Witness History
Episodes
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...
Elvis in the US Army
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1958, Elvis Presley, then at the height of his fame as the 'King' of Rock'n'Roll, was called up and joined the US Army. Simon Watts has been ...
Latvia's Controversial Waffen-SS Fighters
16 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On March 16th 1998, veterans of the Latvian Legion who had fought for the Nazis during World War Two, marched through the capital Riga commemorating t...
Tancredo Neves - Doomed Hero of Brazilian Democracy
15 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1985, Brazil experienced the most traumatic moment in its transition to democracy when the first civilian president-elect in more than twenty...
The Battle of the Airwaves in Latin America
14 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1938 the BBC began its first broadcasts to Latin America in Spanish and Portuguese. The new foreign language service was launched amid rising...
Surviving The My Lai Massacre
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
US troops went on the rampage through a Vietnamese village in March 1968, killing men, women and children in cold blood. 11-year old Pham Thanh Cong s...
The Moscow Show Trials
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An eyewitness account of Stalin's purge of top Soviet leaders during the 1930s, when millions of Soviet citizens were executed or sent to labour camps...
Changing the Alphabet in Azerbaijan
09 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Independent Azerbaijan changed its alphabet from Russian Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet in 2001. The new letters symbolised a break with the co...
Marie Stopes: Birth Control Pioneer
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1921, Marie Stopes opened Britain's first birth control clinic in London. The Mother's Clinic in Holloway offered advice to married mothers o...
The Life and Thought of Hannah Arendt
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Arendt was one of the most influential political thinkers of the 20th-century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she fled Germany in 1933 as th...
Deaf Rights Protest
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Students at deaf-only Gallaudet University in Washington DC shut-down the campus in protest when the board of trustees appointed a hearing President i...
World War One: Russia at War
02 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's disastrous war on the Eastern Front became a catalyst for revolution at home. In 1914, Russia went to war against Germany and the Austro-Hun...
China's Barefoot Doctors
01 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1968, Chairman Mao officially launched a scheme to improve healthcare in rural China, by giving thousands of people basic medical training an...
M*A*S*H
28 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On the 28th of February 1983 the final episode of the iconic US TV series M*A*S*H was broadcast. It was watched by a record 125 million viewers. Set d...
The Killing of Olof Palme
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Swedish Prime Minister was shot dead on a Stockholm street on February 28th 1986. But the investigation into his killing was never satisfactorily...
The Angel of the North
26 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A huge steel sculpture, that has become an icon for the north-east of England, was completed in February 1998. Designed by artist Antony Gormley, the ...
The Last Smallpox Outbreak
23 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of thousands of people died in India in 1974 during the world's last major smallpox epidemic. Individual cases had to be tracked down and quaran...
David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
22 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of the biggest novels of the late twentieth century - both literally and figuratively - was published in February 1996. Infinite Jest by American ...
The Boy in the Bubble
21 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
David Vetter lived his whole life sealed off from the outside world in a completely sterile environment. He was born with a rare genetic disorder, Sev...
Jimmy Swaggart's Fall From Grace
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1988 Jimmy Swaggart, one of America's most successful televangelists, was forced to make a humiliating public confession from the pulpit. ...
Ghana Must Go
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Over a million West African migrants, most of them Ghanaian, were ordered to leave Nigeria at short notice in 1983. The Nigerian economy was sufferin...
The Furies Collective: Lesbian Separatists
15 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A group of feminist activists in Washington DC set up a commune to live independently from men in 1971. They called themselves the Furies Collective, ...
Leonardo's Lost Notebooks
14 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1967, it was revealed that two notebooks by the great 15th-century Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci, that had been lost for centuries, ha...
Women's Rights In Iran
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Iran's first ever minister for Women's Affairs was appointed in 1975. Mahnaz Afkhami was the first person in the Muslim world to hold that position. W...
Hull's 'Headscarf Revolutionaries'
12 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, a group of women from the British fishing port of Hull staged a successful campaign to improve safety in what was then one of the most danger...
The Bombing Of Korean Flight 858
09 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In November 1987 a South Korean airliner was blown out of the sky, killing 115 people on board. The attack on Korean Air flight 858 is believed to hav...
Spying On South Africa's Nuclear Bomb
08 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
During the Apartheid period, the South African government began developing a secret nuclear programme, culminating in the construction of six nuclear ...
The Munich Air Disaster
07 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1958, eight players from Manchester United’s famous “Busby Babes” team were among those killed in a plane crash at Munich airport. G...
Women in Britain get the right to vote
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 6th February 1918, women in Britain were given the right to vote for the first time. The campaign for women's suffrage had begun decades earlier. B...
Bringing Nazi Leader Klaus Barbie To Justice
05 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1983 the man known as 'the butcher of Lyon' was extradited to France to face charges of murder and torture during World War Two. The forme...
Banning The Belt
02 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1982 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain should end corporal punishment in state schools. The landmark decision came aft...
The Roots of the Rohingya Crisis
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims left their homes in Myanmar fleeing government persecution, in what the UN has called the world's f...
Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive
31 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In January 1968, North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong guerrillas launched a huge surprise attack on towns, cities and military bases across South Vie...
The Bloody Sunday Shootings
30 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On 30 January 1972 British troops opened fire on a civil rights march in Northern Ireland. Thirteen people were killed that day, which became known as...
The "Godfather of Gospel Music"
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas A Dorsey is credited with developing Gospel music into a global phenomenon. He started his own musical career in jazz clubs and blues bars, bu...
The Invention of the Lego Brick
26 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Lego brick, one of the world's most popular toys, was invented in the small Danish town of Billund in 1958. Created by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen,...
The Vege-Burger
25 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, American entrepreneur Gregory Sams launched a product that would help take vegetarianism into the mainstream in the UK. "Vege Burgers" were c...
Salvador Dali
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The great surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dali died in January 1989. Louise Hidalgo has been talking about his life and work with Christine Argille...