Witness History

The fastest vaccine ever developed

24 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s five-year-old Jeryl Lynn Hilleman got ill with mumps. Her father Dr Maurice Hilleman took a swab from the back of her throat and used it ...

The first safe house for Afghan women

23 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2003 the first refuge for women fleeing violence and abuse was opened in Kabul, Afghanistan, a country that has been labelled one of the most dang...

The struggle to save Borneo's rainforests

22 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The rainforests of Sarawak in Malaysia on the island of Borneo are some of the richest and most biodiverse ecosystems on earth - but for decades they'...

The Million Man March

21 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On 16th October 1995 hundreds of thousands of African American men marched on Washington D.C. in an attempt to put black issues back on the government...

The man who tried to kill Hitler

20 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On 20th July 1944 Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg put a bomb under Adolf Hitler's desk. Although the bomb exploded, it failed to kill the German Nazi l...

South Korea's 1980s prison camps

17 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A so-called Social Purification project led to thousands of ordinary citizens being imprisoned under the military government in South Korea in the 198...

The scandal of Liverpool's missing Chinese sailors

16 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During World War Two, thousands of Chinese sailors and engineers served in the British Merchant Navy, keeping supplies flowing into the port of Liverp...

Returning Ethiopia's looted history

15 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Stele of Axum, a 4th century Ethiopian treasure, was finally returned by Italy in 2005. It had been taken from the ancient town of Axum in norther...

How Club Med changed holidays

14 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Holidaymakers arrived at the first Club Med resort on the Spanish island of Majorca in summer 1950. The French company - full name Club Méditerranée...

The fight for women's prayer rights in Israel

13 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1988, a group of Jewish feminists demanded the right to pray as freely as Jewish men at one of Judaism’s holiest sites. They called themselves th...

The 1960s report that warned the USA was racist

10 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the summer of 1967 more than 100 cities in America were caught up in riots. US Senator Fred Harris urged the President, Lyndon B Johnson, to inves...

The death of Frida Kahlo

09 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The great Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, died on July 13th 1954, at the age of 47. The art critic, Raquel Tibol, lived in Frida's house during the last ...

Montreal's 'Night of Terror'

08 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When Montreal's police force went on strike for one day over pay in 1969, there was looting and rioting in the streets. But the city's problems leadin...

The unlawful death of Christopher Alder

07 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The black former soldier choked to death in handcuffs on the floor of a British police station in 1998. CCTV footage taken from the police station sh...

The doctor who discovered how cholera spread

06 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1800s cholera was a mysterious disease killing millions around the world. No-one knew how to stop it till an English doctor, John Snow, began ...

How South Africa banned skin-lightening creams

03 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1990, South Africa became the first country in the world to ban skin-lightening creams containing the chemical compound hydroquinone. For years the...

The lost Nazi-era art trove

02 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2012 a stunning, secret collection of art was found in Germany. Much of it had disappeared during Nazi rule in the 1930s and 40s. It had once belon...

Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

01 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

What it was like to be a child quarantined in a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in the 1950s. Ann Shaw was nine when she was first admitted to th...

The Rolling Stones drugs trial

30 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went on trial for drugs offences in June 1967. The case attracted attention around the world, and sealed their reputati...

Jana Andolan – Nepal’s people power movement

29 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A people’s movement called Jana Andolan brought an end to Nepal’s absolute monarchy in the spring of 1990. Political parties worked together with ...

Russia’s bitter taste of capitalism

26 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the rapid market reforms in early 1992, just weeks after the collapse of the USSR. In 2018 Dina Newman spoke to on...

The Chilean economy and its 'Chicago Boys'

25 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Following the violent military coup that overthrew Chile's socialist government in 1973, the new regime led by General Augusto Pinochet began a radica...

Tanzania's socialist experiment

24 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1960s Tanzania's first post-independence president, the charismatic Julius Nyerere, believed that endemic poverty in rural areas could onl...

South Korea's economic miracle

23 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An eyewitness account of how a poor, war-ravaged nation became a global economic powerhouse. We hear the memories of Dr Kongdan Oh, who grew up in Sou...

The New Deal

22 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When Franklin D Roosevelt became President in 1933 he promised to spend his first 100 days rescuing the USA from the Great Depression with one of the ...

The ‘Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes’ anti-racist exercise

19 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, US school teacher, Jane Elliott, decided to try to teach her all-white class about racism. She d...

The friendship train

18 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The passenger train service between India and Bangladesh was resumed after more than 40 years. The train service had been suspended after the 1965 war...

Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

17 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s, whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers and international police in the forced prostitution and trafficking of Eastern European ...

Beethoven's role in China's Cultural Revolution

16 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During the early years of Cultural Revolution in China, all European music was banned. Even enjoying traditional Chinese music and art was illegal. An...

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Five Stages of Grief

15 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. When Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her bestselling book On Death and Dying in...

Three Strikes Law

12 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

One man's experience of the controversial US law that saw thousands locked up for life. Under the law in California, a third conviction for a felony o...

Rodney King and the LA riots

11 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

People took to the streets of Los Angeles in fury after police, who had assaulted a black driver called Rodney King, were acquitted in 1992. His assau...

Black basketball pioneers - Texas Western

10 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1966, an all-black team went head-to-head with an all-white team for the National College Basketball championship - one of the biggest prizes in Am...

The 16th Street church bombing

09 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Four young black girls were killed in a racist attack on a church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. The 16th Street Baptist Church was a centre for civ...

Brown v the Board of Education

08 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. The case was a turning point in t...

The portable defibrillator

05 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s, doctors in Northern Ireland launched the world’s first mobile coronary emergency service using a new invention – the portable defibr...

The origin of the WHO

04 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The WHO was first proposed as part of the new United Nations programme to reform the post-war world. The idea for an international health organisation...

How Christo wrapped the Reichstag

03 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The artist Christo died on May 31st 2020. Famous for wrapping landmarks in fabric and plastic, one of his most ambitious projects was the former Germa...

The Zanzibar Revolution

02 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Just one month after gaining independence there was an uprising in Zanzibar in 1964. It was billed as a leftist revolution but the worst of the viole...

The start of eco-tourism

01 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Monteverde cloud forest reserve in Costa Rica was established in the 1970s with the help of a group of American Quakers. The aim was to protect i...

Ann Lowe - African American fashion designer

29 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ann Cole Lowe designed Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress in the 1950s. As a black woman working in high fashion she was a groundbreaking figurein New Yo...

Winston Churchill's doctor

28 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many people were shocked when Winston Churchill's personal doctor published his memories of Britain's wartime leader in 1966. Churchill's family tried...

The Gwangju massacre

27 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The South Korean army crushed a popular uprising in the city of Gwangju on 27 May 1980. Pro-democracy demonstrators had taken control of the city and...

The book that changed the way we eat

25 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The best selling book that highlighted the health and environmental benefits of a plant based diet. The publication of "Diet for a Small Planet" in 1...

Britain's World War Two crime wave

22 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During times of crisis in the UK, World War Two is often remembered as a period when the country rallied together to fight a common enemy. British pol...

Explaining autism

21 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Ground-breaking work by developmental psychologist Professor Uta Frith has revolutionised our understanding of autism. Beginning in the 1960s, Profess...

The first 3D printer

20 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1983 Chuck Hull invented the first 3D printer. It could produce small plastic objects directly from a digital file on a computer. Instead of using ...

Kowloon Walled City

19 May 2020

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...

The Miami riots

18 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

After four white policemen were acquitted of killing a black man - Miami rioted. Citizens took to the streets on the night of May 17th 1980. The unres...

Sweden's fishy submarine scare

15 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The story of a scientist who helped solve a Cold War mystery involving flatulent fish and Soviet submarines. During the Cold War, foreign submarines i...

Confessions of a Prince

14 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Over a period of four years before his death in December 2004, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the consort and husband of former Queen Juliana, ga...

Fighting for the pill in Japan

13 May 2020

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 just...

The first 24-hour children's helpline

12 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How a group of broadcasters and social workers in the UK set up the world’s first 24-hour telephone counselling service for children. It revealed ju...

The liberation of the Channel Islands

11 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The only part of the British Isles to be occupied during World War Two was liberated when the German army surrendered in May 1945. The Channel Islands...

VE Day

08 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On the 8th of May 1945, hundreds of thousands of Londoners took to the streets to celebrate the end of the Second World War in Europe. BBC corresponde...

The Soviet occupation of Berlin

07 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

After Germany's surrender to Allied forces in May 1945 Soviet soldiers occupied the German capital Berlin. For ordinary German citizens it was a time ...

The battle for Berlin

06 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Hear the eyewitness account of a female Russian soldier and a German schoolboy who fought on opposing sides in the final, brutal battle for the capita...

The death of Hitler

05 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The German leader Adolf Hitler killed himself on April 30th 1945. He had taken shelter in a bunker beneath his government headquarters as the Red Army...

The Wehrmacht exhibition that shocked Germany

04 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An exhibition about the role of the German army the Wehrmacht during the Second World War caused a scandal when it launched in Hamburg in March 1995. ...

Hiroshima's trees of hope

01 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

When an atomic bomb was detonated over the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and injured. Despite many s...

The Galapagos sea cucumber dispute

30 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A boom in demand for sea cucumbers in Asia in the 1990s set off a confrontation between fishermen and conservationists in the waters off the Galapagos...

The assassination of the UN's first Middle East mediator

29 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The UN's first Middle East mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948. A Swedish diplomat and member of the Swedish royal...

The 1957 flu that killed a million people

28 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1957 a new strain of flu emerged in East Asia and quickly spread around the world, killing a million people. It was dubbed the "Asian flu" but it s...

Waria warriors - the fight for trans rights in Indonesia

27 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Nancy Iskandar is a magician, snake dancer, former sex worker, committed Muslim and long-time campaigner for transgender women’s rights in Indonesia...

Tennessee Williams on the BBC

24 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The great American playwright gave several interviews to the BBC over the years and some of them provide revealing insights into his personal life. He...

The Brompton Manley Ventilator

23 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1970 a modern portable ventilator system was designed for use in intensive care units. The Brompton Manley’s designer was Dr Ian English a gifted...

Edhi: Pakistan's 'Angel of Mercy'

22 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Abdul Sattar Edhi built one of the biggest welfare charities in the world. He started with a small pharmacy in Karachi dispensing free medication to t...

The last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade

21 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The last surviving person to be captured in Africa in the 19th century and brought to United States on a slave ship, has been identified as a woman ca...

The Deepwater Horizon disaster

20 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On 20th April 2010, a deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico left 11 people dead. As the rig sank, the riser pip...

A space crash

17 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Michael Foale was on board the Mir space station when a resupply vessel crashed into it in June 1997. It was the worst collision in the history of spa...

When Skylab fell to Earth

16 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1979 the world held its breath as the American space station Skylab, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. NASA tried desperately to control Skylab's ...

The last men on the Moon

15 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1972 the American space agency NASA carried out its final Moon mission. One of the three astronauts on board was geologist Harrison Schmitt. In 201...

The first iPhone

14 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The touchscreen smartphone changed mobile technology for ever. It was unveiled on January 9th 2007 by the Apple boss Steve Jobs. Within a few years sm...

Nasa's female aquanauts

14 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Five 'aquanauts' became the first women to front a mission for America's space agency, Nasa, in 1970. But their mission was underwater rather than in ...

The unlikely pioneers of online shopping

10 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1984, a 72-year-old grandmother became the first to try a new online shopping system, years before the arrival of the internet. Mrs Jane Snowball h...

The Trojan Room coffee pot

07 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The world's first webcam went online in 1993. Its camera was focused on a coffee pot so that computer scientists in Cambridge, in the UK, could see if...

The Homebrew computer club

06 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1975 a group of Californian computer enthusiasts began meeting to share ideas. Among those who took part were the founders of Apple. In those day...

Being a Chinese Muslim

03 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Practising a religious faith in communist China has always been hard. Uighur Muslims face incarceration in re-education camps. But other Muslims have ...

The Swedish warship restored after 300 years

02 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1628, at the height of Sweden’s military expansion, the Swedish navy built a new flagship, the Vasa. At the time it was the most heavily armed sh...

Avenging the Amritsar Massacre

01 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A former governor of Punjab, Sir Michael O'Dwyer, was killed by an Indian immigrant in London in 1940. The assassin, Udham Singh, said he was avenging...

The trembling giant

31 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists believe that the biggest living organism on Earth is a fungus. But the heaviest organism, and the most massive organism, is a tree, or rath...

Britain's first woman judge

30 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rose Heilbron was a trailblazer for women in the legal profession in Britain. She was made the first woman judge in the UK in the 1950s and made headl...

The AIDS Memorial Quilt

27 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985 activists hand-stitched a giant quilt to commemorate friends and relatives killed by AIDS, and to campaign for more funding and research into ...

The Cheonan sinking

26 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On March 26th 2010 a South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, sank after an explosion on board. 48 sailors were killed in an alleged torpedo attack carri...

The Saudi bombardment of Yemen

25 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On the night of March 25 2015 Saudi Arabia and its allies launched an intense aerial bombardment of the Yemeni capital Sana'a. The attacks pushed one ...

Sequencing the 1918 influenza virus

24 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Over 50 million people died from influenza during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. Scientists trying to understand why that particular strain of flu wa...

The Chinese cure for malaria

23 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1970s, scientists in China used ancient traditional medicine to find a cure for malaria. Artemisinin was discovered by exploring a herbal remed...

The launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

20 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1990, NASA launched the historic mission which put into orbit the Hubble Space Telescope. The orbiting observatory has revolutionized astronomy and...

The 'I Love You' computer virus

20 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In May 2000, a virus created by a college dropout in the Philippines caused chaos around the world. Millions of people received - and opened - an emai...

The Major and the VW Beetle

20 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The story of how a car that had originally been the idea of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was saved by a British army officer at the end of World War Two. ...

Red Hollywood

18 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1950, a 200-page-long directory called "Red Channels " was published in America. It was a list of people working in the media who were suspected of...

The fight to make sexual harassment a crime

17 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1986, the US Supreme Court heard a landmark case which would define sexual harassment as a crime in America. The lawsuit, brought by bank clerk Mec...

Marburg virus

13 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A deadly new form of haemorrhagic fever was discovered in the small town of Marburg in West Germany in the summer of 1967. The first patients all work...

The SARS epidemic

12 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In early 2003 a medical emergency swept across the world. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, was a deadly virus which had first struck in sou...

The polio vaccine

11 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1955 scientists in the US led by Dr Jonas Salk announced they had developed an effective vaccine against polio. The poliomyelitis virus had caused ...

The Ebola virus

10 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Some 300 people died during the first documented outbreak of the deadly disease occurred in the 1970s in the Democratic Republic of Congo - then known...

The 'Spanish' flu

09 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1918, more than fifty million people died in an outbreak of flu, which spread all over the world in the wake of the first World War. We hear eye-wi...

Battling Soviet psychiatric punishment

05 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The story of Dr. Semen Gluzman, a Ukrainian psychiatrist, who took a stand against the psychiatric abuse of political dissidents in the Soviet Union. ...

Strikers in saris

04 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1976 South Asian women workers who had made Britain their home, led a strike against poor working conditions in a British factory. Lakshmi Patel wa...

The petrol that was poisoning children

03 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The UK was one of the first in Europe to declare it would ban lead from petrol after a successful campaign showing it was poisoning children and leavi...