Just before dawn on 19 November 1984, an explosion at a gas plant in San Juanico killed hundreds of people and injured thousands. Virginia Martínez Tellez was a young teenager at the time and recalls how she and her family escaped the fire and intense heat of one of the world’s deadliest industrial gas accidents.

Bésame Mucho was written by Consuelo Velázquez, a young woman who kept her authorship secret for fear it would damage her career as a classical pianist. When her secret got out, the song topped the charts in the US and went on to be covered by The Beatles, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, becoming one of the most recognised melodies of the post-war era.

Eufrosina Cruz Mendoza, a Zapotec woman, was prevented from becoming mayor of her local community under a system of customary laws that left indigenous women politically marginalised. Her years of campaigning led to a landmark 2014 amendment to the Mexican constitution, guaranteeing indigenous women the right to vote and stand in elections.

In July 2000, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party defeated the Institutional Revolutionary Party, ending 71 years of uninterrupted rule. Marketing strategist Francisco Ortiz, who worked on the Fox campaign, recalls an election that many had thought impossible.

When James Cameron set out to film Titanic, he built an almost full-size replica of the ship in Rosarito, Baja California, in what was then the world’s biggest water tank. The budget soared to over $200 million, but when the film opened it became the first in history to gross over $1 billion at the box office, winning 11 Oscars in 1998.