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Starring

Jaran Stratton, Adrian Fear, Stephan Erdman, Glen Hayes, Duncan Holmes, Danny Husbands, Noah Michael Levine, Tim Smith, David Schifter, Cheryl Mackie, Glenn Rogers, Kelly Cross, Michael Klesic, Andy Clark, Weetus Cren, Dayton Knoll, Jill Richardson, Roger Tilling

Format

Boxset, Colour, PAL

Main soundtrack

English or Greek (selectable), Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles

OFF or Greek (selectable)

-

Region

Aspect ratio

16:9

Number of discs

11

Classification

Exempt

Studio

2 Entertain Video

DVD release date

6 Aug 2007 in the UK

Run time

1839 minutes (30 hours 39 mins)

EAN

-

The dream of flight is one that has eluded man for most of his existence. But two days stand out as changing history. The first is the flight of the Wright Flyer on 17 December 1907 by Wilbur and Orville Wright while the second, separated by only sixty years, is the flight of Apollo 11 from the Earth to the Moon.

Disc 2
The Coronation of Elizabeth II/The Death of Diana
The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand/The Death of Adolf Hitler
The Assassination of Rev Martin Luther King/The Release of Nelson Mandela

Royalty, civil rights and two world wars are the subjects of the second disc in this set, which begins with an episode that describes two days that shook the British royal family. The first is the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 while the second is the day that many of us will remember, when we woke up to hear that Princess Diana had died overnight following a car crash in Paris. Elsewhere, the assassination of Martin Luther King begins with the civil rights leader, who has recently received a death threat, standing on the tarmac while his plane is searched. Unknown to him, his killer races towards Memphis. Years later, Nelson Mandela, emerges from Victor Verster prison after being jailed for twenty-seven years. Finally, Days That Shook The World looks at the beginning of the First World War with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 while, thirty-one years later, Hitler commits suicide in his bunker in Berlin in the closing days of the Second World War in mainland Europe.

Disc 3
Hiroshima
The Murder of the Romanovs/The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Kristallnacht/The Birth of Israel

The end of hostilities and the repercussions of war are examined on the third disc in this set, with the first episode beginning with the testing of an atomic bomb in New Mexico and, following its success, the loading of a second weapon onto a destroyer only four hours later to sail to Tinian Island in the Pacific, centre of America's efforts against the Japanese. Days That Shook The World describes what happened on that island as Little Boy was loaded onto the B-29 Enola Gay and took off for Hiroshima. Next comes, not the Bolshevik Revolution, but the killing of the Romanovs and the fall of the Berlin Wall while the disc finishes with two stories of the Jewish people, one Kristallnacht in 1938, which is a precursor to the horrors of the Holocaust, and only ten years later, the founding of the state of Israel.

Disc 4
Tutankhamun's Tomb/Deciphering the Rosetta Stone
First Nuclear Reaction/Chernobyl
Black September Hijackings/Lockerbie

The fourth disc in the set opens with two stories that the BBC would later dramatise in Egypt, the discovery of Tutankhamun's Tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon and the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone by Jean-François Champollion. Next comes a modern wonder and its disastrous counterpart, the first nuclear reaction by Enrico Fermi in a squash court in 1942, which will herald the nuclear age and the meltdown of a reactor at Chernobyl in 1986. Finally, Days That Shook The World offers reconstructions of two of the most well-known terrorist incidents of the twentieth century, Black September (the hijacking at Dawson's Field in Jordan in 1970) and Lockerbie (1988).

Disc 1
The Assassination of JFK/The Resignation of Nixon
Marconi's First Transatlantic Radio Transmission/Concorde's First Transatlantic Flight
Faster than Sound: Chuck Yeager/Donald Campbell

America, the crossing of the Atlantic and speed are what this next disc documents as it opens with a young president would not survive his first term in office and another who would not be forgiven after being forced out during his second term. Connecting the assassination of John F Kennedy (1963) and the resignation of Richard Nixon (1973), Days That Shook The World looks at the fall of two American presidents. And it's also to America that the second episode goes, with a rather loose association between Marconi's first transatlantic radio transmission (1901) and Concorde's first flight into New York. The Atlantic had been flown before and Concorde had already crossed it but New York had held out. All that was to change in 1977 with the fastest commercial airliner in the world. This interest in speed continues with Chuck Yeager's first supersonic flight in 1947 in the Bell XS-1 and, in 1967, Donald Campbell's ill-fated attempt to set a world water speed record on Coniston Water in the jet-powered boat Bluebird.

Disc 2
Disaster in the Sky: The Hindenburg/Challenger Disaster
The Christmas Truce
Attack on Pearl Harbor

The second series begins here and, from the first episode, it's clear that Days That Shook The World will offer a more tangible connection in those episodes when it chooses to tell two stories. As such, this disc opens with Disaster In The Sky and in the US in 1937 with Herb Morrison and Charles Nehlsen setting up their mobile recording equipment to document the arrival of the airship Hindenburg while, in its second half, it travels to Florida in 1986 and to the launch of the refurbished Space Shuttle Challenger. Next is the The Christmas Truce, which, without Paul McCartney and his Pipes Of Peace, tells the story of Christmas 1914 when British and German forces played football between the trenches. Finally, it's to Pearl Harbour in 1941 and the Japanese attack that brought a reluctant America into the Second World War.

Disc 3
Grand Heist: The Theft of the Crown Jewels/The Great Train Robbery
Conspiracy to Kill: The Real Day of the Jackal/Wolf's Lair
Reach For The Stars: Trials of Galileo/Yuri Gagarin's Flight

Going further back than it has done before, Days That Shook The World travels to 1671 for the first of its Grand Heists, the theft of the crown jewels from the Tower Of London. And we remain in the UK for second of our two stories but to Crewe in 1963 and in the company of Ronnie Biggs, Bruce Reynolds, Buster Edwards and others for the Great Train Robbery. Next is Conspiracy To Kill with the two targets of the assassins in our stories being Hitler (by von Stauffenburg in 1944) and the ambush of Charles De Gaulle in 1962 in Petit Clamart by a gang that includes Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye and Bastien-Thiry. The last episode on this disc is Reach For The Stars that follows the story of two men, one who looked beyond this world and another who travelled there, Galileo Galilei (1633), who stands accused of heresy for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and, in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

Disc 4
Dinosaurs and Duplicity: Discovery of the First Dinosaur/Piltdown Man
Terror - Made in America: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln/Oklahoma City Bombing
Cold War Spies: Gary Powers/Rudolf Abel

Dinosaurs And Duplicity hints at going even further back in time than 1633 but, alas, it chooses instead to document the discovery in 1824 by Gideon and Mary Mantell of the fossilised teeth of a dinosaur, which proved that giant and long-extinct reptiles had existed. Duplicity, on the other hand, describes the 'finding' of the Piltdown Man in 1912 and how, in 1953, Kenneth Oakley and Joe Weiner revealed it as a fraud. In Terror - Made In America, we go to Washington in 1865 and to see John Wilkes Booth dressing to attend the theatre, which, that same night, will play host to Abraham Lincoln. And over one hundred years later in 1995, as thousands of others head to work, Timothy McVeigh readies the homemade bomb in the back of a hired truck that he will park outside the Murrah Building in Oklahoma. Finally, in Cold War Spies, we have the shooting down of a U-2 American spy plane and its pilot Gary Powers over Russia (1960) and the day in which these enemies traded spies with one another on the Glienicker Bridge in Berlin (1962), another story in which Gary Powers has a starring role as America attempts to get him back in exchange for Frederic Pryor.

Disc 1
Affairs of the Crown: The Execution of Anne Boleyn/The Abdication of Edward VIII
The Cost of Betrayal: The Defection of Burgess & MacLean/The Execution of the Rosenbergs
Rule of the Gun: The O.K. Corral/Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

Execution and abdication are at the heart of Affairs Of The Crown, in which two members of the British royal family, Anne Boleyn (1536) and Edward VIII (1936), are removed from the throne by very different means. Meanwhile, in The Cost Of Betrayal, Days That Shook The World documents the defection to the of two British spies whose names are still remembered, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean (1951) while, in America, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg wake in separate cells in Sing Sing where, that day in 1965, they will be executed for spying against their country. Finally, in Rule Of The Gun, it's back to America and to two days that live on, the gunfight at the OK corral (1881) and the St Valentine's Day massacre (1929).

Disc 2
Fact or Fiction?: The War of the Worlds/Hitler Diaries
The War to End All Wars: The End of World War I
Let Freedom Ring!: The Boston Tea Party/The Independence of India

Fact Or Fiction? sounds like a Reader's Digest book and, indeed, it takes in two stories that have been told many times alongside other famous fakes, getaways and haunted houses. This episode documents two famous hoaxes, Orson Welles' famous radio broadcast of HG Wells' War Of The Worlds (1938) and the selling of the Hitler Diaries to The Times in 1983. The irony in The War To End All Wars is not lost in the episode that describes the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 but which sewed the seeds of the second, even ending with Adolph Hitler in hospital deciding to enter politics and take revenge on those who had shamed Germany. Finally, in Let Freedom Ring!, two events are examined, both of which features a cry for independence, the Boston Tea Party in 1773, while the other is the achievement of that prize, August 1947 and the day in which India is made independent from the British Empire.

Disc 3
Battle for the Holy City: The Six-Day War
The Battle of Midway
The Road to Revolution: The Execution of Ceauşescu/The Iranian Revolution

In 1967, Israel and Jordan fight for control of Jerusalem in Battle For The Holy City while, in the next episode, another war plays out in The Battle Of Midway, with one day in 1942 changing the course of the Second World War in the Pacific. Finally, and in the final episode in this set, The Road To Revolution, Days That Shook The World documents the changing of two countries forever. The first follows the wave of revolution that swept through central Europe as the Soviet Union fell until it eventually arrived in Romania in December 1989 with the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu. Then it is to Iran in 1979 and the fight for power between two men, the reigning monarch Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and, conducting his affairs out of a bungalow in Paris, Ayatolla Khomeini.