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 first social network on the internet

and it's probably not what you're thinking.

Not everyone was on the internet, not everyone had email,

but there was a sense that this would be a place

where you could start a business and do something meaningful. Also, the overthrow of Emperor Bokassa in the Central African Republic,

the death of Nauru in India,

and the surprisingly controversial early years of Sesame Street. It was banned for several months in Mississippi because it featured a little white girl and a little black girl sharing an ice

cream. That's all coming up later in the podcast. But our first story this week comes from 1989 and a watershed moment in the recent history of China

because it was in June of that year that the People's Army opened fire on tens of thousands of

students who'd been demonstrating for weeks in the center of Beijing.

The Chinese Communist Party wanted no part in the sort of reform as being demanded.

So they sent in the tanks.

Dan Wang was one of the Tiananmen Square protest leaders.

He escaped the violence and went into hiding and he's been talking to Yashanzhou

about what happened next.

By the beginning of June 1989, Beijing's Tianmen Square had been filled with

student protests for seven weeks. On the evening of June the 3rd 1989 I was in my dormitory in Peking University with other students.

We were discussing the future of our protests.

Someone called us from a phone box in a street near Tiananmen Square.

He said troops had opened fire on the students.

The noise of gunfire rose from all over the centre of peeking.

...