Witness History

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...

May 1968 Paris Riots

16 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In May 1968 student demonstrations spread across France and when workers joined the protests the whole country was brought to a standstill. Jean-Clau...

The First Montessori Nursery

15 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1907 Italian doctor, Maria Montessori opened a nursery where young children learnt independently, through practical work and playing with education...

The Dambusters Raid

12 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1943, the Royal Air Force attacked a set of dams in Germany's Ruhr valley which were considered indestructible. Flying low and at night, the crews ...

The Walker Spy Ring

11 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985 several members of the same American family were arrested for selling Navy secrets to the USSR. The alleged ring leader, John Walker, had been...

The First Foetal Surgery

10 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On the 10th May 1981 a baby was born after having been successfully operated on whilst still in the womb. The paediatric surgeon who developed the te...

The Last King of Bulgaria

09 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In June 2001, more than half a century after being driven into exile by communists, Bulgaria’s former King Simeon II made a dramatic comeback by win...

Africa United

08 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In May 1963, leaders of 32 newly-independent African nations came together for the first time in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. At stake was the d...

The First Diagnosis of Autism

07 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Autism was first described in 1943 by Austrian-American child psychiatrist Leo Kanner. This condition, which makes it difficult for people to communic...

When Margaret Thatcher Came to Power

04 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The British conservative politician was the first woman elected to lead a Western European country. She came to power on May 4th 1979. Rebecca Kesby...

WW2: Prisoner on the High Seas

03 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A surprise attack, a ship sunk, a crew captured - a veteran of the British Merchant Navy remembers his encounter with a German commerce raider in the...

Takeshi's Castle

02 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The hugely popular game show started on Japanese TV in 1986. Contestants were faced with all sorts of physical challenges which often resulted in sla...

The Children's Crusade

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Birmingham Alabama was one of the most segregated cities in the USA in 1963. In May that year thousands of black schoolchildren responded to a call fr...

A New Approach to Shakespeare

30 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Royal Shakespeare Company opened in Britain in 1961 and changed theatre forever. 400 years after his death, the playwright's work began to be perf...

Pablo Picasso

27 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The man that many consider the greatest artist of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso, died in April 1973. Louise Hidalgo talks to Anthony Penrose who kne...

Scottish Prison Experiment

26 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A Glasgow jail began offering art therapy and a much more relaxed regime to some of its most violent prisoners in 1973. It was known as the Barlinnie...

The Oslo Peace Talks

25 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Top secret negotiations in Norway during 1993 eventually led to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement which became known as the Oslo Accord. Norwegian dip...

Swimming The Bering Strait

24 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1987, an American endurance swimmer called Lynne Cox swam across the "Ice Curtain" between the USA and the Soviet Union. The Diomede Islands in the...

World War One: The Red Baron

23 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Using archive BBC recordings of veterans, we tell the story of one of the most famous figures of World War One. The legendary German air ace Baron von...

Earth Day

20 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On April the 22 1970, 20 million Americans came out on to the streets to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in the first so-called Ear...

The Last Keeper of the Light

19 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The lighthouse on Skellig Michael off the south west coast of Ireland was continuously occupied by lighthouse keepers for more than 150 years until it...

Rebuilding the Site of the Twin Towers

17 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After the September 11th attacks brought down the Twin Towers, reconstruction began at the devastated area in New York in April 2006. Rachael Gillman ...

World War One: Germany's Spring Offensive 1918

16 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In early 1918, Germany launched a huge offensive on the Western Front in a last great gamble to win the war. Following Russia's withdrawal from the wa...

The Shooting of Rudi Dutschke

13 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1968 Europe was rocked by student demonstrations calling for a revolution. In West Berlin the protests intensified following the shooting of studen...

The Soviet Spy Scandal

12 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971 during the Cold War, the UK expelled 90 Soviet diplomats suspected of spying. They'd been allowed into Britain in an attempt to improve relati...

The Zimbabwe Massacres

10 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1983 Robert Mugabe’s government sent crack troops to put down opposition supporters in western Zimbabwe. The soldiers were nicknamed the Gukurah...

The First Frozen Embryo Baby

10 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Zoe Leyland was born in Australia on April 11th 1984. As an embryo, she'd been frozen for 8 weeks before being successfully implanted into her mother...

Woodfall Films

09 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Woodfall Films changed British cinema. First established in 1958, it made films with working class actors about working class lives. The driving forc...

The Emergency Rescue Committee

06 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The 'emergency rescue committee' was set up by a group of American and exiled German liberals during the Second World War to help save some of Europe'...

Vietnam War: The Battle for Hue

06 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Communist forces overran the key southern city of Hue triggering one of the biggest battles of the war. The attack was part of the Tet Offensive in 19...

2001 A Space Odyssey

05 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In April 1968 Stanley Kubrick's ground-breaking sci-fi movie was released in the US. The film had mixed early reviews but went on to be considered one...

Russia's Bitter Taste of Capitalism

04 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the rapid market reforms in early 1992, weeks after the collapse of the USSR. Dina Newman has been speaking to one ...

The UNAbomber

03 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On the 10th May 2023, the so-called UNAbomber was found dead in his prison cell.Ted Kaczynski carried out a campaign of attacks against universities a...

The Invention of Semtex

02 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The plastic explosive was malleable, odourless and stable. Created in communist Czechoslovakia in the town of Semtin in 1958, it was once the weapon ...

The Good Friday Agreement

30 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998, the political parties in Northern Ireland reached a peace agreement that ended decades of war. But the Good Friday Agreement, as it became kn...

Mapping the Ocean's Secrets

29 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The publication of a map of the floor of the Atlantic ocean in 1957 by an American female cartographer, Marie Tharp, helped to change forever the way ...

The 'Oasis of Peace'

28 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 1978 a small community called Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom, was founded by four families, Jews and Arabs, on a hill-top between Jerusalem and Tel Av...

Sarajevo: Singing for Peace

27 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After the bitter Bosnian war in the 1990's, Catholic Monk, Friar Ivo Markovic, launched a multi-faith choir to bring survivors of the violence togethe...

First Women on the London Stock Exchange

26 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

London's Stock Exchange, one of the world's oldest, welcomed women as members for the first time in March 1973. It meant they could earn much more mon...

Who Killed Luis Colosio?

23 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On 23 March 1994 the presidential candidate for Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI, was shot dead in the border town of Tijuana. L...

The Skull Valley Sheep Kill

22 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In March 1968 more than 6,000 sheep died while grazing close to the Dugway Proving Ground, the US military's leading chemical warfare testing site, lo...

Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud

22 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Turin Shroud is one of the most revered relics of the Catholic Church: a piece of linen cloth that appears to show the imprint of a blood-stained ...

A Brief History of Time

21 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In memory of the renowned theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, who died on the 14th of March 2018, Witness looks back at the publication in March 1...