Witness History
Episodes
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...
The killing of Amadou Diallo
12 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When police in New York shot a young immigrant 41 times in 1999, thousands of people took to the streets to protest. But Amadou Diallo's mother Kadiat...
The IRA siege at Balcombe Street
10 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1975, four members of one of the IRA’s deadliest units were chased by police through the streets of London before hiding out in a small ...
The battle of the Louvre pyramid
09 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1983 French president Francois Mitterand commissioned a major renovation of Paris' most famous art museum, the Louvre. But the resulting great glas...
The Cuban writer who defied Fidel Castro
06 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On 7 December 1990 the dissident Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas killed himself in New York after years of suffering from AIDS. Before fleeing...
Jaslyk – Uzbekistan’s infamous prison
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A prison camp called Jaslyk opened in the desert in western Uzbekistan in 1999. Even by the standards of the Uzbek prison system it would become notor...
The British sculptor who won over the world
04 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During the 20th century a British coal miner's son changed the world of art. Henry Moore revolutionised sculpture, altering the way we view the human ...
Shackleton
03 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hear first hand accounts from the doomed Antarctic expedition which became a legendary story of survival. In 1914, polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleto...
The killing of Pablo Escobar
02 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Colombian drug trafficker, once one of the richest men in the world, was shot dead by police on 2nd December 1993. He had been on the run from the...
The first confirmed case of HIV in America
29 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robert R was a teenager who died of a mysterious illness in Saint Louis, Missouri in 1969. It was only in the 1980s that doctors studying the Aids epi...
Handing back Uluru
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1985 Australia's most famous natural landmark, Uluru, the huge ancient red rock formerly known as Ayers Rock, was handed back to its traditional ow...
From cakes to computers
27 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1950s, the leading British catering firm, J Lyons & Co, pioneered the world's first automated office system. It was baptised LEO - th...
India's economic revolution
26 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1990s India began to open up its largely state-controlled economy to foreign investment. Subramanian Swamy wrote the blueprint for reform and h...
The man who gave his voice to Stephen Hawking
25 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
American scientist Dennis Klatt pioneered synthesised speech in the 1980s. He used recordings of himself to make the sounds that gave British physicis...
Exploring Arabia's Empty Quarter
22 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1940s, British gentleman explorer Wilfred Thesiger travelled extensively in one of the world's harshest environments - the Empty Quarter of Ara...
The man who got Delhi on track
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
India's capital city built a brand new mass transit system to tackle its traffic jams and air pollution. The first section of the Delhi Metro was open...
I saw the soldiers who killed El Salvador's priests
20 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In November 1989 Salvadoran government soldiers dragged six Jesuit priests from their beds and murdered them along with their housekeeper and her teen...
The 'Woman in Gold'
19 Nov 2019
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...
The first Tasers
18 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, an American engineer Jack Cover designed a new experimental stun gun. He called it a Taser. But the device only really became popular wh...
The first Indian to win Miss World
15 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Reita Faria was the first Indian to win the Miss World beauty competition in 1966. She was studying medicine in Mumbai when a spur of the moment decis...
The Love Canal disaster
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1970s toxic chemicals were discovered oozing from the ground in a neighbourhood in upstate New York. The neighbourhood was called Love Can...
The demolition of the Babri Masjid
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hindu extremists demolished a 16th century mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya in December 1992 prompting months of communal violence across India. P...
Cap Anamur: A rescue that led to jail
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2004, a German aid agency ship, Cap Anamur, was sailing to the Suez Canal, when it came across 37 Africans on a sinking rubber boat. The captain, S...
Memories of Wilfred Owen
11 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Wilfred Owen died just a few days before the end of World War One but his poetry ensured he would be remembered. Little is known about the man behind ...
The concert that rocked the Berlin Wall
08 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Former Berlin resident David Bowie was among the performers at a pop concert in West Berlin in 1987 credited with helping to create the atmosphere tha...
The Bhagalpur blindings
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
WARNING: This programme contains distressing descriptions of violent torture from the beginning.In 1980 police in a small city in the Indian state of ...
Britain's secret propaganda war
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How sex, jazz and 'fake news' were used to undermine the Nazis in World War Two. In 1941, the UK created a top secret propaganda department, the Polit...
A ground-breaking change to treating breast cancer
05 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1975 the Canadian oncologist Dr Vera Peters released ground-breaking data to prove that breast-conserving surgery could at times be as effective as...
Iran hostage crisis: the humanitarian delegation
04 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On November 4th 1979 revolutionary students overran the US Embassy in Tehran and took everyone inside hostage. In February 1980 the students invited a...
Saving the Great Barrier Reef
01 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1960s conservationists began a campaign to prevent the Queensland government from allowing mining and oil drilling on Australia's Great Barrier...
'Jane' - the underground abortion service
31 Oct 2019
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...
The Algerians who fought with France
30 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Harkis were Algerian Muslims who volunteered to fight with France in Algeria's war of independence. When the conflict came to an end in 1962 and F...
The Paris hotel that hosted Holocaust survivors
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of the Second World War the grand Parisian hotel, the Lutetia, was allocated to receive thousands of prisoners and Nazi concentration camp ...
Margaret Thatcher's anti-Europe speech
28 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The British Prime Minister started expressing doubts about the European Union during a speech in the Belgian city of Bruges in 1988. The now famous "B...
The fall of the Berlin Wall
25 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The border between communist East Germany and the West opened on November 9th 1989. It marked the beginning of the collapse of communism in Eastern Eu...
The Leipzig demonstrations
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mass demonstrations in the East German city of Leipzig in October 1989 shook the communist authorities to their core. The protests are seen as paving...
East German refugees in the Prague embassy
23 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands of East Germans fled to the West in the summer and autumn of 1989, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many of them sought refuge in the Wes...
The reburial of a Hungarian hero
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1989 the body of Imre Nagy, Prime Minister during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, was reburied in a public ceremony in Budapest. He had been executed ...
The legalisation of Solidarity
21 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When the banned Polish trade union organisation, Solidarity, was legalised in April 1989 it was one of the first signs that communism was about to col...
Wangari Maathai Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Kenyan Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. She was an environmentalist and human rights activist who ...
Britain's worst nuclear accident
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Things started to go wrong at the Windscale nuclear plant in October 1957. A reactor was overheating and workers were rushed in to help. In 2011 Chris...
The man who fed the world
16 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1970 the American scientist, Norman Borlaug, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work developing disease-resistant crops. At the t...
Mexico City slashes car use
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1980s a deadly cocktail of factory fumes and car exhausts had turned Mexico City into the world's most polluted city. Hundreds of thousands of ...
Proving climate change: The Keeling curve
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How a young American scientist began the work that would show how our climate is changing. His name was Charles Keeling and he meticulously recorded l...