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00:06in the 20th century the human race took off with remarkable individuals making a series
00:14of breakthroughs that changed every aspect of our lives but whose contribution was the most
00:28significant to find out expert juries from each of the major fields of human endeavor
00:33have drawn up a short list of candidates for you to choose from
00:39the greatest scientist artist entertainer
00:51activist explorer
00:55sports star people are starting to say look it's beautiful and leader
01:05these people's stories are some of the pinnacles of human achievement
01:10and show that a single person has the power to change the world
01:24the
01:24explorers have taken us on a journey from conquest to understanding from flag planting
01:28in the name of empire to the conservation of our planet their work has changed how we see our world
01:35and ourselves put simply where explorers lead we all follow which is why for me they're the true icons
01:43of the 20th century
01:46four great icons of exploration each had the courage and determination
01:50to push the benchmark of human achievement to staggering heights
01:56and that's exactly what makes our first explorer so special a man who's the epitome of courage survival
02:04leadership and endurance
02:11Ernest Shackleton will be remembered as one of the great explorers of the 20th century.
02:17By the turn of the century, explorers had already mapped much of the globe.
02:20They discovered unknown lands, charted its rivers, and climbed some of its highest peaks.
02:26But there were still parts of our planet where no human could set foot, including the North
02:35and South Poles.
02:36This was the age of polar exploration, and Shackleton was one of its most famous figures.
02:45Shackleton had been part of two expeditions to Antarctica and was already a national hero.
02:50But what makes him stand out is the superhuman courage he showed during what might have been
02:55one of exploration's greatest ever disasters.
02:59What Shackleton achieved with a benchmark for endurance and survival hasn't come close to
03:04being surpassed in a hundred years.
03:05But if there's one sentence for me that sums up his iconic status, it's this from one
03:10of his contemporaries.
03:12For scientific discovery, give me Scott.
03:14For speed and efficiency, give me Aronson.
03:17But if disaster strikes and all hope is gone, then get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.
03:29His story begins when the endurance set off from Plymouth on 8 August 1914, just 11 days
03:36after the outbreak of the First World War.
03:41Shackleton and his crew had volunteered to fight, but the expedition was considered so
03:47important to national morale at a time of conflict that Churchill, the Lord of the Admiralty, ordered
03:52them to proceed.
03:55Their mission?
03:56The first land crossing of Antarctica ever attempted, coast to coast, via the pole.
04:03But before they could cross Antarctica, they needed to get there.
04:07So the route of the endurance was to come down the South Atlantic and then they stopped at
04:12the whaling station on South Georgia, actually to get advice from the whalers there.
04:17And the whalers said to them, it is a bad ice year.
04:20You've been down there.
04:21You've seen what the sea ice is like.
04:24This would be a spectacularly difficult thing to do now, correct?
04:26Yeah.
04:27Antarctica and the seas around it, they are probably the most hostile places in the world.
04:33The sea ice started to press in on them and that's when the ship got trapped.
04:38They just had to sit it out and they were completely at the mercy of where the ice was going
04:43to take
04:43them.
04:43The endurance drifted helplessly for 10 months.
04:48As across the world, the appalling events of the First World War continued to unfold.
05:17Shackleton and his crew could do nothing.
05:20They were completely alone, locked in their own desperate fight for survival.
05:25What happened is that as the ice took them progressively to the west, everything tightened
05:31up and then, of course, as pressure started to build and you would not only see pressure,
05:40but you would hear pressure in the ice.
05:41I've heard this myself.
05:43It's like gunshots, cracking noises as the ice is pushed together.
05:51And then they can start to hear the ship's hull as it's pinched under pressure and that,
06:00I suspect, is when they thought we're in serious trouble here.
06:07The endurance had been built in Norway in 1912.
06:13She had an 85-inch oak keel and was at the time the strongest ship ever built.
06:18Oh, wow.
06:20Look at this.
06:21It's a big boat.
06:22It's extraordinary to think that was crushed by ice.
06:27The crew made a last desperate attempt to free her.
06:33Literally soaring through the ice, look at it.
06:36But after six weeks, Shackleton had to surrender the endurance to her fate and give the order
06:43to abandon ship.
06:46The crew of 27 and their 69 dogs could only watch on as slowly as ship succumbed.
06:56Now, just try and put yourself in the position of the crew.
07:03The mission's over before it's begun.
07:05You're now on the ice in the middle of Antarctica.
07:08They must have been terrified and they're looking to one man to get them home safely.
07:14And this is the moment where Shackleton steps up and proves what a leader really is.
07:20He absolutely led from the front.
07:21He understood people and he was a doer as well.
07:25And I think those two things together really made a huge difference to everybody.
07:29He was unfailingly, we are going to get out of this.
07:34The crew of the endurance had now been stranded for over a year, drifting for the first 10
07:39months and then in a makeshift camp for another five.
07:42When suddenly the ice flow beneath them cracked open, forcing them into the tiny lifeboats.
07:53Constantly soaked by freezing waves, the crew struggled for a week to reach the nearest land, almost
07:5960 miles away.
08:01There must have been enormous relief when they saw Elephant Island.
08:06And it's not a particularly hospitable island, is it?
08:08Well, it was deeply inhospitable.
08:10Shackleton realised that he couldn't stay there.
08:15His only hope was a remote whaling station on South Georgia.
08:19He set off with a handful of men, deliberately taking with him those he thought would demoralise
08:23the rest, if left on Elephant Island.
08:26Even in this moment of crisis, Shackleton was still thinking like a great leader.
08:36Shackleton and his crew had to cross 800 miles of the most hostile seas on earth.
08:42That's almost the entire length of Britain, a journey Trevor Potts knows first hand.
08:50In 1993, using modern navigation equipment and clothing, he sailed a replica of Shackleton's
08:5623-foot boat across the same stretch of sea.
09:00Tell us about this journey, as the ocean is foreboding and as terrifying as we're all
09:04led to believe.
09:05Absolutely.
09:06You get these enormous waves and then the noise below is just horrific.
09:15We had no escort, no life raft.
09:17There was no going back for us.
09:20Same as Shackleton.
09:24Shackleton's journey took 16 days.
09:27He was battered by 50-foot waves and hit by several severe storms, the last of which was
09:33almost fatal.
09:35I mean, what we did was difficult.
09:38It certainly was and it was cold and miserable at times, but they went through hell and back.
09:47But Shackleton's ordeal was not over once he reached South Georgia.
09:52Leaving three men behind, he and two others set off on the almost 30 mile hike across the
09:57island's uncharted interior.
10:00A journey Trevor has also undertaken.
10:03I mean, we haven't got to forget that this was a rescue mission for those 22 left behind.
10:10He's now leaving three behind in King Haugen Bay and he's faced with this trek across three
10:18glaciers and two small mountain ranges.
10:21Uncharted and unmapped.
10:22Uncharted, unmapped.
10:23Uncharted, unmapped.
10:24You couldn't make it up.
10:25You couldn't.
10:26They'd take screws out of the boat and put them through the boot soles and carry virtually
10:32nothing sledging rations for a couple of days.
10:36They had one shot at it.
10:37Yeah.
10:38If a blizzard came up, they would be dead.
10:40They had no tents, no shelter.
10:42After 24 hours, the men reached the top of a 4,000 foot mountain.
10:48Survival had never seemed less likely.
10:51With the light failing, they made a leap of faith, throwing themselves off the peak on
10:55a sledge fashioned out of rope.
10:59They didn't know what was down there.
11:00They could have got off the side of a cliff.
11:01Absolutely.
11:03And he thought, you know, if we stay at this height much longer and starting to get dark,
11:09we're going to die.
11:11So let's just go for it.
11:16On the 20th of May, 18 months after first leaving the wailing station on South Georgia,
11:22Shackleton heard a familiar sound.
11:27That must have been such a moment to hear the whistle.
11:32That's the first sound they've heard that a man made sound outside their party for two
11:40years.
11:41Incredible.
11:42They must have been so emotional.
11:47But the case for Shackleton doesn't end there.
11:51There it is.
11:55With his crew still stranded, three on the other side of South Georgia and 22 on Elephant
12:01Island, he worked tirelessly for three months until it organised the rescue of every one
12:06of his men.
12:11So these are glass plate negatives that Hurley took and then rescued from the Endurance.
12:19This is almost the last will and testament of the expedition.
12:23What a privilege to see these.
12:26And then in a weird way it just makes it a little more stark.
12:28I think it just hammers home just how unlikely they're chances of survival.
12:37What is it about the Shackleton story you love so much?
12:40I think it's that putting his own life on the line to rescue all his men.
12:47I mean, they were dead men.
12:48The skeletons would be found if he didn't sail that journey.
12:52And it was a suicide mission.
12:54Hmm.
12:55I mean, you must have a lot of admiration for all of these incredible explorers.
12:59Where does Shackleton rank among them for you?
13:00I've got enormous respect for Shackleton a hundred years ago.
13:05These were the astronauts of their day.
13:08This is similar to the exploration of the planets and the future look at Mars.
13:18In almost impossible circumstances, Shackleton vowed to bring every single member of his crew
13:23home alive.
13:24And he did.
13:25He overturned the whole death and glory ethos of empire exploration, and he redefined what
13:32true leadership and great heroism really is.
13:37After him, explorers began to set their sights on prizes beyond the land.
13:46Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
13:53Otis Barton and William Beeb's bathysphere kickstarted exploration of the oceans.
13:59For this apparatus, I intend to salvage the treasure from known wrecks in all parts of
14:04the world.
14:09But for some, exploration was about more than discovering hidden parts of our planet.
14:13It was about understanding other civilizations.
14:20And my next icon would make discoveries that would ultimately come to define an entire nation.
14:27This picture, which has taken at a conference in Egypt in 1921, shows three very significant
14:33figures.
14:34To the left, sporting a very fine pair of deserted sunglasses, is the new minister of the colony
14:39Winston Churchill.
14:40To the right, a very slight figure of the legendary Lawrence of Arabia.
14:44But the true icon, the one we're interested in, is in the middle, a lady there whose influence
14:48and impact still resonates in Iraq today.
14:56Gertrude Bell has no statue or museum in Britain.
14:59Yet in the early 1920s, she helped change the Middle East forever.
15:05Despite this, Gertrude has all but disappeared from the history books.
15:11And yet her knowledge of Iraq is still so valuable that in the 2003 Gulf War, the local sheikhs
15:17gave the US forces a book that she'd written about local tribes in 1918.
15:22So what did the sheikhs know that the rest of us seem to have forgotten?
15:28Tell us, where did you find out about Gertrude?
15:30I can't quite remember the moment, but I think when I started being aware of my part-Iraqi
15:37heritage, what makes her interesting for me is she's a very, very talented woman.
15:42As a writer, as an explorer, as an archaeologist, her love affair with the region started crossing,
15:48you know, hundreds of miles, thousands of miles in the desert, you know, on horseback.
15:53She stuck out because, you know, how many people were doing that and how many women were doing
15:57that at the time.
16:01Bell was exploring in an era when British women had few options in life besides marriage
16:06and motherhood.
16:09They couldn't vote.
16:11Most couldn't even divorce their husbands.
16:14For Bell, who came from a wealthy family of Yorkshire industrialists, the prospect of
16:19life as a dutiful woman was far too ordinary.
16:24She didn't fit in with the female world.
16:28Just the fact of having gone to university at the time, that in itself was already really
16:33stepping out of the sort of the norm.
16:36Yeah.
16:36I think she actually found England very claustrophobic.
16:42She sought to get away.
16:45Bell's achievements are incredible.
16:48By 1913, she'd crossed more than 20,000 miles of desert through Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia
16:55on modern Iraq, much of which was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
17:02She fell in love with the region and its people.
17:06She goes off map quite a lot.
17:07Oh, she does.
17:08She decides to go to a city in Saudi Arabia today, in present-day Saudi Arabia, called Hayl, where
17:15very few had been before her.
17:18She was very much dissuaded from doing so by everyone.
17:22Hayl was thought to be one of the most dangerous places in the region.
17:27To reach it, Bell had to cross through the territory of warring tribes.
17:33She decided, OK, I'm going to do it anyway.
17:35She gets there and then the ruler of Hayl couldn't care less who she was and decides to put her
17:44in prison, I mean, for about 12 days.
17:47She sought adventure and she was, you know, very courageous as a traveller.
17:58She was the first woman to get a first in modern history from Oxford.
18:02She studied antiquities, she trained in surveying, she trained in map making, she trained in photography
18:07and printing.
18:08She was a brilliant horse woman, she was a brilliant camel woman.
18:12She studied five languages, she was the first woman to win a gold medal for fieldwork for
18:17the Royal Geographic Society.
18:18She was the greatest female mountaineer of her day.
18:22She once survived hanging off the side of a mountain on a rope, in a blizzard, for 53 hours.
18:28And she was the first woman to be employed by British military intelligence.
18:36The case for Bell is already compelling.
18:38But what really sets her apart is what she went on to do in Iraq.
18:43She used the extraordinary knowledge she gained through exploration to make herself invaluable
18:48to the British government.
18:51She was a very intelligent woman.
18:54She made herself relevant.
18:55She set herself the task of going around and documenting the tribes in Iraq.
19:02It's a lot of information that's very, very layered, and she knew it all, and so it would
19:08have been foolish, from a British political point of view, not to take advantage of that.
19:12Yeah.
19:13When Bell began working for the government, the First World War was already raging.
19:17In Europe, thousands were being slaughtered on the Western Front.
19:23In the Middle East, Britain and France fought alongside the Arabs to overthrow Turkish rule.
19:29In exchange, the Arabs have been promised self-government.
19:34She follows the army to Baghdad.
19:36She becomes the Oriental Secretary, which is like the second most senior person in the civil administration.
19:41She was very unusual, because she was the only woman, not just in the British imperial administration
19:45in Iraq and Mesopotamia, but anywhere in the world.
19:47You see, just by this photograph, how different she is from the remainder of the office,
19:52who are both British and Iraqis, but she's the only woman.
19:55I mean, I can only assume there was terrible sexism then, because there's terrible sexism now.
20:01Oh, yes. I mean, some of the British imperial servants were both openly misogynistic and also
20:07very critical of her clothes and what she looked like in a way they wouldn't have been of a male
20:12colleague at all.
20:13I'm getting touched Sir Thatcher here, and I don't know, because, you know,
20:17she was the first woman to go out there and she had to do it for herself.
20:20And I think there may be elements of truth there, that there's a parallel.
20:23A woman who achieved such extraordinary things in what was then very much a man's world,
20:27has to believe in herself and in her own qualities.
20:33In what Bell saw as a complete betrayal of the Arabs, in 1920 the British announced
20:38that instead of handing over power as promised, they would remain in charge.
20:43She thought this was going to be a complete disaster for Mesopotamia,
20:47and she was proved right, because in 1920 it erupted into revolt.
20:54Britain's response to the Iraqi rebellion was brutal.
21:03By the end of the campaign, between 15,000 and 20,000 Arabs were dead.
21:11It led to real doubts in Britain about what on earth they were doing there and how they were
21:17doing it. And for Gertrude Bell, it was a kind of vindication of her belief that they had been
21:24setting about it all wrong.
21:25Yeah.
21:26And so it did open up a possibility for thinking of a new kind of strategy for Mesopotamia.
21:32And it's in the light of that that she starts thinking about an Iraqi king.
21:38Refusing to give up hope, in 1921, Bell convinced Churchill that Faisal was the right man to become
21:45the British back king of a new Arab country.
21:51It was an extraordinary achievement.
21:56What had been ancient Mesopotamia was now renamed Iraq.
22:02The long-promised Arab state, with an Arab leader, was finally a reality.
22:09But not everyone was celebrating the new nation or Bell's part in its making.
22:15For many Iraqis, she was part of a British administration that laid the foundation of
22:21some of the problems they've had to face since then. The way it discriminated against some Iraqis,
22:26excluded others, promoted others. Set in train a pattern of Iraqi politics which was felt for the
22:33rest of the 20th century. For many, it's not her who's responsible, but they feel that that's what
22:39the British set in train.
22:40Yeah, she's an instrument of that.
22:41Exactly.
22:43The case for Bell is complex, because she was a supporter of the Arabs, and yet also a colonialist.
22:51But her legacy was not only political, but cultural.
22:56After the crowning of Faisal, she dedicated her life to building a sense of identity in Iraq,
23:01by founding their national museum.
23:06She really believed that Iraq did have an extraordinary archaeological heritage,
23:11and much of that should be visible to the Iraqis themselves. And bringing in the antiquities law
23:15ensured that Iraq would get a fair share of the archaeological treasures found in Iraq.
23:21And this was part and parcel of her notion that you had to make people aware of their history
23:26in order to build up a sense of a national identity. And that was an impressive legacy.
23:34How significant is that to you and to Iraq, do you think?
23:37I think it's tremendous. It's been a fundamental factor in how this country has defined itself,
23:43politically and culturally. The beginning of that story really started with Gertrude.
23:51She planted the seeds, she created the cultural identity of Iraq through this museum.
24:03What makes Bell such an important explorer is that she saw exploration as a bridge to understanding
24:09and respecting other cultures. Her museum helped ensure Iraq retained its treasures,
24:15and is a testament to her belief in the power of exploration to unite.
24:22You've heard the case for our first two icons, Bell and Shackleton. But the generation of explorers
24:28who followed them belonged to a new era of daring and innovation. Jacques Cousteau invented the aqualung
24:35revolutionising exploration of the oceans. Hillary and Tenzig risked death to conquer Everest,
24:43the highest point on Earth. And explorers even reached the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.
24:52As technology got more and more sophisticated,
24:56the opportunities for explorers seem limitless. The first human to crack a sound barrier.
25:10The next icon not only epitomises the incredible feats technology has allowed explorers to achieve
25:16in the 20th century, he also became the focal point of a whole national project.
25:23I'm in the flatlands of Florida, not the kind of place you'd expect to find one of the bravest
25:27explorers of the 20th century. But our next icon faced the biggest unknown of all.
25:53The argument that Neil Armstrong was the greatest explorer of the century is obvious. He was the
25:59first human being to set foot on the moon, and in doing so completely changed our view of the world.
26:07His journey to this extraordinary moment began in the mid-50s with the Cold War,
26:14which sparked a terrifying arms race that led to the rapid development of rockets that could carry nuclear warheads.
26:26As both sides realised this technology had now brought them within reach of the moon itself,
26:31the arms race turned into the space race.
26:35At first, the Soviet Union tore ahead, launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957.
26:43And then, just four years later, sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space.
26:49America had to respond.
26:53We were going very fast. You know, the goal had the undesirable effect of making us rush.
27:00In 1969, with just months to go before Kennedy's deadline ran out,
27:05John Tribe was part of the team responsible for getting Armstrong and his crew to the moon.
27:12The only rocket with the power to do it was the Saturn V.
27:17The Saturn rocket, it's huge.
27:19Can you try and paint the picture of how brave these guys must have been to be
27:23sat on top of it with quite a lot of hardware and explosives underneath them?
27:28Well, you go back to the days when we were launching the Atlas and the Titan and how many failures
27:32we experienced then.
27:36They were very unforgiving pieces of hardware.
27:42And the Saturn V was a measure larger than those vehicles.
27:49And the crew will tell you that they were very aware that they were riding a monster.
27:54Mm-hmm.
27:55They are sitting on the equivalent of an atomic bomb.
28:02In fact, the Saturn V rocket that took Armstrong, Aldrin, and colonists to the moon had over two million working
28:08parts.
28:08If only one of them went wrong, it could have meant death for the astronauts.
28:12It wasn't only the launch that was dangerous.
28:16The lunar landing to be attempted by Armstrong and Aldrin was so risky that a speech had been prepared for
28:22President Nixon in the event of their deaths.
28:27Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon
28:32to rest in peace.
28:33These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know there's no hope for their recovery.
28:40But they also know there is hope for mankind in the sacrifice.
28:44These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal, the search for truth and understanding.
28:51They'll be mourned by their families and friends.
28:53They'll be mourned by their nation.
28:56They'll be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared to send two of her sons into the unknown.
29:01In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one.
29:05In their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
29:09In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations.
29:14In modern times, we do much the same.
29:17Our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
29:22Ignition sequence start.
29:25Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
29:31All engines running.
29:39Liftoff.
29:40We have a liftoff.
29:41Thirty-two minutes past the hour.
29:44Liftoff on Apollo 11.
30:06For the 20th of July 1969, four days after the launch, the astronauts were orbiting the moon.
30:15Armstrong and Aldrin were in the lunar module, preparing to descend to the surface.
30:22On Earth, tension was building in mission control.
30:27But, as Armstrong began his final descent.
30:36Mission control lost contact.
30:40We lost the data with the Eagle.
30:43That's Charlie Duke putting in a call to the crew.
30:45Then, program alarm.
30:48The main computer flashed up an urgent message.
30:511202.
30:53Error 1202.
30:55Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm.
30:58As mission control scrambled to figure out if it meant they had to abort the landing,
31:04Armstrong, the mission commander, calmly continued his descent.
31:09No one was better prepared for this moment.
31:1718 years earlier, as a 21-year-old fighter pilot in the Korean War, he flew dozens of missions.
31:24Almost losing his life on one of them.
31:29Later, as an elite test pilot pushing the limits of the rocket-propelled X-15.
31:40The fastest plane in the world.
31:42He almost lost control when he flew beyond the Earth's atmosphere to the edge of space.
31:51Most of NASA's astronauts were test pilots.
31:54But even amongst them, Armstrong's ability to stay calm was exceptional.
32:00Travelling in space is hard.
32:02And it's dangerous.
32:04You have to be able to tune out the risk.
32:08Bob Seek is a former test engineer who worked with Armstrong on his very first space flight.
32:15Gemini 8, three years before the moon landing.
32:22Gemini 8 was one of those defining moments of testing the astronauts'
32:28ability to react to a significant problem.
32:34The aim of the flight was to dock two spacecraft in orbit for the first time.
32:39Gemini 8, commanded by Armstrong, and an unmanned vehicle, the Agena.
32:46Okay, Gemini 8, we have Cam Salad. You're looking good on the ground. Go ahead and dock.
32:52The docking goes just fine.
32:58Flight, we are docking.
33:01But almost immediately after that, the spacecraft-Agena combination started tumbling.
33:12Flight, we are docking.
33:14Flight, we are docking.
33:15Flight, we are docking.
33:16Flight, we are docking.
33:18Flight, we are docking.
33:18Out of control, literally.
33:21Rotating at one revolution per second.
33:28Those G-forces, you're going to black out.
33:33A couple hundred miles above the surface of the Earth.
33:40Armstrong was potentially seconds from death.
33:46Yet, under extreme pressure, he managed to stabilize the ship.
33:51Okay, we're regaining control of the spacecraft slowly.
33:55Roger, copy.
33:57And save the entire mission.
34:01I guess this just tells us the sort of person he is that he made that call.
34:05He made the call and made it soon enough before they blacked out.
34:09He was the epitome of calm, cool, collected.
34:13People like that are rare. I'm not sure you can train to be a Neil Armstrong.
34:18Yeah.
34:19But it would be what Armstrong did next, three years later, on Apollo 11, that would make him an icon.
34:27Back in mission control, it took just 23 seconds to establish that error code 1202 could be ignored,
34:35and the descent could continue.
34:38Go on that alarm.
34:39We're going that alarm.
34:41Right, we're going that alarm.
34:43The lunar module was now just 3,000 feet above the surface.
34:48Manual attitude control is good.
34:51And the success of the Apollo program lay in the hands of Neil Armstrong.
34:59Okay, all flight controllers, gonna go for landing.
35:01Retro.
35:01Go.
35:02Fido.
35:02Go.
35:02Guidance.
35:03Go.
35:03Control.
35:04Go.
35:04Telcom.
35:04Go.
35:05GNC.
35:05Go.
35:06Ecom.
35:06Go.
35:06Surgeon.
35:07Go.
35:07Capcom, we're go for landing.
35:1060.
35:1160 seconds.
35:1640 feet down, 2 1⁄2.
35:19Pick up the best.
35:2130 feet, 2 1⁄2 down.
35:28Contact light.
35:33Okay, engine stop.
35:35Engine arm off.
35:36We've had shutdown.
35:38We copy you down, Eagle.
35:42Tranquility base here.
35:44The Eagle has landed.
35:46Roger, Twink.
35:48Tranquility, we copy you on the ground.
35:50You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
35:52We're breathing again.
35:52Thanks a lot.
35:56There was an immense source of pride.
35:59This had been my whole life for four years.
36:03So relief that we'd achieved it.
36:07Back on Earth, a spellbound world watched.
36:11That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
36:21You know, I just sat there, aghast, watching the TV with my family.
36:26Seeing these ghostly pictures with the blurred black and white just made it that much more special.
36:33Yeah, I bet.
36:36Under Armstrong's command, America had won the space race.
36:41It was a symbolic triumph.
36:45But not everyone was celebrating.
36:49The Apollo program cost $25.4 billion and accounted for 5% of America's GDP.
36:58And this was at a time when the country was struggling with deep social divisions.
37:02The Vietnam War polarized a lot of our society.
37:07And we had all the ugly things that happened less than a year before the assassinations.
37:14Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
37:16But the Apollo program was one of those, we got this and this is a good thing.
37:22Did you feel that at the time?
37:24I felt that at the time.
37:25We've got all this ugliness over here.
37:27But keep in mind, people, society, we're doing this.
37:33And this is good.
37:37Apollo showed the power of exploration to inspire and unite.
37:43And turned Armstrong into a symbol of hope for the future of mankind.
37:48In less than 70 years of the 20th century, we've gone from rickety old biplanes
37:53to sending rockets 240,000 miles to the moon.
37:56Now these are incredible technological feats.
37:58But without men like Neil Armstrong willing to accept ludicrous odds to push humanity forward,
38:03all that technology would be useless.
38:05Now that is extraordinary.
38:07For me, that is the case for Neil Armstrong.
38:11What, for you, singled him out as the icon that he is?
38:15Armstrong was the reflection of a nation's will to go to an unknown.
38:21And he was a true explorer.
38:25Mankind's first triumphant step off this world.
38:29I guess you don't get more iconic than that.
38:31And you don't, indeed.
38:35But Armstrong didn't just take us to space.
38:37He showed us the world from a whole new perspective.
38:42The Apollo missions give us the first life-changing images of planet Earth.
38:46They crystallized the world's vulnerability,
38:48and they helped galvanize the conservation movement.
38:51In many ways, Apollo brought us all home.
38:54And that is where our next icon comes in.
38:57For me, she gets to the very heart of what exploration is really about.
39:02Our last icon has redefined what it means to be human,
39:06and was one of the first people to warn us of the dangers of destroying the natural world.
39:14So this is Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania.
39:17And I'm on my way to see the life's work of my fourth and final icon, Jane Goodall.
39:22So, it's 1960, she's 26 years old.
39:24She makes a similar trip as this, by boat, to a small nature reserve,
39:28where she became the first person to successfully study chimpanzees in the wild.
39:33But what she discovers there will change our understanding of ourselves,
39:36of nature, and where we sit in this world.
39:48Now, when you think of Jane Goodall, you think of chimpanzees,
39:51and one of the world's great climatologists.
39:53But she's also an explorer, too, in every sense of the word.
39:57Think about it.
39:57The work itself was an exploration into our very roots,
40:00and the risks she took to do that work were in the tradition of all the great explorers.
40:09When Goodall arrived in Gombe, the reserve was extremely isolated.
40:15She had no map or weapons, and she worked here completely alone for the first two years,
40:22leaving herself vulnerable to disease, accident, and attack by wild animals.
40:27There were leopards in the reserve, poisonous snakes.
40:33Of course, there were also buffaloes.
40:36So, you can imagine the area was very dangerous.
40:39I think she had that special college to come just by herself,
40:44and sometimes even spending a night in this area.
40:48So, you can imagine how courageous she was.
40:52We are now at the place which is called Jane's Peak.
40:55Jane's Peak.
40:56Yeah.
40:57When Jane first came to Gombe, she walked all the way from the beach to here just to see the
41:05chimps.
41:08Trekking through Gombe for just a few hours searching for chimpanzees is tough.
41:13So, it's not hard to get a sense of just how difficult it must have been for Goodall,
41:17doing it day after day.
41:23She doesn't see anything for a long time, no?
41:26It took a while. I think it took her like maybe four or five months of going around,
41:33trekking and trying to see the chimps.
41:35Doing your job, you understand the patients involved for four or five months not to see a thing.
41:41Yeah, I think you really need to have a special, I would say maybe a special heart.
41:47Yeah.
41:47Or maybe a certain kind of determination.
41:51You can imagine how passionate she was.
41:55Four or five months just going around hoping to see them.
42:00Yeah.
42:01And eventually, she saw them, so.
42:17Do you see them?
42:18Yeah.
42:31It's such a wonderful sound, isn't it?
42:53Goodall's achievement in becoming the first person to successfully study chimpanzees in the wild
42:57was all the more remarkable given her background.
43:04Brought up in Bournemouth, she'd worked as a typist and a waitress,
43:08until a chance meeting with the world-famous paleoanthropologist Lewis Leakey took her to Africa.
43:17Leakey believed that the rigid division scientists claimed existed between apes and humans was false.
43:26Previous studies of primates had mostly been confined to captive animals,
43:30but Leakey believed that by studying great apes in the wild,
43:34he might find clues as to how our Stone Age ancestors lived.
43:41Jane had no scientific or academic training, but she'd impressed him with a self-taught knowledge of African wildlife.
43:51He believed her lack of former credentials meant her mind would be unbiased by theory.
43:57Her work would prove to be revolutionary.
43:59The first major discovery was that it is not only humans who can make and use tools.
44:10What Goodall observed was a chimpanzee using a stick to fish for termites,
44:16something that had never been seen before.
44:21So that was really a huge, huge discovery and even, I think,
44:29question our position in the humankind.
44:32Absolutely.
44:35This kind of object modification or tool making had, up until this point,
44:41been seen as the defining difference between humans and other animals.
44:47Goodall sent the telegram to Leakey, informing him of her discoveries.
44:51He replied,
44:52We must now redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.
45:07Suddenly, Goodall became a worldwide sensation.
45:10She changed the path of human history.
45:12She also came under fire from scientists for both naming and feeding her subjects.
45:18But her research went on to show how close we are to chimpanzees
45:21in our family structures and social behaviours.
45:27Goodall's achievements are outstanding, but her legacy is even more important.
45:32As her fame grew, she realised the best way to protect Gombe was to go out into the world
45:35and try and convince us we all have a part to play in saving the planet.
45:39And that is a message she's been spreading for the last 60 years.
45:43There's something very special about chimpanzees,
45:46and this is just for someone who's observed them from afar.
45:48When you got to Gombe, did they capture your heart straight away?
45:52You know, it's intriguing as to how like us they truly are.
45:57And because of that, there are some chimpanzees that are just, you know, you love them.
46:03There are others that I don't like at all.
46:10So why do you think studying them in particular is so important?
46:13We learn a lot about ourselves, and the main thing that strikes me is the biggest difference
46:21between us and the chimpanzees and other animals is this explosive development of our intellect.
46:27But how bizarre that the most intellectual creature to ever walk planet Earth is destroying its only home.
46:35You're, for me, the embodiment of someone who shows that one person can make a difference.
46:40You know, if a little girl in Bournemouth is watching this show now, what advice would you say?
46:44Every single individual matters and has a role to play.
46:49And that means you. That means everybody watching. That means that little girl in Bournemouth.
46:54Every single one of us makes a difference every single day.
46:59It's my greatest hope for the future in these dark times.
47:03Everywhere I go now, young people with shining eyes wanting to tell Dr. Jane what we're doing
47:08to make this a better world. And they're so full of enthusiasm.
47:12And, you know, that along with what I call the indomitable human spirit,
47:17the people who tackle what seems to be impossible and won't give up.
47:21And without hope, then what's the point?
47:25Yeah.
47:26Why should I bother to do anything if some scientists say it's too late?
47:31But we have got this window of time. And we all have to get involved now.
47:44Today, thanks to Goodall, Gombe is a protected UNESCO biosphere.
47:53She taught us not to take our planet for granted.
47:56She's an example to all of us of the power of the individual to change the world.
48:02She's a special person, so you really feel empowered and you feel like you are drawing
48:10something from her when you are around her.
48:14But do you think without Jane, the chimpanzees would be here?
48:17I doubt.
48:24Out of all our icons, Jane's work is and her legacy is probably the one that's most tangible.
48:30You can see the impact it's made on both this park and the wider world around it.
48:39The world around us and our place in it.
48:39These four incredible explorers have taken me full circle.
48:43From Shackleton and the age of heroic exploration,
48:46through the desert travels of Belle,
48:49to Neil Armstrong's moonwalk and our first sight of our fragile planet floating in space.
48:55I'm back here to the heart of Africa, the cradle of civilisation,
48:58where Jane Goodall has taught us so much about the world around us and our place in it.
49:03These explorers share courage, self-belief and always remain true to themselves.
49:08They've taken us from a nearer of conquest to understanding.
49:11Understanding about our planet and showing us we must all take responsibility for our world
49:16if we are to have any future.
49:19And that for me is why these four explorers are my icons of the 20th century.
50:02You
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