What if the Allied D-Day invasions had failed? Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to experts about the possible impact of a failure in this crucial turning point in the Second World War. How would the West have built its identity throughout the 20th Century, who would have held the power, and who would have won the war?

In this episode, historian Professor Suzannah Lipscomb picks through the legacy John F. Kennedy’s presidency might have left, had he not been assassinated. How might this have impacted Cold War relations, the space race, the Vietnam War and American heroic culture?

In the summer of 1969, America made history for mankind, as the Apollo 11 mission placed man on the moon. But what if that spectacular moment had been a disaster instead, and astronauts carrying the pioneering hopes of humankind had met another fate?

An alternative speech for President Nixon was drafted, but just what might it have meant for Western psychology, politics and culture if he’d had to deliver it?

At the height of Cold War tension, what if someone had fired their weapon? This 1983 speech drafted for Queen Elizabeth II to deliver in the event of nuclear warfare shows the chilling reality Britain and the world might have faced. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to the experts about how close this really was, and finds out why nuclear warfare is a zero sum game for the world.

In 1983, a leading figure in the democratic movement was shot dead as he disembarked a plane in his native Philippines. Ninoy Aquino Jnr had prepared his speech, but he never delivered it. Yet his assassination sparked a resistance towards the oppressive rule of martial law that led to revolution, and a wave of peaceful protest that spread throughout nations of the modern world.

If Aquino had lived, though, would his nation have continued to sleepwalk through the curfews and controls of an oppressive state? Or would the people have risen up all the same?

Today we hear Aquino’s speech.