The Incredible Journey

This program follows the extraordinary story of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots of World War II.

At 7:25 am on 25 October 1944, just five days after the Kamikaze Corps was formed, Lieutenant Yukio Seki took off from this very location on the first official Kamikaze attack mission. Three hours and twenty minutes later, at 10:45 am, his unit reached enemy targets in the Gulf of Leyte. Seki was the first to strike. He deliberately...

Al Capone, a name that still echoes through the annals of American crime history, was one of the most notorious gangsters of all time. Born in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, Alphonse Gabriel Capone rose from humble beginnings to become the kingpin of organised crime in Chicago during the Prohibition era. 

Known for his charismatic personality and ruthless tactics, Capone built an empire based on bootle...

M*A*S*H was a hit television show based on the exploits of army doctors in Korea during the Korean War. The public loved the series, and the last episode in 1983 became the most-watched television broadcast in American history. 

But few actually know about the horrific war that forms the setting for the series, a war that has theoretically never ended. Often called The Forgotten War, it was overshadowed by World War II and the ...

Like most small towns and villages around Australia, Emmaville has its war memorial, complete with the names of those who volunteered from this area. But the name of Emmaville’s most remarkable son is not here, for by the time he enlisted, he had long moved away — Tom Richards.

Richards' grew up to be an athletic young man, and his speed, strength and intelligent play led to his selection in the Queensland team i...

In July 1940, Hitler issued a directive formally launching Operation Sea Lion, Nazi Germany's plan to invade and conquer Britain. Despite the fall of France, Britain, under its new Prime Minister Winston Churchill, showed no intention of surrendering. In a series of defiant speeches, Churchill rallied the British people, famously vowing that they would fight on the beaches, in the streets, and in the hills. It soon became clear to ...

Reptiles are not only deadly and numerous, they are also creatures who have some of the most bizarre behaviours in the world. Inhabiting every single land mass with the exception of Antarctica, reptiles are everywhere. Reptiles are generally classified into four main groups; crocodiles and alligators, lizards, snakes and turtles and tortoises. They are all cold-blooded, which means they rely on external sources to regulate their bo...

In 1975, the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh fell to a rebel movement known as the Khmer Rouge. These Marxist revolutionaries seized control of the country and unleashed a reign of terror rarely seen in modern history. Over the next four years, the regime, led by dictator Pol Pot, was responsible for the deaths of nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population. Entire communities were destroyed, and the nation’s religious an...

It's 70 years since one of the most extraordinary achievements occurred. This accomplishment is spoken of, remembered, and often used as the gauge of success. And so, it is no surprise that the name of this one man is carved indelibly into history. In his home country, he's considered a hero and has been voted the most admired person in the nation. He even has a commemorative five-stamp series to honour his status and achievements....

Nancy Bird Walton, Australia's pioneering female aviator, became the youngest woman in the British Empire to gain a commercial pilot's licence at 19. Her passion for flying started at 13 with a joyride in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth, prompting training with Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, purchase of her own plane, and barnstorming tours across New South Wales with Peggy McKillop to offer joyrides and charters that brought aviation and ...

In the late eighteenth century, the nations of Europe were plunged into the chaos and terror of a series of bloody revolutions. But England was spared. Not many people know the story of John Wesley, the man who saved England. Today we often focus on economic and military power as the ways that we can save nations. But Wesley did it by bringing about spiritual revival. When France and many other countries in Europe were plunged into...

King Solomon, of the royal House of David, is considered the richest human being the world has ever known. For centuries, the legend of his gold mines, said to be the source of much of his immense wealth, has captured the imagination of people from all nations and stations in life. According to the Bible, Solomon, the wise son of King David, ruled from Jerusalem from 970 to 930 BC, presiding over Israel’s Golden Age and becom...

Step into one of the most volatile places on earth: the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Despite its name, the DMZ is the most militarised border in the world, a tense strip of land dividing North and South Korea since the 1953 armistice. Technically still at war, the two nations face each other across a boundary where even the smallest incident can ignite global attention.

In Panmunjom’s Joint Security Area, North and South...

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5 May 1818, one of nine children of Heinrich and Henrietta Marx. The family lived in the Rhineland region of Prussia in western Germany. Although both parents came from Jewish families with notable rabbinical backgrounds, Marx’s father, who worked as a lawyer, converted to Christianity in order to continue his legal career.

Following an average school performance, Marx studied law and phi...

Even today, new stories emerge about the Holocaust, and its unrelenting evil remains almost impossible to grasp, coldly calculated cruelty on an unimaginable scale. Perhaps the hardest part to comprehend is that, for the Nazis, being Jewish alone was a death sentence. Children of any age were not spared. Historians estimate that 1.5 million children, mostly Jewish, were murdered. How can we even begin to comprehend that?

Yet...

World War II, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history, began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Adolf Hitler dreamed of uniting Europe and establishing an empire that would rule the world for a thousand years. Yet he could have spared himself and his people immense suffering if he had only paid attention to an extraordinary prophecy written by the Bible prophet Daniel more than 2,500 years earlier. ...