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

where this week we're going to concentrate on love, moments and relationships from the

past to cast a little bit of light on matters of the heart. We have love

against the odds for a gay man in Uganda. Growing up as a kid in Uganda, Uganda is a

very conservative country. You discover that you are different and it's like you try to run away from it.

A love that turned out to be fraudulent and illegal. The judge wasn't impressed by Viglioto's explanation that he regarded himself as a bee and women as flowers.

Also, we look at how Italy finally embraced divorce in the 1970s, recognizing that love can go bad and how in the 1990s love was

restrained by an American ministry preaching chastity. I mean who in the right mind would want to have this as our ministry? Well I

feel like I've tried to do my part in what is important to the kingdom of

God to ultimately help people go to heaven.

That's coming up later.

But for any love at all to be ignited, there has to be that moment of meeting,

the spark of recognition between kindred souls or the hot flush of physical attraction.

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? However, over all societies there has always

hovered the question of how to go about meeting Mr or Mrs right.

Where do you go? How do you improve your chances?

Nowadays we have the internet where much awkwardness can be sidestepped,

or so I'm told.

Before that, making the first connection seem to be getting harder and harder in the hectic fast moving urban environments of the last 100 years.

But at the turn of the century, a new way to break the ice emerged. Lucy Burns has been looking back at the

birth of speed dating.

When you watch something just come out of nowhere and have people other people start using a

...