Witness History
Episodes
England's summer of riots
16 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 2001 race riots gripped towns in the north of England. They began in Oldham in late May 2001, spreading to Burnley in June, and Brad...
When the Taliban took Kabul
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Taliban fighters first took control of Afghanistan's capital city Kabul in late September 1996. They imposed their strict interpretation of Islam on A...
Jane Goodall and chimpanzees
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s a young Englishwoman made a discovery that changed our understanding of animal behaviour. Jane Goodall was living among wild chimpanzees ...
Prisoner of the Cultural Revolution
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As a schoolboy in communist China, Kim Gordon took part in huge rallies to praise Chairman Mao. But when Mao's so-called Cultural Revolution began to ...
The race for the jet engine
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Using eyewitness recordings from the BBC archive we hear from the pioneers of the jet engine, Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain, about the struggle...
The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On 9 July 1985 the Greenpeace campaign ship was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland, New Zealand. One environmental campaigner was killed and t...
The first World Romani Congress
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Roma people from all over Europe met in England for a conference in 1971. The Roma, who migrated from India over a thousand years ago, often used to b...
The famine in North Korea
07 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Communist North Korea suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union which had been one of the country's main suppo...
Britain's wartime gold
06 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 it had to find somewhere to keep its money. Because of the risk of invasion, a decision was made to send...
Cuba's blindness epidemic
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As Cuba faced a devastating economic crisis in the early 1990s, leading to severe food shortages and malnutritiion, some 50,000 Cubans were inexplicab...
China's trailblazing foreign students
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
China has the largest number of overseas students in the world but when students first started venturing out of Communist China it was still a country...
The Chinese Communist Party
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A small group of revolutionaries formed the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921. Led by Chairman Mao, they fought their way to power in the world's m...
The Syrian playwright who challenged the regime
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An experimental play staged in Damascus in 1971 undermined official Syrian propaganda. Simply by stating that the Arab nations had been defeated by Is...
Zimbabwe's mass UFO sightings
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It was one of the most reported UFO sightings in recent history. Local people in the quiet rural town of Ruwa in Zimbabwe reported a 'strange craft' ...
The repeal of 'Don't ask, don't tell'
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
LGBT servicemen and women in the US armed forces had to keep their sexuality secret until the 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy was repealed in 2011. Lie...
China's LGBT 'cooperative marriages'
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
LGBT people in China sometimes arrange fake marriages to hide their sexuality. Homosexuality is not illegal in China but there is discrimination again...
The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The discovery of the diaries of 19th-century Englishwoman Anne Lister, who wrote in secret code about her love affairs with women and has been called ...
Woubis, yossis and travestis: LGBT activism in Côte d’Ivoire
22 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire has a buzzing LGBT scene and the country is regarded as one of the more tolerant nations in West Africa. In this Witness ...
The Stonewall Inn
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1969, the gay community in New York responded to police brutality and harassment by rioting outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Fo...
China's 'Economic Miracle'
18 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since the 1980s China has witnessed massive economic growth. It’s become known as the 'world’s factory'. The driving force behind much of it has...
The Trabant
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The iconic East German car dominated the roads of communist Central Europe for decades. The Trabant was made out of resin and cotton waste, had a two-...
The police rape interview that shocked Britain
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the BBC broadcast a documentary called 'A Complaint of Rape' in 1982 the public was shocked. It was part of a fly-on-the-wall series about the ...
Mindfulness for the masses
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979 scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn opened the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, pioneering a ...
The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In June 2015 an American anti-racist activist climbed a flagpole on the South Carolina state house grounds to take down the Confederate flag. The prot...
The Fall of Madrid
11 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1939, the Spanish capital, Madrid, finally fell to the fascist forces of General Franco – spelling the end of a brutal Civil War in which hundred...
The elections that Hamas won
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem voted in legislative elections in 2006. The Islamist Hamas movement stood against the Fatah p...
Benjamin Britten's War Requiem
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Regarded as one of the most important pieces in 20th Century English music, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem was first played in the newly-built Coventr...
Tunisia’s legal brothels
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, Tunisia has had a system of legal, state-regulated brothels. But in the last ten years they have been under attack and many have been for...
When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On 7 June 1981 Israeli fighter jets launched a surprise attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor located outside Baghdad, killing 11 people. The French-bu...
How Switzerland defeated its heroin epidemic
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s, Switzerland decided to tackle one of Europe's worst drugs epidemics by trying radical new policy ideas including providing safe-injectio...
Afghanistan's poppy problem
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Laila Haidari set up Kabul's first independent drug rehabilitation centre in 2010. Having helped her own brother to quit his heroin addiction she want...
When Peru mistook missionaries for drug traffickers
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2001 the Peruvian Air Force mistakenly shot down a small passenger plane as it flew over the Amazon jungle. The Peruvians believed the aircra...
The killing of Pablo Escobar
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Colombian drug trafficker, once one of the richest men in the world, was shot dead by police in December 1993. He had been on the run from the aut...
The war on drugs
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The first 'war on drugs' was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971. He described drug abuse as a 'national emergency' and asked Congress for ...
The Tulsa Race Massacre
28 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Greenwood was a flourishing and prosperous black neighbourhood of Tulsa, often referred to as Black Wall Street. But in May 1921, a white mob descend...
Rock concert for Chernobyl
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On May 31st 1986 a small group of musicians staged the first charity rock concert ever held in the USSR. It was organised in less than two weeks to ra...
Amilcar Cabral: An African liberation legend
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s and 70s, Amilcar Cabral led the armed struggle to end Portuguese colonial rule in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde in West Africa. Cabral was...
The first Arab woman pilot
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Despite opposition from her father, Lotfia Elnadi was determined to realise her dream to fly. With her mother's consent, she secretly took flying less...
The strike that shocked India
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When one and a half million Indian railway workers went on strike for 20 days in 1974 it brought the country to a halt. Essential food, goods and work...
Fighting forced marriage in war
21 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009 a war crimes trial in Sierra Leone ruled that forced marriage was a crime against humanity. It was the first time a court had recognised that ...
Saving the world's wetlands
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Iran hosted a meeting to save the world's wetlands in 1971. The Ramsar Convention - named after the village on the Caspian Sea where it was originally...
Striking in South Korea in 1980
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There were strikes and student protests across South Korea in May 1980. The military government responded with a brutal crackdown in the city of Gwang...
When Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa compound
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The controversial Israeli opposition leader visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jersualem's old city in 2000. His appearance was followed by an ups...
China's Democracy Wall
14 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How a brick wall in Beijing became a beacon for those calling for change. But when Wei Jingsheng posted an essay demanding democracy in 1978, he was a...
The trial of South Africa’s 'Dr Death'
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The trial of a South African doctor accused of multiple murders under the Apartheid regime. Wouter Basson, nicknamed 'Dr Death' by the country’s med...
The Jewish exodus from Iraq
12 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 1971 around 2,000 Iraqi Jews were forced to flee the country following persistent threats and persecution. The Jewish community in Ir...
Legalising contraception in Ireland
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Contraception wasn't easily accessible in Ireland until 1985. Activists spent years fighting for the right to control their fertility but faced opposi...
Why a British MP was filmed taking mescaline
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
# Warning: This programme contains scenes of drug use #In 1955, a British member of parliament, Christopher Mayhew, took the hallucinogenic drug mesca...
The Great Wine Fraud
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 2000s, Rudy Kurniawan was a newcomer to the hedonistic world of wine auctions in the US. He quickly became well-known for his warm and f...
Ursula Le Guin
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American writer, Ursula Le Guin, was one of the most influential authors of the second half of the 20th century, publishing 20 novels in genres fr...
The IRA hunger strikes
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1981 the British government was faced with prisoners dying on hunger strike in a jail in Northern Ireland. The Irish republican activists were dema...
How Amsterdam became the cannabis smoking capital of Europe
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How Amsterdam became the home of cannabis coffee shops .The Mellow Yellow Café set a pattern in 1973 of attracting customers, which hundreds of other...
The killing of Osama Bin Laden
30 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The US tracked down the al-Qaeda leader to a city in northern Pakistan in May 2011. Special operations troops were sent to capture or kill Bin Laden i...
The battle of Tora Bora
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan in 2001, the hunt for Osama bin Laden began in earnest. One American in particular led the sear...
The Nairobi US Embassy bombing
28 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1998, more than 200 people were killed in co-ordinated bomb attacks on two US embassies in East Africa. They were among the first major atta...
Meeting Osama bin Laden
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan agreed to go and interview Osama bin Laden in 1996 he was apprehensive. By the time he reached the Al...
The siege of Mecca
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979 Islamist militants seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. Hundreds were killed as Saudi security forces battl...
The first space shuttle mission
23 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On 12th April 1981, the space shuttle Columbia made history becoming the first ever reusable space craft to fly into orbit. It marked the start of a 3...
How the NRA became a US political lobbying giant
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The National Rifle Association represents gun owners in the USA. In 1977 it faced a turning point when its members revolted against the organisation...
The Raymond Davis Incident
21 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, an American man shot dead two people in the streets of Lahore. The crisis that ensued saw accusations of espionage and US-Pakistani relation...
The return of Blue Lake
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1970, the Republican president Richard Nixon signed a bill returning a sacred lake to the people of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. The lake, and surrou...
The Eichmann trial
19 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1961, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official in charge of concentration camps, was put on trial in Israel.The trial helped reveal the full details...
China's 'Kingdom of women'
16 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Mosuo community in China’s Himalayan foothills is matrilineal, so a family’s ‘bloodline’, inheritance and power is passed down through the...
The vultures saved from extinction
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
South Asian vultures started dying in huge numbers in the 1990s but no one knew why. They were on the verge of extinction before scientists worked out...
Fighting for Castro at the Bay of Pigs
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On April 17 1961 a group of Cuban exiles launched an invasion of communist-ruled Cuba in a failed attempt to topple Fidel Castro. After 72 hours of f...
How a worm helped explain human development
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA in the 1950s, South African biologist Sydney Brenner was searching for a model animal to help...
The US Supreme Court's first woman justice
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman judge to be appointed to the US Supreme Court. She was nominated by newly-elected Republican presi...
Discovering the Jet Stream
09 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Jet Stream is formed by powerful high-altitude rivers of air which circle the globe and help determine our climate. The existence of these winds w...
From Leningrad to St Petersburg
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As the communist system in the former Soviet Union was collapsing in 1991, the people of Leningrad voted to drop Vladimir Lenin's name abandoning the ...
David Attenborough's first expedition
07 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1954, the BBC broadcast a new television programme in Britain. It was called Zoo Quest and it launched the career of a man who has since brought th...
Mexico's female serial killer
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Former female wrestler Juana Barraza was found guilty in March 2008 of murdering at least eleven elderly women in Mexico city over a period of seven y...
The women who reclaimed the night
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How women in the North of England took to the streets in the late 1970s to protest against a serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper. Police advised...
Black Jesus
02 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Easter Sunday 1967 the Reverend Albert Cleage renamed his church in Detroit the Shrine of the Black Madonna. He preached that if man was made in Go...
Kidnapped on an orchid hunt
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In March 2000, two young English travellers, Tom Hart-Dyke and Paul Winder, were kidnapped by Colombian guerrillas while attempting to cross the notor...
Mrs Thatcher’s ground-breaking Soviet TV interview
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How Mrs Thatcher shook up the Soviet media with a landmark interview in Moscow in 1987 focusing on nuclear disarmament. It was broadcast unedited and ...
When the prisoners ran the prison
30 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1973 guards went on strike at Walpole maximum security prison in the US state of Massachussetts, and the prisoners took over. For the next th...
Anorexia nervosa
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The American singer, Karen Carpenter, died in 1983 of anorexia nervosa. She was one half of a world famous brother and sister duo called The Carpenter...
South Africa takes on big pharma
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the 1990s, tens of millions of people across Africa had been infected with HIV and in South Africa hundreds of thousands of people were ...
The woman who got America talking about sex
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Ruth Westheimer first became popular on a radio show in New York in the early 1980s. Her frank and open approach to giving advice on all sorts of d...
Jamaica’s ‘drug lord’
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Jamaican government issued a warrant for the arrest and extradition of the drug lord Christopher Coke, otherwise known as “Dudus” in May 2010...
The Ulster Workers' Strike
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
An early attempt at power-sharing in Northern Ireland ended after protestant workers went on strike and bomb attacks killed dozens in the Republic of ...
The dirtiest chess match in history
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1978, the World Chess Championship between the Soviet champion and convinced communist, Anatoly Karpov, and the dissident and defector, Viktor Korc...
Mars-500 isolation experiment
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, six men were locked inside a simulated spacecraft on earth for 520 days. It was part of an experiment to see how humans would cope if cooped ...
Alva Myrdal - the woman who made modern Sweden
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, the Swedish social reformer, writer and diplomat, Alva Myrdal, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on nuclear disarmament. She was...
Paris is Burning
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The documentary Paris is Burning was released in 1991 The award winning film showed a glimpse of the thriving underground ballroom and drag scene in N...
The woman who asked Britain to return the Parthenon marbles
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Melina Mercouri, famous actress turned politician, visited Britain in 1983 as Greek Minister of Culture and made the first official request for the re...
Jane: The underground abortion network
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A group of feminists working under the name “Jane” carried out underground abortions in 1960s Chicago – when abortions were still illegal in mos...
Cixi: China's most powerful woman
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Empress Dowager Cixi ruled China for 47 years until her death in 1908. But it wasn't until the 1970s that her story began to be properly documente...
The women of Egypt's Arab Spring
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011 Egyptians took to the streets calling for the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime had been in power for nearly 30 years. Their ...
Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1946, the UK's former wartime leader, Winston Churchill, gave a historic speech which would come to symbolise the beginnings of the Cold War....
The Sharpeville massacre
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1960, the South African police opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people and injuring nearly ...
When US police dropped explosives on a Philadelphia home
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On 13 May 1985 a police helicopter dropped explosives on a house in residential Philadelphia, in an attempt to end a stand-off with radical black acti...
Refugee Island
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In 2001, boats carrying hundreds of, mainly Afghan, refugees arrived on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru. This marked the beginning of the “Pacific...
The world's deepest dive 11km down
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Don Walsh was the first to go to the very bottom of the deepest part of the ocean in 1960 in a specially designed submarine, the Bathyscaphe Trieste. ...
The WW2 airman from Sierra Leone
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Johnny Smythe was one of very few West Africans to fly with Britain's air force during WW2. Recruited in Sierra Leone in 1941 he was trained as a navi...
The fall of Kwame Nkrumah
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah, was one of Africa's most famous independence leaders. But in 1966, while he was out of the country, the Ghanaia...
Ireland's bank bailout
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis Ireland had to borrow billions to stop its banks from going under and to keep its economy afloat. The ...
Acid rain
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s, Swedish scientists documented how acid rain was poisoning lakes, killing fish, damaging soils and forests. Crucially they said it was an...
Mary Wilson
19 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Motown group The Supremes had a string of number one hits in 1964. They would become the most popular girl group of the 1960s. One of the three or...
Free breakfasts with the Black Panthers
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Black Panther Party hit the headlines in the late 1960s with their call for a revolution in the USA. But they also ran a number of "survival progr...