Hello and welcome this is the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Max Pearson the past brought to life by those who were there.

Today it's 50 years since an amazing discovery in the depths of the ocean, the song of the whale.

Slowly I realized, oh my god, this thing repeats itself.

These animals, whatever they were, are actually repeating themselves.

Also we dip into the archives to hear reactions to Finland's independence from Russia a hundred years ago.

It seems so strange that the deposed... go.

It seems so strange that the deposed Tsar was the same emperor whom we had gone to see just a few years before.

We had a glimpse of him by the National Museum in Helsinki, when he was driven past us his

finished subjects and we cheered. Was it all over? It was over.

Plus the crushing of cultural freedoms in the early years of the

rushing of the Soviet Union, and the building of the giant presidential heads that stare out at Mount Rushmore.

You know, we didn't have Disneyland in 1940, but that wasn't what he was looking for he didn't want it to be

something that was just a touristy thing that you drive by. That's all to come but first

we go back 50 years to a key moment in the history of a part of the world which remains

driven by factional fighting and where consequently the majority of the people

are among the poorest and the country one of the least developed in the world.

This is Yemen, and that moment half a century ago

was the British withdrawal from the Port City of Aden.

What followed was the creation of the People's Republic of South Yemen and decades of unrest.

Fajana Haider has been speaking to the former British diplomat Oliver Miles,

who was instrumental in Britain's departure from Aidan,

...