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How aerial photographs tracked down Hitler's flying bombs. 14 July 2013Last updated at 19:04 ET At the height of WWII, as deadly German V1 and V2 rockets were fired from northern France towards the UK, a country house by the banks of the River Thames became the centre of Allied attempts to discover the Nazis' test and launch sites. Hundreds of staff at RAF Medmenham in Buckinghamshire studied millions of grainy aerial images of northern Europe to try to find the final pieces of an intelligence jigsaw - known as Operation Crossbow. To mark 50 years since the first batches of WWII aerial photos were declassified, Allan Williams - from the National Collection of Aerial Photography in Edinburgh - has written a book about Operation Crossbow and the role photographic intelligence played to stop the doodlebugs and V2 rockets.

Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. All images subject to copyright. Music by Billy Cotton and courtesy KPM Music. Related: Richard Rogers at 80: The man who built the Dome, the Pompidou Centre and Terminal 5. 22 July 2013Last updated at 23:44 GMT Regarded as one of the world's most successful and influential architects, Lord Rogers' distinctive, eye-catching creations can be seen far and wide. From the Welsh Assembly building in Cardiff, to Lloyd's of London and the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Now, as he turns 80, Richard Rogers' pioneering career is being celebrated in a new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. To mark his birthday, he spoke to BBC World Service about some of his most memorable structures - from his early work to current projects. Enable captions to see the names of all the buildings.

Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out can be seen at the Royal Academy, London, until 13 October 2013. All images subject to copyright. Other images courtesy Press Association, Getty Images, Reuters, FTIConsulting.com and Andrew Zuckerman. Related: Royal Academy - London. Inside a derelict asylum. 5 August 2013Last updated at 20:11 ET More than 50 years ago Enoch Powell, the then health minister, announced the closure of the great old Victorian and Edwardian asylums - refuge for some, incarceration and controversial treatment for others.

But years on some still lie derelict, waiting to be demolished or redeveloped. They're broken into by vandals and urban explorers. They also provide ideas for artists and writers. Author James Scudamore - whose new book, Wreaking, is based around an old mental asylum - found inspiration at the empty Severalls Hospital in Colchester, where redevelopment is planned. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed.

All images subject to copyright. Additional images courtesy Rex Features - plus 1960s archive images from North Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. Audio by Nicola Stanbridge. Related: 'There is an energy here' Today programme - Radio 4. Above agriculture - a summer in the skies. 17 September 2013Last updated at 03:11 ET Jason Hawkes has been taking aerial photographs from the skies above the UK for more than 20 years. Perched in the open door of a helicopter, hundreds of metres above the ground, his vantage point offers a colourful and striking view of the land below.

Here - with his latest set of images - he explains how he spent the summer of 2013 criss-crossing Britain, snapping the natural and manmade patterns and shapes that dominate our rural landscape. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. All photographs subject to copyright. Music by the Steve Miller Band, Paul Weller and KPM Music. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Related: Jason Hawkes - photographer The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. More audio slideshows: How aerial photographs tracked down Hitler's flying bombs The man who built the Dome Venus project - redesigning the future.

How 'big data' is changing lives. 25 February 2013Last updated at 20:08 ET Data is increasingly defining us - from the information we share on the web, to that collected by the numerous companies with whom we interact. Intrigued by the sheer scales involved, photojournalist Rick Smolan wanted to see how data was transforming the world. Take a look at his global snapshots - compiled in his book The Human Face of Big Data. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Click bottom right for image information and full credits. All images subject to copyright. Additional images courtesy Google Maps. Slideshow production by Jane Wakefield and Paul Kerley. Related: BBC News - What If?

More audio slideshows: LED at 50: An illuminating history Reg Turnill - The Moon landing Wildlife photos: How to take the best shots. Top travel photos from around the world. 8 July 2013Last updated at 21:05 ET From untamed landscapes and stunning natural phenomena to human stories and wildlife in close-up. Each year, the Travel Photographer of the Year competition draws thousands of entries from across the planet. Have a sneak preview of some of the latest winners with judges, Debbie Ireland and Chris Coe. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Images from TPOTY 2012 are at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London, from 12 July to 18 August 2013. All images subject to copyright.

Music by KPM Music. Related: Travel Photographer of the Year Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) More audio slideshows: Tour de France 100 Magnificent Mallard: The world's fastest steam locomotive Charles Correa - India's greatest architect? Valentina Tereshkova: The Greta Garbo of space. I follow the factory boss up endless staircases and down long corridors. As the light filters through grimy windows and bounces off green paint, I feel trapped in a vast aquarium, or rather a tank of aspic. Here is an impeccably preserved piece of the Soviet Union, right down to the browbeaten babushkas listlessly sweeping the floors and the hammers and sickles decorating the walls. We stop by a metal loom, gathering dust. Pyotr Shelkoshwein, director of the Krasniy Perekop textile plant, strokes the machine reverentially "This", he says, "is where Tereshkova worked.

" Shelkoshwein joined the factory in Yaroslavl, 150 miles north-east of Moscow, at the same time as Valentina Tereshkova, the world's first woman to be sent into space. Tereshkova, third parachutist from left, displayed an early enthusiasm for flight Nothing unusual about that; by the 1960s almost every Soviet town had its own parachute club. Tereshkova was celebrated in songs and her face was put on postage stamps. Related: Magnificent Mallard: The world's fastest steam locomotive. 1 July 2013Last updated at 21:16 ET Three-quarters of a century ago, a locomotive built in Doncaster set a world speed record for steam rail travel on a stretch of track just south of Grantham. That 1938 record - of 126 miles per hour - remains to this day. To mark the 75th anniversary of the achievement, the National Railway Museum in York has arranged for Mallard to meet its five surviving sister locomotives from the A4 Class - which ran on the East Coast Mainline from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Ahead of the museum's Great Gathering on Wednesday 3 July - look back at how the record was set, with one of the museum's curators Ed Bartholomew. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Mallard and the other five surviving A4 Class locomotives can be seen at the National Railway Museum, York, from 3-17 July 2013. All images subject to copyright. Music by KPM Music. Related: National Railway Museum - York. Richard Rogers at 80: The man who built the Dome, the Pompidou Centre and Terminal 5. The 1953 technology used to climb Everest. 7 May 2013Last updated at 20:06 ET High altitude boots, rubber walkie talkies and experimental oxygen tanks helped Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquer the world's highest mountain 60 years ago. The 1953 Everest expedition used the latest technology available at the time.

The Royal Geographical Society, which helped organise the trip, is celebrating with two exhibitions. Everest 1953 showcases some of the awe-inspiring photographs taken during the ascent - while Innovation Everest examines the cutting edge products that were taken to the Himalayas. Take a look with head of collections at the RGS - Alasdair MacLeod. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed.

Innovation Everest is on until 14 June 2013 at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), London. Everest 1953 runs from 23 May to 9 June 2013 at London's Oxo Gallery, and accompanies the official RGS anniversary book Everest. Related: Neon style in Cold War Poland. 14 March 2013Last updated at 20:16 ET Colourful and creative neon lights were an antidote to Polish Cold War gloom. From the 1950s onwards, bright lights beamed out across the country.

But today, as Poland modernises and as buildings come down, many of those lights are going out. Photographer Ilona Karwinska has captured the period of Poland's "neonisation" in pictures. But what started as a photographic project for a book, has resulted in the creation of a museum dedicated to these works of art. She told Lila Allen why she is on a mission to save Poland's Cold War neons. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. All images subject to copyright. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Related: Neon Museum - Warsaw Ilona Karwinska - photographer More audio slideshows: Joel Meyerowitz: Back story Garden glory through a lens Turkish Cypriot London life: Dilek's story. Wildlife photos: How to take the best shots. 13 February 2013Last updated at 21:03 ET Even though the latest digital cameras can take dozens of photographs within a matter of seconds, and reveal instant results, it is still not as easy as you might think to snap a winning image.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition - run by the Natural History Museum and BBC Worldwide - receives thousands of entries. With the 2013 entry deadline approaching, what could you do to make your images stand out? Watch this slideshow - and see the lists below - to get some expert tips. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Entries for Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 must be submitted by 25 February 2013. All images subject to copyright. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Related: David Maitland - photographer BBC Wildlife Magazine Natural History Museum - London 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Reg Turnill - The Moon landing. 13 February 2013Last updated at 11:07 ET In July 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" was watched by millions of people around the world.

The BBC's aerospace correspondent at the time, Reg Turnill, reported on the Apollo 11 launch in Florida, and later from mission control near Houston. Here - in a tribute to Reg who has died at the age of 97 - we revisit his recollections of that summer, with the help of archive material from Nasa. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Audio recorded in 2009. All images subject to copyright. Music by Zager and Evans (US no 1 at time of moon landing), Fifth Dimension, Thunderclap Newman (UK no 1 at time of moon landing) and KPM Music. Slideshow production by Paul Kerley. Related: Reg Turnill obituary More audio slideshows: 50 years of the UK in space Extinction: Beyond dinosaurs and dodos Joel Meyerowitz: Back story.

Tour de France 100. 24 June 2013Last updated at 19:00 ET The cyclists taking part in the centennial staging of the world's greatest bike race will cover nearly 3,500 km in 21 stages - as they seek to emulate Sir Bradley Wiggins' 2012 victory. But how does the corporate, science-based Tour of the 21st Century compare to the early days of the competition, when riders lacked gears and were very much on their own?

Here, at the start a series of reports looking at the business behind the race, take a nostalgic look back. Hear from Graeme Fife, author of Tour de France, the History, the Legend, the Riders - and Brian Robinson who became, in 1955, the first British man to complete the race. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. All images subject to copyright. Music by Kraftwerk and KPM Music. Related: BBC Sport - Cycling Tour de France 2013 BBC Business of Sport More audio slideshows: How 'big data' is changing lives.

50 years of the UK in space. 28 December 2012Last updated at 21:35 ET From swirling star formations deep in the cosmos, to sat-nav in cars and the daily weather forecast, the UK has played an significant role in space exploration and technology over the past 50 years. And it is big business - with the UK space industry worth more than £9bn a year. Take a colourful look at how it all started - and where it is now heading - with the acting chief executive of the UK Space Agency, David Parker. Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Click bottom right for image information. Music by Focus Music. Related: UK Space Agency European Space Agency Nasa The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

More audio slideshows: Treasures at the Natural History Museum Skyscrapers - past, present and future Ansel Adams and American nature. What's behind a 62-gun salute? 23 April 2013Last updated at 05:47 ET A stark contrast from their day jobs in the mud on Salisbury Plain - the men of 34 Battery, part of 14 Regiment Royal Artillery, were this year given the honour of firing the Royal Salute for the Queen's birthday. The celebrations were marked with 62 blasts from three guns at the Tower of London. WARNING: Contains loud gun blasts Continue reading the main story To see the enhanced content on this page, you need to have JavaScript enabled and Adobe Flash installed. Narration by Lt Col Paul Bates and Sgt Maj Edward Ellershaw - 14 Regiment Royal Artillery. All images subject to copyright. Related: British Army Historic Royal Palaces The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites.

More audio slideshows: Iraq 10 Years: Photographs by Sean Smith Baroness Thatcher: Life at No 10 How 'big data' is changing lives. Extinction: Beyond dinosaurs and dodos. Lours of space - Visions of the Universe. Amy Winehouse: Fame and family. LED at 50: An illuminating history by the light's inventor. How the men from the ministry saved England's heritage.

Turkish Cypriot London life: Dilek's story. Garden glory through a lens. Polar bears: An uncertain future. Audio slideshow: The road to Downing Street. Making hyacinths bloom in winter. Tomorrow's cities: How the Venus Project is redesigning the future. BBC - Today. The time when sweets were strictly rationed. Wonderground underground - MacDonald Gill's maps. Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2013. The crazy ideas that failed to solve the longitude problem. Iraq 10 Years: Photographs by Sean Smith. Joel Meyerowitz: Back story. Baroness Thatcher: Life at No 10. Audio slideshow: A week in politics. Charles Correa - India's greatest architect?