Witness History
Episodes
The Nazi Black Book
10 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
During World War Two the German secret service compiled a book listing all the people they wanted to arrest in Britain if it fell to the Nazis. The to...
Anti-traveller Riots in Sweden
09 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1948 racist violence broke out against Romany-speaking traveller people in Sweden. The riots in the town of Jönköping lasted for several days. ...
Reform of the House of Lords
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Britain's Labour government was determined to get rid of the unelected aristocrats sitting in the House of Lords - Parliament's second chamber. But th...
Howl: The Poem That Revolutionised US Writing
05 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Allen Ginsberg first read his poem Howl, at an art gallery in San Francisco in October 1955. It marked a turning point in American literature and is c...
The Soviet Union's Fashion Revolutionary
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Slava Zaitsev was the first designer to create high fashion collections in the Soviet Union. He tells Dina Newman about the challenges he faced workin...
The Invention of Artificial Skin
03 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How a chemist and a surgeon found a way of helping burns to heal. Chemist Ioannis Yannas was working alongside surgeon John Burke when they first made...
The Street Battle That Rocked Brazil
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On the 2nd and 3rd of October 1968, students from two neighbouring universities in the centre of São Paulo clashed in a battle which left one dead an...
Racial Equality in Britain - Learie Constantine
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The former West Indies cricketer, Learie Constantine, took the Imperial Hotel in London to court in 1943. It had refused to let him and his family sta...
The Bridge Which United Sweden and Denmark
28 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993 work began to build Europe's longest road and rail bridge. The Oresund Bridge links Sweden to Denmark connecting them by land for the first ti...
Fighting in the Iran-Iraq War
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The war lasted for eight years. The death toll is estimated at over a million people. It began when Saddam Hussein sent planes and troops into Iran i...
The Creation of the Cervical Cancer Vaccine
26 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How a scientific breakthrough led to the invention of the revolutionary cancer vaccine. In the 1980s, it was established that cervical cancer was caus...
Isadora Duncan - Dance Pioneer
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes called the 'Mother of Modern Dance' she was born and brought up in the USA. Isadora Duncan performed across Europe in the early 20th Centur...
The South African Army In Lesotho
24 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
South Africa sent 600 soldiers into Lesotho to quell political unrest in September 1998. Mamello Morrison was an opposition protestor. She spoke to D...
Brazil's Nuclear Accident
21 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In September of 1987, two waste pickers in the Brazilian town of Goiania broke into a disused medical clinic and stole a radiotherapy machine, trigger...
The Arnhem Parachute Drop
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands of Allied troops parachuted into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands in September 1944. At that point, it was the most ambitious Allied airborne o...
The Battle of Algiers
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1966, a film was released that has come to be seen as one of the great political masterpieces of 20th-century cinema. Shot in black-and-w...
The Cuban Five
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Five Cuban spies were arrested in Miami by the FBI in September 1998. After a controversial trial, they were given lengthy jail sentences. The last of...
The Fifteen Guinea Special
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The train which marked the end of the steam age on Britain's main-line rail network. The Fifteen Guinea Special was a passenger service which ran from...
The Truth About Crop Circles
14 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1991 a mystery was solved when two English men claimed responsibility for the creation of crop circles. The huge patterns had been appearing on far...
How I Survived a Fire on a Plane
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ricardo Trajano was the only passenger to survive a fire on a plane in 1973. His flight from Brazil was forced to make an emergency landing outside P...
The Killing of Steve Biko
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On September 12th 1977 the anti-Apartheid activist and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa died from injuries sustained while i...
Appeasement
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1938 Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew back and forth to Germany to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. He hoped to guarantee ...
The Ship that Dumped America's Waste
10 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1988 a ship named 'Khian Sea' dumped 4,000 tons of incinerated ash close to the beach in the town of Gonaives, in northern Haiti. The ash had origi...
WWI: The Hundred Days Offensive
07 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
First-hand accounts of the Allied offensive which finally brought the war to an end. The offensive took place on the Western Front in the summer and a...
From Leningrad to St Petersburg
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1991 as the communist system was collapsing, in a hugely symbolic act, Leningrad voted to drop Lenin's name abandoning its revolutionary heritage a...
Living Under Gaddafi
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1969, a military coup in Libya brought Muammar Gaddafi to power. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to award-winning writer Hisham Matar ab...
The Battle for Brick Lane
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1978 the racist murder of a young Bangladeshi textile worker in east London galvanised an immigrant community. Farhana Haider has been speaking to ...
The First MRI Scan
03 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The first magnetic resonance scan of a human body was attempted by Dr Raymond Damadian and two students in 1977. It marked a breakthrough in efforts t...
Surviving the "Death Railway"
31 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
During World War Two the Japanese forced prisoners of war to build a 400 kilometre railway from Thailand to Burma. Tens of thousands died during the c...
The Mine Disaster That Devastated Post-War Italy
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1956, a fire at a coal mine in Belgium killed 262 people. The tragedy caused grief across Europe, but particularly in Italy because more tha...
The Lake Nyos Disaster
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 21 August 1986 villagers in the north-west of Cameroon awoke to find that many of their friends and neighbours had died in their sleep. More than 1...
Hitler's League Of German Girls
28 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The League of German Girls was the girl's wing of the Nazi party's youth movement, Hitler Youth. Open to girls aged ten years upwards, it was a key pa...
Benidorm
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Spanish town of Benidorm is now one of the world's most popular holiday resorts - receiving more than 10 million visitors a year. The hotels and s...
Hitler's Architect
24 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Among the leading Nazi inmates in Berlin’s Spandau prison, which was closed in August 1987, was Hitler's architect and minister of war, Albert Speer...
Baba of Karo
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story behind the groundbreaking autobiography of a woman who grew up in 19th century pre-colonial Nigeria. The book is the story of Baba a Hausa w...
USSR Wages War on Alcohol
22 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sales of alcohol in the USSR were severely limited in 1985 in a bid to fight drunkenness. But the anti-alcohol campaign was abandoned three years late...
Prague Spring
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A former student, Olda Cerny, tells Alan Johnston about how he made a desperate appeal for the support of the outside world as invading Soviet tanks ...
The Gladbeck Hostage Crisis
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An intriguing story from West Germany in August 1988, of a bank robbery, a three-day car chase that had the country holding its breath, and a journali...
The Invention of Instant Noodles
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1958 the Japanese entrepreneur, Momofuku Ando, came up with the idea of a brand new food product that would change eating habits of people a...
When TV Came To South Africa
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The apartheid government finally launched a TV service in 1976. For years the Afrikaner dominated government had opposed the introduction of televisio...
Photographing Martin Luther King and His Family
14 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1969 photo journalist Moneta Sleet became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. He won for the black and white image o...
Vera Brittain: Anti-Bombing Campaigner
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
During WW2 the feminist and writer, Vera Brittain, spoke out against the saturation bombing of German cities. Her stance won her enemies in Britain a...
Israel's Secret Peace Envoy
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1994 Yitzhak Rabin became the first Israeli leader publicly to visit Jordan. But in fact talks had been going on for years. Former head of M...
The Azeri-Armenian Village Swap
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At a time of a bitter ethnic conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1988, two villages managed to escape violence by swapping homes with each othe...
The First CIA Coup in Latin America
03 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1954 Guatemala's left-leaning President Jacobo Arbenz was ousted from power by army officers backed by the CIA. In 2016 Mike Lanchin spoke to his s...
The Search for Iran's Nuclear Programme
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003 Iran agreed to let officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency into the country to look at its nuclear facilities. Olli Heinonen wa...
The Retirement Home For Dancing Bears
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998 brown bears were declared a protected species in Bulgaria and the ancient tradition of forcing them to dance for people's entertainment became...
Shambo The Sacred Bull
31 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In July 2007, a standoff between monks and the Welsh government made headlines around the world. At issue was the fate of Shambo, a sacred bull which ...
WW1: Britain's Conscientious Objectors
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1916, Britain introduced conscription for the first time. But thousands refused to be part of the war effort. The government allowed people to appl...
Women At West Point
27 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1976, women were admitted to the prestigious West Point military academy in the United States for the first time. Simon Watts talks to Marene ...
Winston Churchill's Election Defeat
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In July l945 Britain's great wartime leader, Winston Churchill, was defeated in a general election. The Labour party's landslide came just weeks after...
The Whitewashing of Zimbabwe's Ancient History
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When colonial explorers discovered an ancient ruined city in Zimbabwe, they claimed foreigners must have built it. They denied the probability that i...
The Kitchen Debate
24 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
US Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had an argument about living standards when Nixon visited Moscow in 1959. They spo...
South Korea's Summer Of Terror
23 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the start of the Korean war in 1950, tens of thousands of suspected communist sympathisers were executed by the South Korean military. The regime f...
A Vet Remembers The Hyde Park Bombing
20 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Two IRA bombs were detonated in Hyde Park and Regent's Park in London on 20th July 1982. They left 11 military personnel dead, and injured around 50 ...
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1968 one of the most significant international treaties of the 20th-century was signed. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was aimed at stop...
The Bombing of the King David Hotel
18 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On July 22 1946 an armed Jewish group opposed to British rule in Palestine, attacked the iconic hotel in Jerusalem where the British had their headqua...
The Virgin Lands Campaign
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
To fight food shortages in the 1950s the USSR embarked on a major agricultural project to develop vast areas of previously uncultivated land in northe...
The Killing of the Russian Tsar
16 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, four daughters and young son, were shot in the cellar of a house in Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918. Olga Rom...
Italy's 'Ghost Shipwreck'
13 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 2001, an Italian journalist used an underwater robot to find the remains of a shipwreck off the coast of Sicily which had killed near...
The Spiegel Affair
12 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1960s a magazine article about West Germany's defence capabilities led to the imprisonment of seven journalists, a vehement debate about...
Smiling Buddha: India's First Nuclear Test
11 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The inside story of how India secretly developed and exploded an atomic device in 1974. India called it a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion, though the exper...
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
10 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1958 Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, published his first book "Things Fall Apart". It was set in pre-colonial rural Nigeria and examines how the ar...
Kosovo: 'Madeleine's War'
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When war broke out in Kosovo in 1998, Nato intervened with air-strikes. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was the main proponent for military a...
Playgrounds Made of Junk
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Post-war Britain saw a rise in makeshift adventure playgrounds born out of bomb sites. Children were provided with tools and raw materials, to build ...
The Toilet
04 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A controversial installation by Russian conceptual artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov offended Russians in 1992, but is now seen as a masterpiece. Emilia...
Flight 655: When The US Shot Down An Airliner
03 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 3 July 1988, a US Navy warship, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf. All 290 on board the aircraft were...
The Search For Deep Throat
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In July 2005, the identity of one of the most famous informants in American political history was revealed. Deep Throat leaked details of President Ni...
The President and the Gun Lobby
29 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Former President George Bush Senior gave up his lifetime membership of the country's most powerful gun-lobby, the NRA, in 1995. Claire Bowes has been ...
Whiskey On The Rocks
28 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1981 a Whiskey-class Soviet submarine became stranded on a rock just off the coast of southern Sweden. For years Sweden had suspected the Soviets o...
The SARS Emergency
27 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Early 2003 saw a medical emergency sweep across the world. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome was a deadly virus which had first struck in southern Chi...
Veronica Guerin - Dying for the Story
26 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1996, the campaigning Irish journalist Veronica Guerin was murdered by a hit squad as she waited in her car at a set of traffic lights. Guerin...
The King of Lampedusa
25 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1943 a young Jewish RAF pilot from the East End of London was forced to make an emergency landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa. The Ita...
How the World Woke Up to Global Warming
22 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor James Hansen finally got US politicians to listen to his warnings about climate change in June 1988 after years of trying. He and fellow NA...
Demoted For Being Gay
21 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Uzi Even is a former Colonel in the Israeli army reserves and a top nuclear scientist. In 1982 he was dismissed from his post after the military disco...
Wittenoom: An Australian Tragedy
20 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The town of Wittenoom in Western Australia sprang up around a blue asbestos mine in the 1940s and '50s. Asbestos, a natural fire retardant mineral fib...
Bata the Shoemaker's Revolution
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bata was a Czech company which pioneered assembly line shoemaking and sold affordable footwear around the world. Its factory near London became key to...
The Battered Child
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An American doctor coined the phrase 'the battered child' to describe unexplained injuries which had been misdiagnosed by paediatricians unwilling or ...
The Death of Kim Il-sung
15 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
North Korea's communist leader Kim Il-sung died in July 1994. Dr Antonio Betancourt, of the Unification Church, was in the North Korean capital, Pyong...
The Unified Korean Table Tennis Team
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1991, amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang and Seoul agreed to field a united Korean table tennis team at the World Champion...
The GI Who Chose China
13 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When the Korean War ended, a few American prisoners of war chose to go with their captors and try life under communism, instead of heading home to the...
The Beginning of the Korean War
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
North Korean communist troops invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. Initially they were very successful until UN forces (mainly American) helped drive ...
Korea Divided
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of World War Two with the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Korea was split along the 38th parallel. Soviet forces took control in the N...
The Execution of Adolf Eichmann
08 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was executed just after midnight on June 1st 1962 in a prison in central Israel. Holocaust survivor Michael Goldmann-...
The Death of General Sani Abacha
07 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nigeria's military ruler, General Sani Abacha, died suddenly of an apparent heart attack on 8 June 1998. In 2015 Alex Last spoke to the general's pers...
The 1968 Belgrade Student Revolt
06 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1968, Belgrade University was occupied by students protesting against Yugoslavia's system of 'market socialism'. The occupation lasted seven d...
The Assassinaton Attempt that Sparked a Middle East War
05 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1982, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov, was shot and critically injured by a Palestinian gunman outside the Dorchester Hotel in ...
Couch to 5K
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1996 a young TV producer in Boston came up with the idea of a running programme to help people exercise regularly. Couch to 5K running groups now ...
Lyuba the Baby Mammoth
01 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In May 2007 a nomadic reindeer herdsman discovered the perfectly preserved body of a 42,000-year-old baby mammoth in Siberia. The creature, which was ...
Isaac Asimov and Science Fiction
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1942, the American Isaac Asimov published the first instalment of the Foundation series, which would go on to become one of the most popular wo...
Free Health Care For All
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1948 the British government carried out an ambitious shake-up of post war society, establishing the foundations of a welfare state. A cornerstone ...
The Thalidomide Trial
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Executives of Chemie-Grunenthal, the German company that made the drug Thalidomide, went on trial charged with criminal negligence in May 1968. Thalid...
The First Bicycle Sharing Scheme
28 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid 1960s a Dutch engineer called Luud Schimmelpennink came up with a scheme to share bikes, and cut pollution. He collected about ten old bic...
The BBC at Caversham
25 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For 75 years the BBC ran a monitoring service based in an English stately home. Its job was to listen to foreign broadcasts from all around the world...
Shoah the Film
24 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Shoah, the epic nine-and-a-half hour documentary on the Holocaust by French film director Claude Lanzmann, was first screened in spring 1985. It took ...
Lesbian Protest on BBC News
23 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 23 May 1988 a group of lesbian activists invaded a BBC TV news studio as it went live on air. They were protesting against the introduction of new...
Pakistan's Theatre Revolution
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1984 a group of young people formed the Ajoka theatre group. Created at a time of heightened tensions and censorship due to the state of emergency...
President Suharto Resigns
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On May 21st 1998 the president of Indonesia resigned after 31 years in power. He stood down in the wake of demonstrations and riots across the countr...
Defusing Nuclear Bombs: The Goldsboro 'Broken Arrow'
18 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How Lt. Jack ReVelle disarmed two thermonuclear bombs which crashed in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1961. The bombs had been sucked out of a B-52 bomb...
Look Back in Anger
17 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The play Look Back in Anger exploded onto London's cultural scene in May 1956 and helped to change British theatre forever. The play by John Osborne i...