Witness History
Episodes
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...