7 Crimes that Made History

Some crimes are so sensational that they leap out of the annals of crime and into popular culture. From Jack the Ripper to Roswell to Lady Di, each episode in this series revisits a page of our shared history, meticulously decoding and deconstructing a sensationalist news item. Unjustly disdained by historians, and generally left to the tabloid press, these stories reveal much about the societies that spawned them, and the later generations that keep reviving them. 1. Jack the Ripper: The Invention of a Serial Killer (1888) 2. The Vampires of the Weimar Republic (1924-1931) 3. The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre: Gang Rule in America (1929) 4. Violette Noziere, Murderess or Victim? (1933) 5. Roswell: Back to the UFO (1947) 6. The Jonestown Massacre: The Start of the Anti-Cult Movement (1978) 7. The Death of Lady Di: The Paparazzi's Princess (1997)

• biography
• documentary
• history