Witness History

The creation of the Barbie doll

05 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The first Barbie doll was sold in 1959. Ruth Handler, one of the founders of the Mattel toy company who created Barbie, describes how it took years to...

Britain's first Muslim woman in government

04 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Sayeeda Warsi made history when she was appointed to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government's Cabinet in May 2010, and was also ma...

Happy Beer Day!

01 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On March 1st 1989 Icelanders were allowed to buy full-strength beer for the first time in decades. Beer had been outlawed in the country since 1915. ...

Asama Sanso: Japanese hostage crisis

28 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Armed left-wing extremists held off Japanese police for 10 days during a hostage crisis in the mountains in February 1972. Young members of the so-ca...

Sucked out of a plane

27 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Nine passengers were sucked out of a plane when a cargo door opened mid-flight over the Pacific.United Airlines Flight 811 was flying from Hawaii to N...

Swine flu shuts down Mexico City

26 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Mexico City, the world's third largest metropolis, was effectively shut down when a new and deadly virus, swine flu appeared. Soon the virus started t...

Venezuela's oil bonanza

25 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Rocketing oil prices in the mid 1970s fuelled massive consumer and government spending in Venezuela, earning the South American country the nickname "...

How science ended the search for Josef Mengele

22 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

An international panel of experts gathered in Brazil in 1985 to identify the remains of a man thought to have been the infamous doctor from Auschwitz....

The men who tried to warn us about smoking

21 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

British doctors produced an alarming report in 1962 warning that 1 in 3 smokers would die before the age of 65. The doctors suggested restrictions on ...

The curse of Agent Orange

20 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Millions suffered from exposure to toxic chemicals sprayed by US forces during the Vietnam war. The chemicals were defoliants and herbicides designed ...

The Columbia space shuttle disaster

19 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The US space shuttle Columbia broke up on its way back to Earth on February 1, 2003. It had been in use since 1981. Iain Mackness has spoken to Admi...

The true story of Roma

18 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Alfonso Cuarón's critically acclaimed film Roma portrays a student massacre that took place in México City in 1971. The Corpus Christi massacre, kno...

Maastricht: The birth of the European Union

15 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In February 1992, European ministers from 12 countries signed a treaty that would lead towards greater economic and political unity. The European Uni...

Confessions of a Soviet alcoholic

14 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1969, homeless Russian alcoholic Venedikt Yerofeev wrote a hugely popular book which was passed illegally from person to person. The book gave voic...

British Cameroons' historic referendum

13 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1961, the British run territories of Northern and Southern Cameroons in West Africa were given a vote to decide their future. They could choose eit...

Women Airline Pilots

12 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Airlines in America finally allowed women to pilot passenger planes in the 1970's. But women like Bonnie Tiburzi and Lynn Rippelmeyer had been fighti...

Iceland Jails Its Bankers

11 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The 2008 global economic crisis hit hard in Iceland. Its three major banks and stockmarket collapsed and it was forced to seek an emergency bail-out f...

The Bombardment of Baghdad

08 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When the US and its allies began their invasion of Iraq in 2003 the population of Baghdad faced three weeks of bombing and fear. Hear what life was li...

Disney Goes to Europe

07 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1992 Disney opened its first theme park in Europe. But it had taken years of delicate negotiations and diplomacy get it off the ground. In 2013 Reb...

The Soweto Uprising

06 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A former schoolgirl remembers the children's demonstration against having to study in Afrikaans that sparked the Soweto Uprising against South Africa'...

The Capture of Che Guevara

05 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1967 the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara was captured and killed in Bolivia. Mike Lanchin spoke to former CIA operative, Felix Rodriguez,...

The Death of Hitler

04 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

A first-hand account of Hitler from our archives. Traudl Junge worked as a secretary for the German Nazi leader. She was in the bunker in Berlin when ...

Women and the Iranian Revolution

31 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Many women supported Iran's 1979 Revolution against the monarchy but some later became disillusioned. Islamic rules about how women dressed were just ...

Iran Hostage Rescue Mission

31 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In April 1980, the US launched Operation Eagle Claw - a daring but ultimately disastrous attempt to free dozens of hostages held captive in the US Emb...

Iran Hostage Crisis

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 1979 young revolutionaries stormed the US Embassy in Tehran. 52 Americans were taken captive and held hostage for 444 days. Barry Rosen was one of ...

Ayatollah Khomeini Returns From Exile

29 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In February 1979 an Islamic revolution began to unfold in Iran. The Islamic leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who had been in exile for 14 years, flew back t...

Musicians of the Iranian Revolution

28 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

During the heat of Iran's revolution the country's top musicians decided to join the popular uprising. After the massacre of demonstrators by the Shah...

The Publisher Who Tried to Change the World

25 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Virago Press opened as a feminist publisher in 1972 to promote women's writing. Its founder, Carmen Callil, says she wanted both men and women to bene...

Vatican II: Reforming the Catholic Church

23 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Pope John XXIII wanted to modernise the Catholic Church. In January 1959 he announced a council of all the world's Catholic bishops and cardinals in R...

The Carry On Films

22 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The comic film franchise which churned out movie after movie mocking British stereotypes and pomposity. The first Carry On film hit cinema screens in ...

India's First Call Centre

21 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Pramod Bhasin returned home to India in 1997 after working abroad for years. He spotted an opportunity to start a new industry that would revolutionis...

The Case of Dr Crippen

18 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

How one of the most notorious murderers in Edwardian London was captured as he fled to Canada. Listen to an astonishing BBC archive account of his arr...

The Thames Whale

17 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In January 2006, London was entranced by the appearance of a large bottlenose whale in the Thames – the first such sighting for more than a century....

Strikers In Saris

16 Jan 2019

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...

Mexico's Miracle Water

15 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands of people flocked to the village of Tlacote in central Mexico in 1991. They were hoping to be cured by 'magical' water after rumours spread...

Judy Garland's Final Shows

14 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Judy Garland ended her long and glitzy stage and screen career at a London theatre club in January 1969. She was booked for five weeks of nightly show...

'Fat is a Feminist Issue'

11 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Susie Orbach's best-selling book Fat is a Feminist Issue led many in the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s to rethink body-image from a feminis...

Diary of Life in a Favela

10 Jan 2019

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...

When Stalin Rounded Up Soviet Doctors

09 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the last year of his rule Stalin ordered the imprisonment and execution of hundreds of the best Soviet doctors accusing them of plotting to kill se...

Fidel Castro Takes Havana

08 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

On January 8 1959 Fidel Castro and his left wing guerrilla forces marched triumphantly into the Cuban capital, ending decades of rule by the US-backed...

The Doomsday Seed Vault

07 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In January 2008, seeds began arriving at the world's first global seed vault, buried deep inside a mountain on an Arctic island a-thousand kilometres ...

Vikings in North America

04 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery that proved Vikings had crossed the Atlantic 1000 years ago. In 1960, a Norwegian couple, Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad arrived in the re...

Ceausescu's 'House of the People'

03 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1980s the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu ordered the construction of a massive building in central Bucharest. Dubbed the "House of t...

Barbara Cartland - Queen of Romance

02 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Barbara Cartland was best known for her historical romances and is thought to have sold hundreds of millions of books around the world. She was s...

Brazil's Marijuana Summer

01 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In September 1987, fishermen and surfers in the states of Rio and São Paulo started spotting mysterious tin cans floating in the sea. Soon those tins...

Rebels Rout The Army In El Salvador

31 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On December 30 1983 Marxist rebels in El Salvador attacked and occupied the El Paraiso army base in the north of the country. It was the first time an...

When Animals Go To War

28 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In December 1943, a British charity created the Dickin Medal to honour the bravery of animals serving in war. The first medals went mainly to pigeons ...

Trautonium: A Revolution in Electronic Music

27 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

'I like it, carry on', said Joseph Goebbels, after listening to the trautonium, invented in Berlin. It was used first in classical music in the early ...

UFO Sightings: The Rendlesham Forest Incident

25 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At Christmas 1980 strange objects and lights were seen over a US military base in Suffolk, England, for three consecutive nights. Several military se...

Scotland's Stone of Destiny

24 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On Christmas Eve 1950 four young Scottish students took the 'Stone of Destiny' from Westminster Abbey. The symbolic stone had been taken from Scotlan...

Stopping The 'Shoe Bomber'

21 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On December 22 2001 a British-born man tried to bring down American Airlines flight 63 from Paris to Miami. His plan failed when the bomb didn't go of...

The Woman Who Wrote Mary Poppins

20 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Writer PL Travers created a children's classic when she invented the magical English nanny. But was the character built around her own personality? Vi...

Hacking The First Computer Password

19 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists at MIT in the 1960s had to share computer time. They were given passwords to access the computer and could not use more than their allowanc...

Theatre in the Sahara

18 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Theatre director Peter Brook led a troupe of actors on a three-month-long journey across the Sahara Desert starting in December 1972. They performed i...

China and Japan at War

17 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Japanese troops reached the Chinese city of Nanjing in December 1937. The violence that followed marked one of the darkest moments in a struggle that ...

The US Apologises for Wartime Internment

17 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act which gave a presidential apology and compensation to Japanese Americans interned durin...

Englandspiel: The Deadly WW2 Spy Game

13 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1942, a Dutch secret agent was captured by German military intelligence in the Netherlands. The agent's name was Haub Lauwers and he worked for the...

Cicely Saunders And The Modern Hospice Movement

12 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1967, Dame Cicely Saunders opened the first modern hospice in South London. St Christopher's inspired the creation of thousands of similar hospices...

Apollo 8

12 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The biggest audience in TV history watched NASA's Apollo 8 mission beam back the first pictures from an orbit around the moon at Christmas 1968. The b...

When China Joined the WTO

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

China had to relax its strict communist system to join the World Trade Organisation. Charlene Barshefsky was the US trade negotiator looking after Ame...

Angela Merkel's Rise to Power

07 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Angela Merkel rose to power in German politics after the fall of her mentor, Helmut Kohl. He had accepted secret donations on behalf of their politica...

Adopted By The Man Who Killed My Family

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ramiro Osorio Cristales was just five years old when his family was murdered by the Guatemalan army, along with more than 200 other civilians from the...

The Armenian Earthquake

05 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A catastrophic earthquake hit northern Armenia on the morning of December 7th 1988. At least 20,000 people were killed and thousands more injured. An...

The Coronation of Jean-Bédel Bokassa

04 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Republic in a lavish ceremony on the 4th of December 1977. He'd already been Presi...

Berlin's Rubble Women

03 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of WW2 much of Germany's capital had been destroyed by bombing and artillery. Almost half of all houses and flats had been damaged and a mi...

Norway's EU referendum

30 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of November 1994, Norway voted in a referendum not to join the European Union. The issue had split the country, and Norway was the only one...

The Discovery of Dinosaur Eggs

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The discovery of a nest of complete dinosaur eggs in Mongolia in 1923 provided the first proof that the prehistoric creatures hatched out of eggs rath...

The man who inspired Britain's first Aids charity

28 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1982, Terrence Higgins became the first known British victim of a frightening new disease called HIV/AIDS. In his memory, his friends set up the Te...

The Antarctic Whale Hunters

27 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A personal account of the huge Antarctic industry which left whales on the brink of extinction. For centuries, whaling had been big business. Whale pr...

The Destruction Of Iraq's Marshlands

26 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1990s, Saddam Hussein ordered the draining of southern Iraq's great marshes. It was one of the biggest environmental disasters of the twe...

The USSR Opens Up to the West

23 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1957, just four years after Stalin's death, 30,000 students from 130 countries attended the 6th International Youth Festival in Moscow, a two week ...

The Last Days of Yasser Arafat

22 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died in November 2004. French doctors treating him at the military hospital in France where he died said Arafat h...

The Story Behind The Man Who Shot JFK

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What did Lee Harvey Oswald do for two years in the Soviet city of Minsk? And why did the American authorities let him return without any fuss in 1963?...

The 'Braceros', America's Mexican Guest Workers

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

During the last years of World War Two, the American government began hiring poor Mexicans to come to work legally on US farms. The scheme was known a...

The Funeral of the Duke of Wellington

19 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A man recorded by the BBC shares his memories of the funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. The Duke was given a state funeral after defeating Nap...

Britain's Little Blue Disability Car

16 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

For decades disabled people in the UK were offered tiny, three-wheeled, turquoise cars as their main form of transport. They were known as Invacars an...

Japanese Murders in Brazil

15 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When WW2 was over, a fanatical group of Japanese immigrants living in Brazil refused to believe that Japan had lost the war. They decided to punish th...

The Shah in Exile

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1979, Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran after Washington agreed to allow the deposed Shah into the US for medical tre...

Jewish in Imperial Russia

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Pearl Unikow was a young woman who grew up in a segregated Jewish community in Russia before WW1. Her stories, recorded in Yiddish in the 1970s, provi...

How The Brazilian Dictatorship Made My Father Disappear

12 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On a hot summer day in 1971, six armed men invaded the house of former Congressman Rubens Paiva in Rio de Janeiro. He was taken from his wife and chil...

WW1: Revolution in Germany

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After four years of war Germany was on the verge of defeat. Its armies were exhausted and in retreat, its civilian population enduring hardship and hu...

Women Nurses during World War One

07 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

During World War One, two British nurses set up a first aid station just a few hundred metres behind the trenches of the Western Front. Mairi Chisholm...

African Troops during World War One

06 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

At the start of World War One, British and German colonial forces went into battle in East Africa. Tens of thousands of African troops and up to a mil...

The Battle of Passchendaele

05 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It was one of the defining battles of the First World War.Britain and its allies had ambitious plans to break through German lines - but they ended up...

A Kristallnacht story

02 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On 9 November 1938 Nazis led attacks on Jewish homes and businesses across Germany. Because of the number of windows that were smashed it would be rem...

Why I Slapped the German Chancellor

01 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1968 a young activist hit Germany's leader in public, to draw attention to his Nazi past. The activist was Beate Klarsfeld - the Chancell...

Princess Margaret And The War Hero

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1955, Britain was gripped by a romance between the young Princess Margaret and a glamorous, but divorced, ex-fighter pilot called Captain P...

Life With America's Black Panthers

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Eldridge Cleaver, one of the leaders of the radical African American Black Panther party, spent more than three years in exile in Algeria in the late ...

The KGB's Whistleblower

29 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Senior KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life smuggling thousands of top-secret Soviet intelligence files out of KGB headquarters, and bringin...

The Day Nigeria Struck Oil

26 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

An eyewitness account of a discovery that changed Nigerian history. Chief Sunday Inengite was 19 years old when prospectors from the Shell D'Arcy oil ...

When Russia's Richest Man Was Jailed

25 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003, it was the start of President Putin's crackdown on the oligarchs. He shares his memories ...

The Arrest in London of Augusto Pinochet

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London in October 1998. Spanish lawyers wanted him extradited to Spain to face charges ...

Desmond Tutu Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

22 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1984, one of South Africa's most well-known human rights activists, Desmond Tutu, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to a...

When Belgium Banned Coca-Cola

19 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1999 Belgian teenagers started to become ill after drinking Coca-Cola. Many ended up in hospital and the government banned the sale of all Coca-Col...

The Pergau Dam Affair

18 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1993 news broke about an arms deal with Malaysia that led to the biggest development aid scandal in British history. It became known as the...

Brazil's Hidden War in the Amazon

17 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1970's, at the peak of political repression and persecution in Brazil, a collection of left-wing students and liberal professionals decid...

The 1973 Oil Crisis

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1973 Arab nations slashed oil production in protest at American support for Israel during it's war against Egypt and Syria. Oil prices sky ...

Fighting Mount Etna

15 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Italian authorities tried to divert the stream of molten lava pouring down the slopes of the Etna volcano on the island of Sicily in 1983. Susan ...

Archbishop Oscar Romero

12 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The murdered Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, is being made a saint of the Roman Catholic church. He was killed in 1980 by a right-wing deat...

Austria at War

11 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1945, Austria got its first provisional government since its annexation by Nazi Germany a year before the Second World War. Wilfriede Iwani...