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 the women who fought for reform of the Turkish Penal Code at the turn of this century.

One thing which really shocked me was that if a woman is raped and if the man marries her, then he would get no sentence.

Plus, we'll hear an insider's story of the invention of radar during the Second World War.

We could pick up a cigarette packet at about 30 miles.

The planes were equipped with us and they could go out at night and they could pick

up the German submarines.

Also how Danish medics played a vital role in the development of the mechanical ventilator and how Germany confronted the angst surrounding a colonial era statue of an elephant.

So there was a debate what to do with this elephant. Should it be destroyed? Should it be repaired?

We'll find out what they decided later in the podcast.

But first, as the people of Beirut struggled to regain any sense of equilibrium after this month's

truly devastating explosion in the city, it's

felt to many as though that event was so traumatic that it must mark a turning point in Lebanon's

history. Images of devastation cover a vast area, spreading out from the scene of the explosion,

which was an abandoned cargo of ammonium nitrate in the dock area. It looks apocalyptic.

But Beirut has been here before. Similar images, but perhaps slightly smaller in scale, can be found in the history books that chart the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s.

At the start of the conflict in 1975, Beirut's luxury hotel district was turned into a battlefield

with rival groups of gunman holed up in some of the most expensive accommodation in the Middle East.

In 2014, William Kramer spoke to two former employees

of the Holiday Inn about what came to be known as the Battle of the downtown hotels was the Holiday Inn.

It was formerly inaugurated in 1974 and the American Soul Group

...