The History Of The World Backwards

Episode 2 (1x2)

Air date: Nov 06, 2007

Looking to plug the £40b pensions black hole, Britain sets a target to have 90 per cent of the population smoking by 1940. Consequently, mandatory smoking is introduced on tube platforms, escalators, train carriages, buses, the underground, planes, cinemas and classrooms. In Ghana, President Kwame Nkrumah completes his vision of pan-African rationalisation by outsourcing control of his country to the British. As part of its re-branding, the British rename the country "the Gold Coast". The 1945 Blitz is a mutual pact agreed with Germany to stimulate property development in Coventry. Meanwhile, Dr Robert Oppenheimer steals uranium from missiles primed for use against civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. John Wayne becomes one of the many film stars of the talkies era to struggle to make the transition to silent films, which become popular in the Twenties. Meanwhile, Emmeline Pankhurst leads the post-feminist movement to let women stop at home and not have to go to work. Suffragettes march under banners which read: "You Decide For Both Of Us Dear". The world's last-ever television advert is made and Alexander Graham Bell makes the world's last-ever premium-rate telephone call. Finally, in Galileo, Kepler & The Duchess, Kepler dances to Ain't Nobody by Chaka Khan and the Pope accuses Galileo of "Sat Nav heresy" and says: "There are no satellites, Galileo, everything in Heaven was put there by God!" He then sentences him to be burnt at the stake as part of Make Science History week.