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 a drug scandal from the 1970s which blighted the lives of generations.

I was very aware as a 10 year old that something was potentially amiss in my nether regions.

Plus we'll hear from the celebrated British artist Francis Bacon on his turbulent lifestyle

and challenging works.

All art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself.

That is going to become much more difficult for the artist because he must return the

onlooker to life more violently.

And the 1980s New York Street News newspaper

set up to help the homeless.

They had grins as a mile wide,

and I was like, this is a revolution. This is a ground up thing. I'm going to be part of this.

Those items which are coming up later in the podcast shine a light into corners of the past which might not necessarily have featured as top news stories in their time, but our

first item certainly did. On February 13, 1991, several hundred Iraqi civilians were killed when US fighter planes dropped two precision

bombs on an air-raid shelter near the centre of Baghdad. The airstrikes were part of the US-led

operations against Saddam Hussein following the Iraqi

invasion of neighbouring Kuwait. The incident raised serious questions about

American intelligence gathering and about the intelligence of so-called smart bombs.

My clanchion has heard from one woman whose four children were in the shelter that day.

So Operation Desert Storm started like this with the unsuspecting Iraqis about one

hours flight away. Operation Desert Storm the US-led assault against Saddam

...