Witness History
Episodes
The Chappaquiddick Incident
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1969, United States Senator Edward Kennedy was involved in a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which a young woman named Mary Jo Kopech...
LGBT 'cooperative' marriages in China
23 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
LGBT people in China sometimes arrange fake marriages to hide their sexuality. In 2005 Lin Hai set up a website to allow lesbians and gay men to get i...
Mamma Mia!
22 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The hit musical Mamma Mia! opened in London's West End in 1999. Using the songs of the Swedish pop group ABBA, the stage show was followed in July 200...
The Beagle 2 mission to Mars
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On Christmas Day 2003, a British spacecraft was due to land on Mars and begin searching for signs of life. The late Professor Colin Pillinger was the ...
Apollo 13
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The 1970 Moon mission that almost ended in tragedy after an explosion on board the spaceship. Fred Haise was one of the Apollo 13 astronauts. In 2010...
The Moon Landing
17 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1969, the world watched in awe as NASA’s Apollo 11 mission landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the lunar surface. ...
Valentina Tereshkova, cosmonaut
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1963 Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was sent into orbit around the Earth, in a solo voyage which lasted for nearly three days. Lucy Ash...
Laika, the first dog in space
15 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Russian stray was the first dog to orbit the Earth. She was sent into space in November 1957 in a flight which had been timed to mark the annivers...
Kenya's ivory inferno
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Twelve tonnes of ivory was set alight by President Daniel Arap Moi in Nairobi National Park in July 1989, to highlight the threat from poaching.The iv...
Cuba executes top military officers
11 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Four army officers were sentenced to death for drug trafficking by the Castro government in July 1989. Critics accused the communist authorities of ca...
The Common Cold Unit
10 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Common Cold Unit was created after World War Two to find the cause of the illness. Its work depended on thousands of volunteers who came to the un...
China puts tampons on sale
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tampons first went on sale in China in 1985. But many Chinese women, especially in rural areas still didn't have access to basic sanitary products. Ev...
The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'
08 Jul 2019
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 ...
The indigenous fight to stop nuclear waste disposal
05 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995 a group of senior, indigenous Australian women started a campaign to halt the construction of a nuclear waste facility in a remote part of Sou...
The launch of the Walkman
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The portable cassette player that brought us music on the move was launched in July 1979. By the time production of the Walkman came to an end thirty ...
Surviving Cambodia's 'Killing Fields'
03 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Extremist communists, the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975 and began a social engineering project displacing millions to forced labour camps, and commit...
Germans kidnapped by Nicaragua's rebels
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1980s thousands of young activists from around the world flocked to Nicaragua to support the fledgling left-wing Sandinista revolution. They ca...
The US judge accused of sexual harassment
01 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1991 the US Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas was publicly accused of sexual misconduct by a law professor, Anita Hill. She was called to...
Defending a British serial murderer
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
**Warning: Some listeners might find parts of this programme disturbing**In June 1994 Fred and Rosemary West were charged with a series of gruesome mu...
The Stonewall Riot
27 Jun 2019
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. Th...
The Anfal genocide
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In June 2007, an Iraqi court ruled that a 1980s campaign by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds was genocide. More than 100,000 Kurds were killed in chem...
Catch-22
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Joseph Heller's funny, tragic satirical anti-war novel was published in 1961 and sold millions. For many it epitomised the growing anti-establishment ...
The fat acceptance movement
24 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The National Association to Aid Fat Americans, NAAFA, held its first meeting in June 1969. Its first president was Bill Fabrey, a thin man married to...
The yoga teacher and the violinist
21 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
To mark world yoga day, how a chance encounter between the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the yoga teacher, BKS Iyengar in 1952 led to a life-long...
Sister Lotus - early Chinese online star
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sister Lotus was an early online celebrity in China. She first became famous in 2004 after posting pictures of herself on China's early social media ...
The assassinaton of Medgar Evers
19 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1963 the murder of a prominent black civil rights activist and war hero in Mississippi shook the civil rights movement. Medgar Evers was worki...
Carl Gustav Jung
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most influential figures in modern psychoanalysis, the Swiss thinker and writer, Carl Gustav Jung, died in June 1961. Although he had work...
The death of Neda Soltan
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In June 2009 after the presidential elections in Iran, millions took to the streets to dispute Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory. A young woman, Neda Agha...
The first gay marriage in the USA
14 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Long before same-sex marriage became legal in the USA in 2015, one gay couple in Minneapolis got married in 1971. Their names were Jack Baker and Mik...
How America 'lost' China
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After the end of WW2 the US feared its wartime ally, China, would become communist. In 1946 after the end of Japanese occupation China returned to a c...
Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap the Reichstag
12 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1995 artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in fabric. The former German parliament building sat on the border betw...
The first anti-psychotic drug
11 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the first half of the 20th century, most mentally ill patients were locked away in psychiatric hospitals and asylums. Those suffering from severe m...
The end of the war in Kosovo
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovan Albanians were forced to leave their homes when NATO started bombing Serb targets in the former Yugoslavia in 1999. B...
The Gurkha soldiers fight for equality
07 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For over 200 years soldiers from Nepal have fought in a special regiment in the British army called the Gurkhas. In 2009 all retired Gurkhas won the ...
Broadcasting D-Day
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hear how the BBC reported the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6th 1944. The operation was a crucial step in the liberation of western ...
The Little Prince
05 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1944, a plane piloted by the author of the world famous children's story The Little Prince, disappeared over the south of France. Antoine de S...
D-Day
04 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Eyewitness accounts of the Allied landings on the coast of Normandy during World War Two on 6 June 1944. The massive operation was a crucial step in t...
Vikings in York
03 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When archaeologists uncovered perfectly preserved evidence of domestic life in Viking York in the 1970s, it changed the way the Vikings were viewed. ...
Six Degrees - the first online social network
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Six Degrees was the first online social network, allowing users to connect with their real-world contacts by creating a profile within a database.It w...
Behind the scenes on Sesame Street
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A TV show for young children, Sesame Street aimed to educate and promote tolerance at the same time. It was first broadcast in 1969 and went on to be...
Tiananmen Square escape
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On the evening of June the 3rd 1989, the Chinese People’s Army opened fire on thousands of students who had been campaigning for democracy in the mi...
Bokassa's massacre of the children
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Protests about expensive school uniforms in the Central African Republic eventually led to Jean-Bédel Bokassa's fall from power in 1979. The demonstr...
The death of Jawaharlal Nehru
27 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The man who led India to independence and its first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died on May 27th 1964. His niece Nayantara Sahgal spoke to Louis...
The Acid Survivors Foundation
24 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1999 a charity was founded in Bangladesh that was dedicated to treating and rehabilitating the survivors of acid violence. The majority of the atta...
How environmental campaign group Greenpeace was formed
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The environmental campaign group, Greenpeace, was formed in 1971 in western Canada, after a group of activists met in a Vancouver kitchen and decided ...
Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws
22 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009 Ugandan MPs tried to introduce new laws against homosexuality that would include life imprisonment and even the death penalty. Homophobia was ...
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
65 million years ago an asteroid hit the earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs along with three quarters of all species on earth at the time....
Walking the Great Wall of China
20 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It took 508 days for three friends to complete the first trek along the entire length of the ancient structure, well over 8000 kms. They began in May ...
Hitler's stolen children
17 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During the Second World War Nazi officials searched for blonde blue-eyed children in the countries they had occupied. The children were removed from t...
China's One Child policy
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese Communist Party started ruthlessly enforcing birth control in the early 1980s. People with more than one child faced fines, or lost their ...
The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In May 2009 the Sri Lankan army finally crushed the Tamil Tiger rebels, ending 25 years of bloody civil war. In the final weeks of the conflict, thous...
Predicting the financial crash
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 2000s, a handful of experts warned that the world was sleep-walking towards a financial crisis. Among them were South-African born politi...
The Karakoram highway
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979 one of the great engineering feats of the 20th Century was completed and the Karakoram highway between Pakistan and China was finally opened. ...
Strictly Come Dancing
10 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most successful TV formats in the world started back in May 2004, bringing ballroom dancing to a new generation. Its format has been sold a...
The war on drugs
09 May 2019
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 Bauhaus
08 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The groundbreaking Bauhaus school of art and design was founded in Germany in 1919. It would go on to have a huge impact on architecture and design ar...
The siege of Dien Bien Phu
07 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On May 7th 1954, French forces surrendered after a bloody 56-day siege of their base at Dien Bien Phu in the north of Vietnam. Their defeat by the com...
Jack Ma: The founder of Alibaba
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Chinese billionaire set up his online shopping site in 1999. When Alibaba first started, Jack Ma and his team were working out of a small flat in...
The Malayan Emergency
03 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1948, British colonial authorities declared a State of Emergency in the territory of Malaya, now part of Malaysia. It was in response to the start ...
The sinking of the Belgrano
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Argentine ship, General Belgrano, was sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands War on 2nd of May 1982. 323 people died in the attack. Da...
The Arctic African
01 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, grew up in West Africa but he was obsessed with the Arctic. When he was 16 years old he ran away from his village in Togo det...
Rupert Brooke
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1915, Britain mourned when poet and national hero Rupert Brooke died on a troopship in the Dardanelles during World War One. Often compared t...
Ellen comes out
29 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian publicly in April 1997 – and so did the fictional character she played in her self-titled sitcom. The Puppy Ep...
The al-Yamamah arms deals
26 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A record series of arms sales from the UK to Saudi Arabia was worth tens of billions of dollars. The first al-Yamamah deal was agreed between Prime Mi...
Sri Lanka: A journalist's editorial from the grave
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The assassination of newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickramatunga, shocked the world in 2009. Sri Lanka's civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the...
South Africa's first free elections
24 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After Apartheid all South Africans, regardless of race, were finally able to vote for the first time in April 1994. Organising the elections was a hug...
Britain's first vegans
23 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Vegan Society was established in 1944 by British 'non-dairy vegetarians'. They wanted to persuade other people not just to give up meat, but milk...
Nato bombs Serbian TV
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1999 Nato bombed the Serbian state TV station in Belgrade, killing 16 people. It was part of a military campaign to force Serbia to withdraw ...
The Columbine massacre
19 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On April 20th 1999 a mass shooting in the USA shocked the world and started a devastating trend of violence in American schools. 13 people were killed...
How organic farming started
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of World War Two pesticides and chemical fertilisers started to become more widespread in the UK. Worries about the effect this would...
Auto-destructive art
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1959 the German artist Gustav Metzger came up with a new and subversive form of art. He called it auto-destructive art. It was art as a political w...
The first play on Broadway written by a black woman
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway in 1959. It had an almost exclusively black cast and a black director too. The playwright, Lorraine Hansberry...
Dennis Tito - the first space tourist
15 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2001 an American multi-millionaire paid Russia's space agency millions of dollars to blast him into space. He spent time on the Internationa...
Chinese restaurant syndrome
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Diners at Chinese restaurants in America in the 1960's began to report unusual symptoms, including headaches, flushing, numbness at the back of the ne...
The rise of Hindu nationalism
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1990 the president of Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, LK Advani, embarked on a political and religious rally called the Rath Yatra or chariot march....
The man who invented wingsuits
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The wingsuit is the ultimate in extreme sports clothing. An aerodynamic outfit for BASE jumpers and skydivers it allows them to free-fall for longer b...
The Amritsar Massacre of 1919
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On 13 April 1919, British Indian troops fired on an unarmed crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in the Punjab. Hundreds were killed. The massacre ca...
The man who made Marilyn Monroe dance
08 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Choreographer Jack Cole had a huge influence on musical theatre and Hollywood films - most memorably with Marilyn Monroe in the film Gentlemen Prefer ...
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Maya Angelou's iconic first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in spring 1969. The book was an instant best-seller, and was one of...
Abolishing the army
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After a brief civil war in March-April 1948, the new president of Costa Rica, Jose Figueres, took the audacious step of dissolving the Armed Forces. S...
The warship lost for more than 300 years
03 Apr 2019
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...
EMDR: the eye-movement therapy
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
EMDR is a form of psychotherapy which works for many sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder. The 'eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing' ...
Patty Hearst the rebel heiress
01 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Patty Hearst was kidnapped by an extreme left-wing group called the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974. She had been held hostage for two months when...
Mindfulness for the masses
29 Mar 2019
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 secret Nazi past of Kurt Waldheim
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Witness History talks to the American lawyer who led the investigation into the secret Nazi past of former United Nations Secretary-General, Kurt Wald...
Around the world in 20 days
27 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1999 Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard made the first non-stop flight around the world in a balloon. Beginning in Switzerland and finishing ov...
Drama in the British parliament
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1979, the British Prime Minister James Callaghan was struggling desperately to govern with a parliamentary majority of just three. When the C...
The first home pregnancy test
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A female designer working for an American pharmaceutical company came up with the idea in the 1960s, but her bosses didn't like it at first. Margaret ...
The rise of Viktor Orban
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Viktor Orban, now the populist Hungarian Prime Minister, was an anti-communist youth leader in 1988. Over the years his party has become increasingly ...
Autism and the MMR vaccine
21 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A British doctor published an article in the leading medical journal The Lancet in 1998 that led to a global panic over the triple vaccine protecting ...
The discovery of the Aztec Moon Goddess
20 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Electricity workers in Mexico City accidentally uncovered a massive stone sculpture in 1978. It turned out to be the Aztec Goddess of the Moon, Coyol...
The first democratic elections in the USSR
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On March 26th 1989, Soviet citizens were given their first chance to vote for non-communists in parliamentary elections. Democrats led by Boris Yeltsi...
The millionaire Nazi war criminal
18 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of how one of the wealthiest men in the Netherlands was exposed as a Nazi war criminal. In the 1970s, Pieter Menten was a respected art deal...
How Little America was built in Afghanistan
15 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1950s, US engineers were sent to Afghanistan to build a huge dam.The aim was to irrigate the deserts of Helmand.The town of Lashkar Gah was bui...
Slaughterhouse-Five
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1969, the cult American author, Kurt Vonnegut, published his famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel is a mixture of science fi...
China's breakthrough malaria cure
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chinese scientists used ancient traditional medicine to find a cure for malaria in the 1970s. Artemisinin was discovered by exploring a herbal remedy ...
Lenin and the deadly mushrooms
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As communism was crumbling in the early 1990s a spoof made for Soviet TV, persuaded some Russians that Vladimir Lenin's personality had been seriously...
The fall of Singapore
11 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 1942, during the Second World War, the British colony of Singapore fell to Japanese forces. Its capture marked the start of Japan's three-and-a-hal...
Britain's first female black headteacher
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Yvonne Conolly was appointed head of Ringcross Primary school in North London in 1969. She had moved to the UK from Jamaica just a few years earlier a...
The woman who asked Britain to return the Parthenon marbles
07 Mar 2019
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...