Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,

the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week a dramatic first-hand account of the Rape of Nank King in 1937.

I was really frightened because the Japanese planes were shooting at the people fleeing.

Many died, especially on the bridges, because there was nowhere to run when they attacked.

Plus, how China became a major player in global trade.

Also the woman who revolutionised the treatment of dying patients

and a disastrous episode for Allied agents during World War II.

I realized I had to risk everything to prevent further damage and the Germans cutting hold of vital information.

The message was all agents are in enemy hands.

That's all coming up later in the podcast. But we begin by marking the 50th anniversary

of one of the most significant moments in the history of humankind's

exploration of space. In December 1968, the world was gripped as astronauts went round the moon for the first time.

Simon Watts has been talking to Colonel Frank Borman, the commander of NASA's Apollo 8 mission.

Welcome to the road, beautiful.

Thank you. It's Christmas Eve, 1968. A quarter of the world's population tune in as the Apollo 8 spacecraft

broadcasts pictures from just 60 miles above the moon.

The moon is a different thing to each one of it.

I know my own impression is that it's a vast, lonely forbidding type existence.

It looks rather like clouds and clouds of pomestown.

Frank Borman was in charge of the riskiest mission in NASA's history.

Before the launch, America had been a long way behind the Soviet Union in the Cold War battle to put the first men on the moon.

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