Witness History

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...

Womenomics in Japan

02 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

One of the toughest challenges facing Japan’s economy is that its population is ageing rapidly and its workforce is shrinking dramatically. But a J...

Freeing American prisoners from Iran

28 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2009, three American hikers were arrested and jailed after they crossed an unmarked border into Iran while on holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan. Sarah Sho...

The last smallpox outbreak

27 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands of people died in India during the world's last major smallpox epidemic. Individual cases had to be tracked down and quarantined to stop the...

The rebel nuns who left their convent behind

26 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A group of Californian nuns left their convent and set up their own independent community in 1970. They’d been inspired by the social change they sa...

The first mobile phone call

25 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1973, an engineer called Marty Cooper made the world’s first mobile phone call from a street in New York City. Cooper worked for a then tiny tele...

An Antarctic mystery

24 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985, human remains were found by chance on a remote island in Antarctica by Chilean biologist Dr Daniel Torres. But whose were they? It would take...

Saving Antarctica

21 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1991, an international protocol to protect the world’s last wilderness, Antarctica, from commercial exploitation was agreed at a summit i...

Saddam Hussein's 'Supergun'

20 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An insider's account of Project Babylon, the plan to build the largest gun in the world for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The "Supergun" was the brainchild o...

Fighting oil pollution with art in Nigeria

19 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

"Battle Bus" was a sculpture made by Sokari Douglas Camp in memory of Nigerian environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists who were contr...

How meditation changes your brain

18 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2002, scientists in the US began performing a landmark series of experiments on Buddhist monks from around the world. The studies showed that the b...

The Pale Blue Dot

17 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In February 1990, the Nasa space probe Voyager took a famous photo of Earth as it left the Solar System. Seen from six billion kilometres away, our pl...

The Rules: A dating handbook

14 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On Valentine's Day 1995, authors Sherrie Schneider and Ellen Fein published a dating handbook called The Rules: Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the ...

The best-seller Fear of Flying

13 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The groundbreaking novel about female sexuality, called Fear of Flying, was first published in 1973. Dina Newman has been speaking to its author, Eric...

Diary of life in a favela

12 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A poor single mother of three, Carolina Maria de Jesus lived in a derelict shack and spent her days scavenging for food for her children, doing odd jo...

The man who first published Harry Potter

11 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1996, after many rejections, author JK Rowling at last finds a publisher for her first Harry Potter novel. Louise Hidalgo hears from editor, Barry ...

Chairman Mao's Little Red Book

10 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1966, the collected thoughts of China's communist leader became an unexpected best-seller around the world. A compendium of pithy advice and politi...

The release of Nelson Mandela

07 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

On 11th February 1990 anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela walked free after spending 27 years in a South African jail. It was a day that millions of ...

The Native American casino boom in the US

06 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In February 1987, a small Native American tribe from California won a landmark ruling at the US Supreme Court granting them the right to conduct gambl...

Witnessing the birth of a new language

05 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1980s deaf children in Nicaragua invented a completely new sign language of their own. It was a remarkable achievement, which allowed exp...

Cixi: China's most powerful woman

04 Feb 2020

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 document...

London's first black policeman

03 Feb 2020

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 Treaty of Rome

31 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The treaty which established the European Economic Community was signed by six countries in 1957 - France, West Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg an...

The first self-made female millionaire

30 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Madam C. J. Walker was the first ever self-made female millionaire. She was born to former slaves in the USA and was orphaned at seven but against all...

The ancient oak tree that taught the world a lesson

29 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The remarkable Turner's oak in Kew Gardens in London not only survived the Great Storm that ravaged the south of England in 1987, but also changed the...

Reforming India's rape laws

28 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In January 2013 the Indian government began to overhaul the country's laws on rape following the brutal gang rape and killing of a 23 year old physiot...

The Way Ahead group: Modernising the Royal Family

27 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Prince Harry and Meghan’s announcement that they will step back from their royal duties is not the first time the British royal family has tried to ...

The frozen zoo

24 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1975, San Diego Zoo began placing tissue samples of rare animals in cryogenic storage for the benefit of future generations. Called the Frozen Zoo,...

The discovery of whalesong

23 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Whales were being hunted to extinction, when in 1967, a biologist called Dr Roger Payne realised they could sing. It changed the perception of whales ...

Silent Spring: A book that changed the world

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Silent Spring, written by marine biologist Rachel Carson, looked at the effect that synthetic pesticides were having on the environment. Within years ...

How the dodo died out

21 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A flightless bird, the dodo became extinct just decades after being discovered on the uninhabited island of Mauritius by European sailors. Because dod...

The mystery of the disappearing frogs

20 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How scientists discovered that a deadly fungus was killing off amphibians around the world. The chytrid fungus has caused the greatest loss of biodive...

The killing of Osama Bin Laden

17 Jan 2020

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 story of George Stinney Jr

16 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

How a 14-year-old boy became the youngest person to be executed in the USA during the 20th century. George Stinney Jr was sent to the electric chair i...

The woman who negotiated peace with a rebel group

15 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In January 2014 after decades of violent struggle, a peace deal was agreed in the Philippines between a Muslim separatist organisation and the governm...

Storming the Stasi HQ

14 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Just weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall East Germans found themselves able to walk into the communist secret police headquarters in Berlin. The m...

Britain's National Trust

13 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The National Trust was founded in 1895, and initially focused on preserving Britain's rural heritage. But their mission expanded in the 1930s to inclu...

The battle for Fallujah

10 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A US Marine's account of the massive US-led assault on the Iraqi city in November 2004. Amid post-invasion chaos in Iraq, the city was seen as a stro...

The Computers for Schools revolution

09 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 2009, Uruguay became the first country in the world to give a laptop computer to every child in state primary schools. At the time, only 10 per cen...

The murder of environmentalist Chico Mendes

08 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In December 1988 the Brazilian environmental campaigner, Chico Mendes, was shot dead by cattle ranchers, unhappy at being prevented from exploiting la...

The exodus of Kashmiri Hindus

07 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In January 1990 over 100,000 Hindus fled the Kashmir valley after an increase in tension between the Indian military and Muslim independence activists...

German atrocities in Poland during WW2

06 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Towards the end of World War Two in Europe, Polish civilians suffered terribly at the hands of retreating German troops. But many never received any r...

East Germany's punks

03 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1980s, thousands of young people in communist East German became punks, attracted by the DIY culture and anti-establishment attitude.But ...

Desmond's: A sitcom that changed Britain

02 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Desmond's was the most successful black sitcom in British TV history. It ran on Channel 4 for over five years, attracting millions of viewers. Trix Wo...

The book that predicted an end to civilisation

01 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 and predicted global decline from 2020. It was based on a computer model which analysed how the Earth would...

Negotiating an end to El Salvador's civil war

31 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On December 31 1991 the two warring parties in El Salvador's brutal civil war agreed to end the fighting. Left-wing FMLN rebels pledged to disarm and ...

The Chippendales

30 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The Chippendales nightclub in downtown Los Angeles was looking for ways to attract customers on a weeknight – when they hit upon the idea of male st...

Vietnam war: Surviving the 'Christmas bombing' campaign

27 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In December 1972 the US military launched its heaviest bombardment on the Vietnamese city of Hanoi. Around twenty thousand tonnes of explosives were ...

Cirque du Soleil

26 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The global circus phenomenon Cirque du Soleil was born in 1984 when a group of street performers in Quebec bought a big top tent and went on tour.Lucy...

The secret history of Monopoly

25 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1904, a left-wing American feminist called Lizzy Magie patented a board game that evolved into what we now know as Monopoly. But 30 years later, wh...

The invasion of Afghanistan

24 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On 24 December 1979 Soviet troops poured into Afghanistan in support of an anti-government coup. Their first targets were the palace in which the pres...

Fighting cancer

23 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s doctors began ground-breaking work into using several toxic chemicals at once to treat cancer. Combination chemotherapy, as it was called...

The creation of Abuja

20 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Why Nigeria came to build a brand new capital from scratch.and created one of the world 's fastest growing cities. During the 1970s oil boom, Nigeria...

Bee crisis: Colony Collapse Disorder

19 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 2007, the mysterious loss of commercial honey bees in the United States made headlines around the world. Researchers called the phenomenon Colony C...

The Romanian revolution

18 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Of all the revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe 30 years ago in the winter of 1989, the over throw of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena wa...

Women and the Sabarimala temple

17 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Priests reacted with horror when a South Indian actress, Jayamala, admitted she had inadvertently touched a statue of a god at the Sabarimala temple i...

Black GIs during World War Two

16 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

For much of World War Two African-American soldiers were relegated to support roles and kept away from the fighting. But after the Allies suffered hug...

The attack on India's parliament

13 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In December 2001 armed men attacked India's Parliamentary compound in broad daylight. Islamist extremists were blamed and the attack brought India and...