Global News What Happened To...?

Since the dawn of time, humanity has been at war.  Conflict in one form or another has been part of our existence since we first walked the earth.   In this first episode of a four-part series, join military historian David Borys as we travel back in time to Iran, where we chart how a modern monarchy, which was armed, wealthy, and globally backed, lost control. On our journey, we'll be helped by h...

The challenges ahead for Prime Minister Mark Carney as the Liberals win another minority government. What's next for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre after he lost his own riding? How the NDP lost official party status and its leader. Plus, the hopes the Liberals can reset relations with the Prairies. Click here for more Global National: ⁠https://link.chtbl.com/gndf Learn more about your ad ch...

It’s a summer night in 1998. Vienna, Austria. And petty thief Daniel Blanchard is about to carry out the heist of a lifetime. Stealing a crown jewel. The last remaining diamond Sisi Star. His plan? A daring night-time parachute jump. Daniel is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious, meticulously planned; his escapes from the law defy belief. And Daniel knows that if he can get his hands on th...

On June 15, 2011, riots broke out in Vancouver following Game 7 of the NHL Stanley Cup final downtown after The Canucks were defeated by the Boston Bruins in a stunning 4-0 win. A report found that total damage caused by the riot was just over $3.7 million. There were 112 businesses and 122 vehicles damaged, and 52 assaults were reported against civilians, police and emergency personnel. On this e...

On February 5, 1981, Toronto Police launched Operation Soap. Officers ambushed four Toronto bathhouses in a series of coordinated raids following a six-month investigation, which led to almost 300 patrons being arrested on the street. The raids were a watershed moment for Toronto's Queer community because, thousands of activists protested along the streets of Toronto and decided to fight the attac...

TikTok is one of the most popular apps around the world, with more than one billion users, but in February of 2023, Canada's federal government announced a ban of the app on government devices. It's a move several countries have made in recent months. TikTok has maintained the app isn’t unique in the amount of information it collects and all social media companies should be looked at with the same...

The old days of air travel were quite risky…compared to today, the chances of your flight going down were far greater …every airport had kiosks and coin-operating vending machines where you could buy life insurance before you headed to the gate—you know, just in case you thought you weren’t going to make it to your final destination… 1977 was one of the worst years for accidents in aviation histor...

TikTok is one of the most popular social media applications with more than 1 billion users around the world. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks to Bev Standing, the original voice behind TikTok’s text-to-speech feature. She also speaks with Kat Callaghan, the woman behind TikTok’s current text-to-speech character “Jessie.” She learns about the adoption and evolution of the fe...

Kourosh Doustshenas met Forough Khadem in 2010 but a relationship between the couple wouldn't blossom until years later. The couple planned to get married, but before that could happen, Khadem traveled to see her family in Iran. Her return ticket to Canada was scheduled for Dec. 21, 2019, but the flight changed and she was now scheduled to depart on Jan. 8, 2020. By the beginning of January 2020,...

On this episode of What happened to…?, Erica Vella revisits Google Glass — the product that sparked curiosity, protests and internet memes around the world. She speaks with one of Wired’s gadget reporters, Mat Honan, about the controversial pair of smart glasses. Find out more at https://globalnews.ca/news/9873033/what-happened-to-google-glass/ Contact: Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca Learn more...

The 2018 Thai cave rescue quickly became an international spectacle that captured the attention of people all around the world. Twelve boys and their soccer coach were exploring the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai when the cave suddenly flooded, trapping the team. Monsoon season came early that year, and the cave became blocked by heavy rainwater. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella re...

The 2018 Thai cave rescue quickly became an international spectacle that captured the attention of people all around the world. Twelve boys and their soccer coach were exploring the Tham Luang cave in Chiang Rai when the cave suddenly flooded, trapping the team. Monsoon season came early that year, and the cave became blocked by heavy rainwater. On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella re...

There are stories…..that grab the world’s attention… But what happens when the cameras turn off and new stories take over the headlines? On this season of Global News “What Happened to”, Erica Vella brings you some of the most gripping stories from the past and talks to the people at the heart of them to find out what's happened since. Starting Sept 14 we'll share stories on The Thai Cave Rescue,...

In this season wrap we give you a sneak peek at the complete season on Global News What Happened To…? as journalist Erica Vella brought you incredible stories and spoke to the people at the heart of each one to find out what’s happened since the news cycle turned and the cameras walked away. Contact: Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brook Schryer recalled his first interaction with zebra mussels in the early 1990s. He was living with his family on Lake Scugog in Ontario and one fall, Schryer and his brothers pulled the family boat out of the water and noticed that it was double its normal weight. This was because of the sheer number of tiny mollusks that clung to the bottom of the boat. The brothers scraped the mussels off th...

Fifty years ago, Kim Phuc Phan Thi's life seemed simple; she lived with her family in the village of Trảng Bàng in Vietnam. The country was in the middle of a war, but as a nine-year-old child, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Everything changed in June 1972 when several napalm bombs fell on her once peaceful village. Suddenly there was fire everywhere around her and her clothes burned off. In...

In a nearly three-hour-long interview between Det. Rob Thomas and the man accused of driving a rental van on a busy Toronto sidewalk we got insight on the driver's frustrations with women and his inability to attract a partner. "I would say that sometimes I am a bit upset that they choose to date obnoxious men instead of gentlemen," he said in the interview. He then speaks about 4Chan — an online...

On Apr. 23 2018, a man drove a white rental van down busy sidewalks in Toronto, killing 11 people and injuring 16 others. The driver was arrested without injury on the day of the attack and was brought in for questioning by Toronto Police. The almost three-hour investigative interview between the driver and Det. Rob Thomas was released publicly in September 2019. At the time, the driver of the whi...

Cathy Riddell has lived in Toronto's Yonge and Finch neighbourhood for over six decades; it's an area where she says she’s surrounded by familiar faces, shops and restaurants. On a warm Monday in April 2018, Riddell was eager to be outside and run errands in the sunshine. However, her day was interrupted when a white rental van wreaked havoc in the neighbourhood she called home. On April 23, 2018,...

The man who killed six men and injured over a dozen others after storming a Quebec City mosque will be eligible for parole after 25 years after a Supreme Court struck down a Criminal Code provision on consecutive sentencing for multiple murderers. The unanimous high court decision happened May 27 and declared unconstitutional a 2011 provision that would allow a judge, in the event of multiple murd...

In June 2014, cases of Ebola were reported in Guinea and the disease began to rapidly spread across the border to Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than 28,000 people became ill with the disease and over 11,000 died. The 2014 outbreak was the first Ebola outbreak in West Africa. According to the World Health Organization, it first appeared in two simultaneous outbreaks in 1976 in South Sudan and the...

On this special episode journalist Erica Vella shares an excerpt of the series on the Brentwood Five massacre first covered by Nancy Hixt. Nancy is a Global News colleague and a senior crime reporter based in Calgary and she covered this case in an episode of her award-winning podcast Crime Beat. In the excerpt of the episode shared with you today you’ll hear from Timothy McLean’s mother, Carol De...

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, companies made the move to create products that were colourless or transparent as it was often equated with purity. It was called the clear craze and it was first inspired by Ivory soap's "99.44/100% Pure" campaign. Crystal Pepsi was launched in 1992 with a big splash at Super Bowl 27 in a commercial with Van Halen’s hit song Right Now in the background, but...

In May 2016, tens of thousands of people in Fort McMurray were forced to flee their homes, as a fire burned through surrounding forests and entered the city. Damian Asher, a veteran firefighter and the captain of the Fort McMurray fire department, said the department had been monitoring the wildfire's movement. READ MORE: Short-term exposure to Fort McMurray wildfire smoke affected lungs of RCMP o...

Journalist, Erica Vella is on a journey to find and speak with the people at the heart of stories that have captured the entire world’s attention, … and today she shares major developments in two stories that we’ve covered so far. Contact: Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices