Yesterday's Witness (1969)

The 1930s were the golden age of the child movie-star. Scores of tousle-headed moppets were dragged West to Hollywood by movie-struck mothers. It was the Great Depression, and desperate parents were lured to the world's film capital by the promise of easy riches and instant fame -$2,000 a week and top-line billing. But the reality was invariably crueller. A brief and lucky spell in the limelight led almost inevitably to retirement at 12 or 13. And then what for the rest of your life? This is the story of five of those famous children and what became of them, with rare glimpses of what they looked like on screen. And there's a sixth; the legendary Baby Peggy who was a movie-star back in the 20s, long before the baby bonanza of the 30s boomed.

Sept. 27, 1976, midnight

"The winning of this strike was the most important event in American labor history". The story of the famous sit-down at the General Motors plants at Flint, Michigan, early in 1937, is told by some of the people who took part. They sat down in protest against their intolerable working conditions. They sat down to demand union recognition. And despite the vast network of company spies and informers, the strikers, by brilliant strategy and with the help of the unique Women's Emergency Brigade, managed to "whip the mightiest industrial corporation in the world to its knees". The young union - the United Automobile Workers - forced General Motors to grant it recognition and within a generation was to proclaim itself the most powerful in the world.

Oct. 4, 1976, midnight

On 16 July 1945, at 5.30 in the morning, the world's first atom bomb was experimentally exploded in the desert of New Mexico. This is the story of the fateful days of secret preparation for the test. It is told by some of the scientists and soldiers who were intimately concerned and is illustrated by previously unseen colour film. The story is also told by some of the local inhabitants for whom the birth of the nuclear age came as a total and alarming surprise.

Oct. 11, 1976, midnight

' We were called coloured then, or gentlemen of colour ... To use the term black, well everybody disliked that. Black was a fighting word.' This is the story of three remarkable black Americans who fought for equal rights and social justice for their people in the first years of this century. They were pioneers. There was Revels Cayton , the grandson of one of the first black Senators, who worked through the labour movement. Lt George Lee , who became one of the Deep South's most successful businessmen and a prominent Republican politician. And C. L. Dellums , who assisted at the birth of America's first black Trade Union - the International Brotherhood of Sleeping-Car Porters.

Oct. 18, 1976, midnight