A bomb, whose creation would tip the scales of global power, a nuclear physicist who sought to

redress the balance. The bomb, a podcast from the BBC World Service.

Season 2 available now.

Hello and welcome to The History Hour Podcast from the BBC with me, Max Pearson and the team behind the Witness History

Strand on the World Service. This week we remember the world's deadliest ever

earthquake. I thought it was really a bad storm.

So I went to try and close the window.

No sooner had I cut the window, the wall collapsed.

Also, the scientist who invented the nicotine patch.

That suddenly clicked in my brain like a lightning bolt because I knew that nicotine does get through the skin very easily.

And the dangerous missions of the ANC's London recruits.

In the suitcase I had a Fortnham Mason's biscuit tin which had another false bottom,

just one layer of biscuits on the top and underneath the

false bottom in that the explosive devices. That's all coming up later in the

podcast but we're starting with further aspects of the troubled recent history

in relations between Ukraine and Russia. There have been of the

recent history in relations between Ukraine and Russia.

There have been several moments from the past which have highlighted the

increasingly fragile and fractious relationship.

2014 of course was pivotal with the Russian annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine following

anti-Russian protests in Kiev. But decades earlier the strains were evident.

In 1990 Ukrainian students staged a hunger strike that helped to bring down the Soviet

...