Witness History

Spies or plane-spotters?

08 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In November 2001 a group of British aircraft enthusiasts were arrested and put on trial in Greece. Unfamiliar with their hobby, the Greek authorities ...

The V2 rocket

07 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Using eyewitness accounts from the BBC archives, we hear how the Nazis developed the world's first modern ballistic missile that killed thousands duri...

Fighting 'virginity tests' in the Indonesian police

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2000s, Sri Rumiati, a brigadier-general in the Indonesian police, began campaigning against intrusive examinations of female recruits to ...

Derek Jarman

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

One of the first high-profile artists to speak openly about having Aids was the British experimental film-maker, Derek Jarman. Jarman had made his nam...

South Africa and Aids drugs

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people in South Africa were still dying from HIV/Aids because effective drug treatments were prohibi...

AZT: The breakthrough treatment for Aids

01 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1987 the first successful drug treatment was developed for Aids. AZT went from initial test to approval in just over two years - at the time it was...

The early days of HIV/Aids

30 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The HIV virus was first identified by medical experts in a journal article in 1981. In the early days of the epidemic, carriers of the virus were stig...

The Aids 'patient zero' myth

29 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early days of Aids, a misunderstanding made one man the face of the epidemic. Canadian air steward Gaetan Dugas developed the symptoms of HIV/A...

The assassination of the Mirabal sisters

26 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The three Mirabal sisters were leading figures in the Dominican Republic's opposition movement against the dictator, General Rafael Trujillo. Patria,...

Estonia’s internet ‘Tiger Leap’

25 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Estonia started connecting all its schools to the internet very early. In 1996 less than two percent of the world’s population had access to the web...

The doctor who helped her mother to die

24 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise voluntary euthanasia: although the new law was ground-breaking, it was base...

Europe's last smallpox epidemic

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eighteen million people were vaccinated against smallpox in the former communist Yugoslavia in only a month and a half in 1972. The mass vaccination c...

The Woman in Gold by Gustav Klimt

22 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

'The Woman in Gold' was one of Gustav Klimt's most famous paintings. It was a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, but it was taken from her family by the N...

Sudan's October Revolution

18 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A first-hand account of how Sudanese civilian protesters first brought down a military regime in 1964. The protests began after a student was shot and...

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

17 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How a particular form of psychotherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, became a common treatment for anxiety and depression. CBT was first developed b...

The capture of war criminal Radovan Karadzic

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2008, one of Europe’s most wanted fugitives, the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, was arrested in Belgrade for war crimes. Karadzic h...

Kuwaiti oil fires of 1991

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

After the end of the Gulf War in 1991, retreating Iraqi forces set light to oil wells in the desert. Specialist firefighters were drafted in by the Ku...

Shoot: A milestone in performance art

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1971 a young American artist decided to get a friend to take a shot at him - in the name of art. His name was Chris Burden and the shootin...

The South African football star murdered for being a lesbian

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eudy Simelane was a star of the South African women's national football team and a gay rights activist. In 2008, she was pursued by a group of men aft...

Spying in Berlin

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of the Cold War the German city of Berlin was known as the spy capital of the world. Spies were operating on both sides of the Berlin Wa...

Chanel No. 5

09 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1921, one of the most famous perfumes in the world was launched in France. Chanel No. 5 was created for Coco Chanel, the fashion designer and good-...

Britain's Black Schools

08 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1960s mainstream schooling in Britain was failing many black immigrant children. A disproportionate number were being sent to schools for those wi...

When Eritrea silenced its critics

05 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2001, the Eritrean government suddenly arrested prominent critics and journalists, and shut down the country's independent press. None of those det...

The end of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising

04 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On November 4th 1956 Soviet tanks rolled into the Hungarian capital Budapest, crushing the country's short-lived popular uprising against Soviet rule....

The enduring legend of Fu Manchu

03 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The evil criminal mastermind Fu Manchu was a recurring character in Hollywood films for decades. He epitomised racist stereotypes about China and the ...

Judgement at Nuremberg

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It's 75 years since verdicts were delivered on leading German Nazis at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for their instrumental role in...

The miracle of walking

01 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

An American doctor, Ignacio Ponseti, revolutionised the treatment of children born with 'club foot' - where their feet are turned in and under, and wh...

Kilimanjaro: Africa’s disappearing glaciers

29 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The mountains of East Africa are losing their glaciers. At 5,895 metres, Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain on the continent, but it has lost about 9...

The child climate activist of the 1990s

28 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Long before Greta Thunberg, there was 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki, the girl who stood in front of world leaders and implored them to take action ...

How the world woke up to climate change

27 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Professor James Hansen finally got US politicians to listen to his warnings about climate change in June 1988 after years of trying. He and fellow NAS...

The world's first environment conference

26 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The first international conference on the problems of the environment took place in Stockholm in 1972. It didn't concentrate on climate change but on ...

Proving climate change: the 'Keeling Curve'

25 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A young American scientist began the work that would show how our climate is changing in 1958. His name was Charles Keeling and he started meticulousl...

Britain’s lesbian families ‘scandal’

22 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In January 1978 a London newspaper revealed how several British lesbians had conceived babies using donor sperm with the help of a respected gynaecolo...

The Greenham Common women's peace camp

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The anti-nuclear weapons protest was the biggest women-led movement in the UK since the Suffragettes. It began in 1981 when Ann Pettitt from Wales org...

Polish refugees in Africa

20 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

During World War Two, close to 20,000 Polish people found refuge in Africa. They arrived after surviving imprisonment in Soviet labour camps and a har...

The mysterious death of Samora Machel

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When the socialist leader of Mozambique and some of his senior advisers were killed in a plane crash on the border with South Africa, many were suspic...

The first transgender minister in the Church of England

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Jones is the first person who had undergone a gender change to be ordained in the Church of England. She has been talking to Phil Marzouk about ...

The doctor killed by an anti-abortion extremist

15 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In America, there are few issues as controversial as abortion. It’s a major fault line that runs through society, dividing families and even influen...

The Pakistani law that jailed rape survivors

14 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Under legislation known as the Hudood Ordinances introduced in 1979, a nearly blind teenage girl who'd been raped by two men and then became pregnant,...

The story of 'Baby Jessica'

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Eighteen-month-old Jessica McClure fell down a well-shaft while playing with other children in Texas in October 1987. It took almost three days to fre...

Colin Jordan and the British Nazi rally

12 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1960s Britain extreme right-wing groups were on the rise. A schoolteacher called Colin Jordan led a Nazi rally in Trafalgar Square in central Londo...

Winning the Arabic Booker prize

11 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Saudi author Raja Alem was a voracious reader from an early age and thanks to her liberal-minded father, grew up immersed in books. She was in her ear...

Clyde Best - A black footballing pioneer

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bermuda-born Clyde Best came to England as a teenager in 1968 and went on to play for West Ham United alongside the likes of Bobby Moore and Geoff Hur...

The unlawful death of Christopher Alder

07 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998, Christopher Alder, a black former soldier, choked to death in handcuffs on the floor of a British police station. CCTV footage showed the 37-...

A Somali sailor in 1920s Britain

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 20th century, many Somali seafarers made their way to Britain on merchant ships, establishing communities in cities such as Cardiff. One ...

Britain's World War Two 'Brown Babies'

05 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

During World War Two, tens of thousands of African-American US servicemen passed through the UK as part of the war effort. The black GIs stationed in ...

London's first black policeman

04 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Norwell Roberts joined the Metropolitan police in 1967. He was put forward as a symbol of progressive policing amid ongoing tensions between the polic...

The Tanker War

01 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1987, the Romanian cargo ship, the Fundulea, was attacked by an Iranian gunboat in the Persian Gulf. It was just one of hundreds of mercha...

Petra Kelly and the German Greens

30 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1980s in West Germany, a radical new political party was on the rise. Die Grünen - the Greens - championed protecting the environment, s...

'Mad cow disease' and CJD

29 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1996 the UK government said there was a link between BSE in cattle and Variant CJD in humans. It's believed that more than 100 people contracted t...

Photographing Brazil's Yanomami

28 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971 photographer Claudia Andujar began documenting the lives of a remote indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon jungle. Claudia went on to take ...

The rise of the Taliban

27 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Taliban first started to gather support in the south of Afghanistan in the early 1990s. By September 27th 1996 they had taken control of the count...

Kenya: Westgate Mall attack

24 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Gunmen from the Somali Islamist group Al-Shabab attacked a shopping centre in Nairobi taking hundreds hostage. The group claimed it was in retaliatio...

James Bond on screen

23 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As the 25th James Bond film hits cinema screens we look at the lasting appeal of the franchise. The original author, Ian Fleming, died in the 1960s bu...

The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko

22 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Litvinenko was a former colonel in the Russian secret service and a critic of Vladimir Putin's government. He fled to London seeking politic...

Mexico's miracle water

21 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands of people flocked to the village of Tlacote in central Mexico in 1991. They hoped to be cured by 'magical' water after rumours spread about ...

Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis

20 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1960s, the widow of President Kennedy had a secret romance with Aristotle Onassis, who was then the richest man in the world. Simon Watts ...

The Peter Principle

17 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1969 a satirical book, The Peter Principle, suggested that promotion led to incompetence. Written by a Canadian Professor of Education, Dr Laurence...

Christiania: Copenhagen’s hippy commune

16 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971 a group of squatters, artists and activists took over a disused military barracks on the edge of Copenhagen. They established a self-governing...

The earthquake that devastated Haiti

15 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 2010 the Haitian capital and surrounding areas were hit by a catastrophic earthquake. Much of Port Au Prince was flattened and more than a hundred ...

The lost king of France

14 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

King Louis XVI of France and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were killed during the French Revolution. Their son and heir was said to have died in prison...

The Attica prison rebellion

13 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In September 1971 prisoners in a high security jail in the USA turned on their guards taking 42 people hostage. After 4 days of negotiations, armed po...

9/11: The backlash against American Muslims

10 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the Aftermath of the Al Qaeda attacks against America on September 11th 2001, many Muslims living in the US had their allegiance to America questio...

America attacks Afghanistan

09 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In October 2001, just a month after the 9/11 attacks, the first airstrikes against Afghanistan began in what the US and its allies called Operation En...

With the president on 9/11

08 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The al-Qaeda attacks against America took place on the morning of September the 11th 2001. The news was broken to the US President, George W Bush by h...

The killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud

07 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On the 9th of September 2001 the Afghan fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud who led the opposition to Taliban rule, was killed by a suicide bomber. Just two d...

The warnings before 9/11

06 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout 2001 the US authorities were being given warnings that a terror attack was imminent. A Congressional Commission, FBI officers and the CIA w...

North Korea's founding father

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When World War Two ended and the Korean peninsula was divided, Soviet soldiers occupied the North, and US soldiers occupied the South. So how did one ...

The businessman who defied the Mafia

02 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Palermo businessman Libero Grassi published an open letter in Sicily’s main newspaper denouncing the Mafia for constantly demanding extortion paymen...

Surviving the fall of Saigon

01 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When South Vietnam fell in 1975, most could not escape. In the last days, the US airlifted its remaining personnel and some high ranking Vietnamese of...

The first modern electric car

31 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This electric car revolution is finally on the horizon: many car manufacturers have promised to make only electric vehicles in the near future, in res...

Nigeria's 'War Against Indiscipline'

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Muhammadu Buhari's military government launched an unusual campaign to clean up Nigeria in August 1984. Under the policy, Nigerians were forced to que...

Syria's rebel poet

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani was one of the most influential and famous Arab cultural figures of the 20th century. His enduring legacy has become con...

Campaigning for Mexico's women with disabilities

25 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid 2000s disability campaigners in Mexico were stepping up their efforts to secure changes in laws and attitudes in their country. They faced ...

My father survived the sinking of the Titanic

24 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, roughly 700 passengers survived by escaping in the ship's lifeboats...

John Maynard Keynes

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The economist John Maynard Keynes transformed 20th century economic policy. Considered one of the great minds of his age, his seminal work The General...

When The Queen met Ceaușescu

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Nicolae Ceaușescu was the first communist leader to be given a full state visit to the UK, but it was controversial from the outset. The Romanian pre...

Saddam Hussein's foreign hostages

19 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In August 1990 following the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of neighbouring Kuwait hundreds of foreign nationals were held hostage by the...

India's secret freedom radio

18 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When Indian independence leaders, including Gandhi, were jailed in 1942, activists set up a secret radio station to carry the message of rebellion aga...

US withdrawal: The fall of Saigon

17 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The last remaining US forces pulled out of Vietnam on April 30th 1975 as communist North Vietnamese troops took control of the country. There was a de...

The man who coined the term genocide

16 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Genocide has a long and grim history, but until the 1950s, the mass extermination of a people or a group was an atrocity without a name, a definition ...

Inside an East German jail

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Vera Lengsfeld was a prominent human rights activist in East Germany who was arrested and jailed for taking part in a peaceful protest. She was sent t...

East Germany's nudists

12 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For years Germans have been bathing nude at the beach. Many are members of a naturist movement called the FKK, which was banned under the Nazis and fa...

Exiled from East Germany: Wolf Biermann

11 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

East Germany's most famous singer-songwriter was exiled to the West in November 1976, causing an international outcry. Wolf Biermann was stripped of h...

Escaping from East Berlin

10 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How a young West German student helped East Berliners escape communism at the height of the Cold War. Volker Heinz told Robin Lustig how he worked wit...

The building of the Berlin Wall

09 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In August 1961, communist East Germany began building the Berlin Wall, which divided the city for nearly three decades and became a symbol of the Cold...

Gay activism in 1990s India

06 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1990s, when homosexuality was still a criminal offense in India, a group of gay men and lesbian women set up the Counsel Club in the city...

Afghanistan's battle of the airwaves

05 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When the US led invasion of Afghanistan ousted the repressive Taliban regime in 2001, it was no longer illegal to listen to music or news on the radio...

Escaping Nigeria’s Civil War

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When the south-east region of Nigeria declared itself to be the independent state of Biafra, civil war broke out. More than a million people died befo...

Chipko: India’s tree-hugging women

03 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The 1970s were a time of rapid development in the Indian Himalayas. New roads had recently been built, allowing logging companies greater access to th...

Dorothy Butler Gilliam: American news pioneer

02 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1961, the Washington Post newspaper hired an African American woman as a reporter for the first time. Dorothy Butler Gilliam was only 24 when she g...

The Tsunami and Fukushima

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Remembering the earthquake and tsunami which devastated Japan and triggered a nuclear emergency in 2011. Max Pearson, who reported from Japan at the t...

Fighting for the pill in Japan

29 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

After decades of campaigning in Japan, the pill was finally legalised in 1999. In contrast, the male impotency drug Viagra was approved for use in jus...

The soldier who never surrendered

28 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In January 1972 a Japanese soldier was found hiding in the jungle on the Pacific island of Guam. He had been living in the wild there for almost 30 ye...

The birth of Karaoke

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Daisuke Inoue was playing keyboards in a band in Kobe, Japan, when he invented the Karaoke machine in 1971. He had a customer who wanted to impress bu...

Japan's Bullet Train

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On 1 October 1964, the fastest train the world had ever seen was launched in Japan. The first Shinkansen, or bullet train, ran between Tokyo and Osaka...

When war came to Darfur

22 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2000s, rebels in Sudan's Darfur region took up arms against the government. In response, the Khartoum regime launched a scorched earth ca...

Surviving Norway's day of terror

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On 22 July 2011 Norway suffered its worst terror attacks in recent history. A far-right extremist, Anders Breivik, launched a bomb attack on governmen...

The Battle of Gondar

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In 1941, Italian colonial rule in East Africa ended when Mussolini’s soldiers made a dramatic final stand in the northern Ethiopian town of Gondar. ...

Domestic violence in Brazil

19 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ground-breaking legislation came into effect in Brazil in 2006. For the first time the courts were ordered to recognise different forms of domestic v...