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 from the 1980s the first Tamilbers, the Black Tigers.

When the camera was rolling, they explained how they trained to be suicide bombers.

How once the bomb exploded, that their bodies would be reduced to tiny pieces.

Plus, no sex please, we're Soviets, the story of a classic Cold War misunderstanding,

and the first non-stop round-the-world balloon trip.

So what's it like stepping on solid ground?

Out of the circumstances is an enormous relief.

Would you do it all again?

I suppose that I don't have to.

I've done it. But first an event from 70 years ago which has

spawned any number of books, films, TV shows and conspiracy theories. This is the

Roswell incident, an event which remains the most famous story hinting at a visitation

from an alien life form. In early July 1947, witnesses reported a strange light in the sky to the north of the U.S. Air Base at

Roswell in New Mexico. An intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel, was sent to examine

strange metal debris which was said to have been strewn across the desert.

In the middle of the night he went home to show his family what he'd found.

In 2010 that officer's son Jesse Marcel Jr., who was 11 years old in 1947, spoke to Ed Butler.

My dad walked my mother up so he could see remnants of what he called a crash flying saucer.

You know, kind of grope my way into the kitchen where the debris was located and

and he was so excited, you know, his excitement was catching.

...