Witness History
Episodes
The raising of the Mary Rose
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 40 years since a wrecked English Tudor warship was brought back to the surface. On 11 October 1982, 60 million people worldwide watched the ext...
Castrating Pablo Escobar's hippos
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When drug kingpin Pablo Escobar died in 1993 having built a billion dollar cocaine empire, he left behind a zoo. While his rhinos, giraffes, elephants...
The power of Jomo Kenyatta
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, Sharad Rao was Kenya’s assistant director of public prosecutions, working closely with Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta who was seen as rut...
Festival of Light
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1971, Christians from all over the UK held the Nationwide Festival of Light to protest against what they saw, as increasingly liberal att...
Iran-Iraq War begins
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Iran-Iraq war began on 22 September 1980. It lasted for eight years and became one of the bloodiest wars in recent history. Pooneh Ghoddoosi was j...
The first Pope to visit Africa
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s, popes rarely left the Vatican City. So it was a major event when Pope Paul VI accepted an invitation to visit Uganda in 1969. Hugh Coste...
Ancient fossils give new insight
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1967, a major breakthrough was made in our understanding of the evolution of the world. A student discovered fossils at Mistaken Point in Newfoundl...
World War Two child evacuees in Britain
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The 1 September 1939 was Kitty Baxter’s ninth birthday, it was also the day her life and millions of other people’s changed with the beginning of ...
The last days of Queen Victoria
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901. In this programme from 2010, Claire Bowes looks back on the monarch’s last days.She speaks to the author Ton...
When the Queen opened Buckingham Palace
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Queen Elizabeth II first opened her London home to the paying public on 7 August 1993. Tourists were allowed to look round Buckingham Palace while the...
Windsor Castle fire
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In November 1992, a fire devastated Windsor Castle - a symbol of the British monarchy and Queen Elizabeth II’s weekend home. Coming at the end of a ...
Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation Derby
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A few days after Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, she had her best chance of owning the winner of the Derby, but first the horse would have to beat the...
The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
12 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1953, the young Queen Elizabeth II was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Two of her Maids of Honour, Lady Anne Glenconner and Lady Jane Vane-Tempe...
The car that charmed Brazil
10 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since its launch in the 1950s, the Brazilian version of the VW Beetle has had a special place in the nation's heart. Cheap, charismatic and virtually ...
The Candelaria child massacre
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993, eight homeless children were murdered outside the Candelaria church in Rio De Janeiro. The murders caused international outrage and put a spo...
Building of Brasilia
07 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1960, Brazil opened a new capital city in its remote central plains.The city was designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer and was supposed to...
The murder that shocked Brazil
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2002, an investigative journalist called Tim Lopes was brutally killed by a drug gang in Rio de Janeiro. The murder sent shockwaves throughout Braz...
Doomed hero of Brazilian democracy
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1985, Brazil experienced the most traumatic moment in its transition to democracy when the first civilian president-elect in more than 20 yea...
Mikhail Gorbachev: Release of Irina Ratushinskaya
02 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mikhail Gorbachev - the last leader of the Soviet Union - has died aged 91. On the eve of an important summit on nuclear disarmament between the Sovie...
Mikhail Gorbachev: Perestroika
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died aged 91. Gorbachev came to power in 1985 at a time when the Soviet economy was on the...
Princess Diana dances with John Travolta
31 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in an underground tunnel in central Paris on the 31st August 1...
The 'Last Indian'
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1911, a mysterious Native American man called Ishi emerged from the North Californian forest after more than three decades in hiding. He is thought...
Marikana Massacre
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On 16 August 2012, police shot dead 34 striking miners at a platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa. It was one of the bloodiest police operations sin...
India's onion election
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In January 1980, Indira Gandhi's Congress (I) party was voted into power in India. Before the election, inflation meant that onions were unaffordable ...
The 'Nixon Shock' and the end of the Gold Standard
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1971, inflation was a huge problem in the USA so the President, Richard Nixon, made one of the most drastic moves in economic history: abandoning t...
The Gay Games
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 40 years since the first ever Gay Games were held in San Francisco. Attracting a large crowd and featuring more than 1,000 athletes from m...
Hundreds die in Darayya
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ten years ago, Syrian government soldiers surrounded Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, bombing buildings and searching for people opposed to President As...
Bulgaria's cash crisis
22 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, Bulgaria was in financial meltdown with hyperinflation making money in the country worth a lot less. Bulgaria had emerged out of communism fo...
The Bard of Bengal
19 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1941, one of the greatest poets India has ever produced died. Known as the "Bard of Bengal", Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European ...
The death of Jawaharlal Nehru
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1964 India's first prime minister and the man who led India to independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, died. On the 50th anniversary of his death in 20...
The last Viceroy of India
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The daughter of the last British Viceroy in India, Lord Mountbatten, remembers the transfer of power in 1947. Lady Pamela Hicks accompanied her father...
India's Partition - Part Two
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The partition of India led to millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fleeing their homes during horrific religious violence. This is the second of two ...
India's Partition - Part One
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The partition of India led to millions of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fleeing their homes amid horrific violence. This is the first of two programmes re...
The nightclub that changed Ibiza
12 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1973, the nightclub Pacha opened in Ibiza. Other clubs with the capacity to fit thousands of people on the dancefloor opened in the years afte...
Discovering Hale Bopp
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hale Bopp is one of the most widely observed comets of the 20th century. Its discovery in 1995 resulted in huge advances in science. Russell Crewe spo...
Indonesia's forest fires
10 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty five years ago in Indonesia, some of the worst forest fires in history devastated the environment and resulted in a smog which engulfed South E...
Sweden’s pronoun battle
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sweden has a long history of championing LGBTQ+ rights. But campaigners spent years battling to get the gender-neutral personal pronoun ‘hen’ incl...
The resignation of President Nixon
08 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On 8 August 1974 Richard Nixon became the first US president in history to resign from office, following the Watergate scandal. In 2014, Farhana Haide...
The return of Asians to Uganda
05 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, he encouraged exiled Asians to return to Uganda and reclaim their homes and businesses to help r...
The city shaped by Ugandan Asians
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands of Asians who were expelled from Uganda in 1972, settled in the UK and many made Leicester their home. Their arrival in the East Midlands he...
The exodus of Asians from Uganda
03 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1972, the dictator Idi Amin announced that all Asians had just 90 days to leave Uganda. Teacher Nurdin Dawood, who had a young family, didn't at fi...
When Asians were forced to leave Kenya
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many South Asians migrated to Kenya in the early 20th century. They lived in a society divided by race and experienced discrimination from the white r...
Why Asians came to Uganda
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 20th century, South Asians migrated to Uganda in search of a better life. Jamie Govani’s grandparents married in Gujarat, India, in the...
The Leaflet Bomber
01 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1971, young communist Bob Newland left the UK and headed to South Africa to take part in a secret mission to support the African National Congress....
The Tangshan Earthquake
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On 28 July 1976, one of the deadliest earthquakes in modern history hit the city of Tangshan in north-eastern China - killing hundreds of thousands of...
Inventing nicotine patches
27 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1990s, nicotine patches became commercially available all over the world but their origins go back to the early 1980s, when Dr Daniel Rose sugg...
The Surkov leaks
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, Ukrainian hackers leaked thousands of emails belonging to Russian President Vladimir Putin's right hand man, Vladislav Surkov.They provided a...
Ukraine's Revolution on Granite
25 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1990, Ukrainian students went on a hunger strike that helped bring down the Soviet regime there. It took place in Kyiv’s central square and inspi...
Nigerian sitcom Papa Ajasco
22 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1996, sitcom Papa Ajasco first hit Nigerian TV screens. Following the ups and downs of the Ajasco family – it quickly became one of the most succ...
The Soviet James Bond
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The most successful TV spy series ever to be broadcast in the USSR, went on air in 1973. The central character was a Soviet secret agent in Nazi Germa...
Who shot JR?
20 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dallas was already a hit American TV series in 1980. But when its leading man, JR, was shot, the reaction worldwide was extraordinary. Claire Bowes sp...
Madhur Jaffrey’s ‘Indian Cookery’
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A ground-breaking Indian cookery programme broadcast on the BBC, launched 40 years ago. It was presented by actor turned food writer, Madhur Jaffrey. ...
The school for telenovela stars
18 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1987, broadcaster Televisa set up a drama school in Mexico City to train actors for its hugely popular telenovelas, Mexican soap operas. The Centro...
Fighting for the pill in Japan
15 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The contraceptive pill first was approved for use in the US in 1960. But it wasn't until 1999, that women in Japan were allowed to take oral contracep...
The man who invented the Pill
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1951, in a lab in Mexico City, Austrian chemist Dr Carl Djerassi created a synthetic hormone from wild yams. It would go on to become the Pill's ac...
When Tunisia led on women's rights
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1956, Tunisia became the first country in the Muslim world to legalise civil divorce and abortion. President Bourguiba also gave women the vote and...
Poland's strict abortion law
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993 Poland introduced some of the most stringent abortion laws in Europe. It followed the fall of Communism in 1989. Ewa Kowaleska was among those...
How abortion was legalised in Great Britain
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s, a young mother, Diane Munday became well-known in Britain for her work demanding abortion rights for women. She and others in the campai...
The US’s first gay election candidate
08 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1961 the first openly gay person ran for public office in the United States. He was called Jose Sarria and he was a drag queen. He was determined t...
How the smear test was invented
07 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1928 Dr George Papanicoloau, a Greek immigrant living in New York, discovered he could detect pre-cancerous cell changes in the cervix. This led to...
Escaping Nigeria’s Civil War
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The south-east region of Nigeria declared itself to be the independent state of Biafra. In response, Nigerian forces invaded the state on 6 July 1967,...
Japanese university student riots
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968 and early 1969 university students across Japan fought pitched battles with riot police after they barricaded themselves into their lecture ha...
The Higgs Boson: A scientific discovery that explains how the universe works
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is 10 years since scientists in Geneva said they believed they had found the Higgs boson - known by some as the God particle. In July 2012 after mo...
Hong Kong - Kowloon Walled City
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A unique way of life came to an end in Hong Kong in 1993 when Kowloon Walled City was demolished. When the rest of Hong Kong was a British colony, the...
Hong Kong: Abandoned children
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1950s and '60s hundreds of thousands of Chinese people fled to the British colony of Hong Kong to escape famine. Conditions for the arrivals we...
Hong Kong: The 5-19 football riot in China
29 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1985 Hong Kong inflicted an unexpected footballing defeat on their neighbours and rivals China in a World Cup qualifying game in Beijing. The d...
Hong Kong: Democracy campaigner
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997 Hong Kong was handed back to China after more than 150 years of British rule. There were ceremonies and fireworks to celebrate the end of colo...
Hong Kong: The handover
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997 Hong Kong was a buzzing hub of capitalism surrounded by a communist state. It was also a colonial relic - still ruled largely from Britain. It...
The UK's first official gay Pride March
24 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The UK’s first official gay Pride march took place 50 years ago - 1st July 1972. Alex Collins talks to Ted Brown who took part in the London march. ...
Egypt's first democratic presidential election
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 2012, Egypt held its first ever free democratic presidential election. Mohamed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, emerged victorious....
The killing of Vincent Chin
22 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1982 a young Chinese-American engineer was murdered with a baseball bat by two white men in the US city of Detroit. The lenient sentences the ...
Robot Surgeon
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1985 the first robot-assisted medical surgery took place in Vancouver, Canada. It’s now become a standard feature of operating theatres worldwide...
India's surrogacy capital
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003 Dr Nayana Patel, who ran her own fertility clinic in the state of Gujarat in India, carried out her first surrogacy procedure. It was a purely...
Cambodia war crimes
17 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009, a UN-backed war crimes tribunal opened in Cambodia to try the senior Khmer Rouge commanders responsible for the genocide of an estimated two ...
James Joyce and Ulysses
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This year is the 100th anniversary of Ulysses by James Joyce, a landmark modernist novel and one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Ul...
New York's LGBT High School
15 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1985, a unique High School opened in New York to provide a safe environment for LGBT students needing specialised education. The publicly-funded Ha...
Vietnam's 'Napalm Girl'
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s 50 years since Kim Phuc's village in Vietnam was bombed with napalm. The photograph of her, running burned and crying away from the attack, bec...
Holy Cross school dispute
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A violent sectarian dispute took place outside Holy Cross primary school in Belfast in 2001. Loyalist protesters tried to block Catholic pupils and th...
The Gulabi Gang
10 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 2000s, Sampat Pal Devi, a villager from a remote part of India's Uttar Pradesh state, started a women's rights group which now has thousa...
How Sri Lanka's president survived a suicide bombing
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2006, Sri Lanka’s current president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, came within metres of death when he was targeted in a suicide bomb attack in Colombo. Th...
Saving Gabon's rainforest
08 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2002 Omar Bongo, the president of Gabon, set up a network of national parks to protect the country's forests from logging and help save its populat...
The Diary of Anne Frank
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1947, one of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust - the Diary of Anne Frank - was published for the first time. In her diary, the teena...
The assassination of Bobby Kennedy
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1968, US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy was assassinated shortly after addressing his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angel...
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
03 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As the Queen celebrates her Platinum Jubilee weekend, Claire Bowes takes us back to her Coronation in London's Westminster Abbey in June 1953. In 201...
Sarin attack in Syria
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, more than a thousand people are thought to have died in a chemical weapons attack on a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus called Ghouta. ...
Life in the biggest Syrian refugee camp in the world
01 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's 10 years since Za’atari refugee camp was set up in Jordan to take in the thousands of people fleeing Syria because of the civil war. It's now t...
Civil Rights activist Ida B Wells
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In March 2022 a law was passed in the United States making lynching a federal crime - nearly 120 years after the first attempts to introduce legislati...
The attack on Lod Airport
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1972, Japanese gunmen attacked Lod airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. They were left-wing militants working for a Palestinian organisation. Twenty-si...
Georgia O'Keeffe
27 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the world's most influential female artists - in 2014, her painting "Jimson Weed" sold for the highest price ever paid for...
The World Festival of Black Arts
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
in April 1966 thousands of artists and performers from all over Africa descended on the Senegalese capital, Dakar, for the first World Festival of Bla...
The museum of banned Russian art
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, a Russian painter and archaeologist, Igor Savitsky, created a museum in the remote desert of Uzbekistan, where he stored tens of thousands of...
The last days of Frida Kahlo
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The great Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, died in 1954, at the age of 47. The art critic, Raquel Tibol, lived in Frida's house during the last year of th...
Meeting Picasso
23 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1951 a young art historian called John Richardson met one of the greatest painters of the modern era. Richardson was part of Picasso...
The murder of Kelso Cochrane
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1959, Kelso Cochrane, a carpenter who'd emigrated to Britain from Antigua, was knifed to death by a gang of white youths in West London. The un...
Chasing the Marcos millions
20 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The former president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos Senior is thought to have plundered a huge amount of public money during military rule in the...
Shanghai at War
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1937, Japanese forces entered Shanghai - spelling the end of a period when the Chinese city had been a thriving commercial centre governed by inter...
The first McDonald's in Moscow
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Following the closure of McDonald’s in Russia, we’re going back to January 1990 when the global fast food giant opened its first restaurant in Mos...
People Power in the Philippines
16 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1986, four days of huge public protests brought down President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. Kate McGowan, in Manila, talks to the leading F...
The war in Transnistria
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With speculation mounting that President Putin might mount an attack on Moldova, we're going back to the early 1990s and a war between the Moldovans a...
Eyjafjallajökull: The volcano that stopped Europe
11 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, a previously little-known Icelandic volcano erupted twice, sending a huge plume of volcanic ash all over Europe. The ash cloud grounded fligh...