Witness History
Episodes
World War Two’s Rome escape line
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Between September 1943 and June 1944 in World War Two, the Italian capital Rome was occupied by German soldiers.Italy had surrendered and thousands of...
Usonia: Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘utopian’ town
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1948, the foundation was laid for a “utopian” community of houses designed by a man described as America’s greatest ever architect.Frank Lloy...
The discovery of the first exoplanets
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 9 January 1992, astronomers Alex Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced they had discovered the first two exoplanets, or planets outside our solar syst...
Favela life: The diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Carolina Maria de Jesus was a poor, single mother-of-three who lived in a derelict shack and spent her days scavenging for food.Her diary, written bet...
The world’s largest model train set
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2000, nightclub owners and twins Frederik and Gerrit Braun went from the neon lights of a Hamburg nightclub to building the world’s largest model...
Dolly Rathebe: South Africa’s first international film star
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
South Africa’s first feature film aimed at black audiences was released in 1949, launching Dolly Rathebe’s career. The actress and jazz musician w...
The Battle of the Beanfield
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 1 June 1985, a convoy of New Age Travellers set off for the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge in the south of England. They were planning to hold ...
The legacy of The Pirate Bay
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 31 May 2006, police launched one of the largest raids in Swedish history, seizing servers from The Pirate Bay - a hugely popular but highly controv...
Chinua Achebe’s revolutionary book Things Fall Apart
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1958 Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, published his first book, Things Fall Apart. Set in pre-colonial rural Nigeria, it examines how the arrival of...
The Tragically Hip's final gig
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, rockstar and Canadian icon Gord Downie was given months to live, after doctors found he had a terminal brain tumour. But instead of quietly e...
'I wrote the Champions League anthem'
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1992, European football was at a turning point. The European Cup was going to be replaced with a new format: The Champions League. European footba...
Vivian Maier: Secret street photographer
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It is only since Vivian Maier's death in 2009 that the 150,000 photographs she rarely showed to anyone have come to light. Working as a nanny in the s...
The founding of Magnum Photos
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of World War Two, a group of famous photographers brought their individual styles into one powerful collaboration, over a celebratory...
Martín Chambi: Peru's pioneering documentary photographer
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Martín Chambi is regarded as one of the most important indigenous Peruvian photographers of the 20th century. Famous for his black and white images o...
Nigerian photographer’s iconic 'Hairstyles' series
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
J. D. 'Okhai Ojeikere, who was known as Nigeria’s top photographer, started documenting women’s hairstyles in 1968. He built up a portfolio of aro...
Lunch atop a Skyscraper
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1932, a photo was taken showing 11 New York ironworkers casually eating their lunch while sitting on a steel beam at the top of a skyscraper. No sa...
Sweden’s shocking sugar experiment
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1940s, some vulnerable Swedish hospital patients were fed large amounts of sugary sweets as part of an experiment to see what it would do to th...
Mexico’s soda tax: Confronting soft drink giants
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, Mexico’s government approved a tax on sugary soft drinks. The country has one of the highest rates of fizzy drink consumption in the world....
The founding of the Warsaw Pact
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 14 May 1955, the leader of the Soviet Union and leaders from seven European countries met to sign the Warsaw Pact. In the years following World War...
Tesla and Edison: Electricity rivals
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By 1915, the two great rivals, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, had brought electricity to the world. It was reported that they were set to share the N...
Intervision Song Contest
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980, Finnish singer Marion Rung won the Intervision Song Contest. Born in the 1960s, Intervision was the Eastern Bloc’s answer to Eurovision. It...
Rescuing Palmyra’s treasures from the Islamic State group
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In May 2015, when the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria was about to fall to jihadist fighters, a group of men risked their lives to load centuries-old...
VE Day celebrations
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The end of the Second World War in Europe came on 8 May 1945, after more than five years of conflict.British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announce...
Sinking of the Lusitania
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 7 May 1915, the British ocean liner, the Lusitania, was sunk by a German submarine off the Irish coast, as it sailed from New York to Liverpool.Tho...
The invention of the automatic electric rice cooker
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1955, entrepreneur and engineer Yoshitada Minami came up with a way to liberate women from two to three hours of housework a day.When his water-hea...
Conclave: How a new pope is chosen
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI following the death of Pope John Paul II.The new leader of the Catholic Church was e...
Snake: Popularising mobile gaming
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998, the Snake game made its debut on mobile phones. It is known for its simple yet addictive gameplay and played a major role in popularising m...
Ten countries join the EU in one night
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 1 May 2004, the European Union went through its biggest ever enlargement. 10 countries joined including eight from the former Soviet Union’s sphe...
The Cu Chi tunnels of the Vietnam War
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency aga...
Surviving the fall of Saigon in 1975
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When South Vietnam fell to communist forces in 1975, most could not escape. In the last days, the United States airlifted its remaining personnel and ...
Doi Moi: Vietnam's economic miracle
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1970s, Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world. Its economy had been destroyed by war with the USA, a trade embargo, and the...
The death of Adolf Hitler
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler killed himself in a bunker in the German capital Berlin as Soviet Red Army soldiers closed in. But first he married his ...
Staging Othello in apartheid South Africa
24 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1987, Othello was staged at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg during the apartheid regime in South Africa. The Immorality Act, which ban...
Coca-Cola’s ‘New Coke'
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Forty years ago, on 23 April 1985, Coca-Cola decided to change the secret formula of its fizzy drink, in a bid to be market leaders. They launched a n...
The creation of YouTube
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
An 18-second clip of a young man standing in front of an elephant enclosure at San Diego Zoo in California, describing their “really long trunks” ...
Exercise Tiger: Disastrous D-Day rehearsal
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1944, the Allies planned Exercise Tiger to practise their landing on France's Normandy beaches ahead of D-Day. During the rehearsal, a German...
The origin of World Book Day
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In November 1995, a proposal of having an annual day focused on celebrating books was put forward at the UNESCO conference in Paris.The idea came from...
Clearing landmines in Cambodia
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty years after the start of the genocide that wiped out a quarter of its eight million population, Cambodia remains one of the most heavily landmin...
The Khmer Rouge take power in Cambodia
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1975 the four-year rule of the brutal Khmer Rouge began in Cambodia. Up to two million people are thought to have died - many summarily execu...
The invention of the white LED lightbulb
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1993, a literal lightbulb moment led to the invention of the first white light emitting diode (LED). These LEDs are now used to light up everything...
The Bali Nine drug smuggling case
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2005, nine young Australians were caught trying to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin out of Indonesia. The Bali Nine, as they became known, faced a max...
Germany’s ‘Green Belt’
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1989, Germany’s ‘Green Belt’ was born. For more than 40 years, the country had been split by a 1,400km border and, in the decades th...
Oklahoma City bombing
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 19 April 1995, a huge truck bomb killed 168 people in a government building in Oklahoma City, US. There were 19 children among the dead and more th...
Liberia’s women in white who helped end civil war
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In December 2011, Leymah Gbowee was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her role in helping to end the devastating civil war in Liberia.She had mobilise...
The Reichstag fire
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building in Berlin, which was home to the German Parliament, was burned down.This was a key event in the establishm...
The UN retreat from Somalia
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1991, a horrific civil war erupted between rival warlords in Somalia. A US-led United Nations mission tried to restore order and provide humanitari...
Resusci Anne: the world’s first life-saving resuscitation dummy
04 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1960, Norwegian toymaker Åsmund Lærdal began selling his latest invention - a life-size training dummy designed to teach mouth-to-mouth resuscita...
JFK’s 1963 Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
United States President John F Kennedy gave a speech in Berlin at the height of the Cold War on 26 June 1963. It galvanised the world in support of We...
The Wonder Woman of DC Comics
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1976, Jenette Kahn took on one of the biggest roles in comic books - publisher of DC Comics, home to superheroes like Superman, Batman and Wonder W...
The invention of superglue
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1951, American chemist Dr Harry Coover was experimenting with a substance called cyanoacrylate but it was sticking to everything.He realised its po...
The 'ghost town' of Namibia
31 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1900s, the first diamond was found in Kolmanskop, in the African country of Namibia. It led to a diamond rush and the town was created.Ha...
The father of Ethio-Jazz
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For more than 50 years, Mulatu Astatke has been performing at venues around the world, inspiring audiences with his original genre of music known as E...
Harold Riley’s 'one of a kind' portrait of Nelson Mandela
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Harold Riley was the only artist in the world granted a sitting to capture Nelson Mandela on canvas. The unique portrait was unveiled in 2005 and rais...
The suspicious death of Rear Admiral Durović
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As Yugoslavia began to break down, the Balkans conflict began - a series of brutal wars characterised by disputes over territory, identity, and ethnic...
Goodluck Jonathan’s phone call that changed Nigeria
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015 Goodluck Jonathan became the first Nigerian president to concede election defeat. It allowed the transfer of power to the opposition party in ...
The Germanwings plane crash
24 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When General David Galtier hovered above the French Alps in a helicopter on 24 March 2015 he could not see the 60-tonne plane he was looking for. Inst...
The visionary behind the European Space Agency
21 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In October 2012, the founding father of the European Space Agency was honoured when a spacecraft named after him was sent to the international space s...
The historic handshake in space
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1975, former competitors the Soviet Union and the United States both launched rockets into the sky within hours of each other, as part of a jo...
In event of moon disaster: 'The speech that never was'
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”These are the opening lines of th...
First spacewalk
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 18 March 1965, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to spacewalk.He spent around 10 minutes floating above the Earth, tethered to the sp...
The rocket that revived Brazil’s space programme
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003, 21 people died when a space rocket exploded at Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Centre, three days before its planned flight. It was the country...
Bardo Museum attack in Tunisia
14 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 18 March 2015, 22 people, mostly foreign tourists, were killed at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. Hamadi Ben Abdesslem,...
The Gambia’s ‘Queen of Recycling’
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, Isatou Ceesay, who lives in The Gambia had an idea to make bags and purses out of old discarded plastic.Her idea to help the environment star...
The Capitol Crawl
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By the beginning of 1990, the United States Congress stalled on passing the Americans with Disabilities Act, a piece of legislation aimed at prohibiti...
King Kong: South Africa's first all-black musical
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1959, Todd Matshikiza composed the score for King Kong, it was South Africa’s first musical with an all-black cast and it opened to critical accl...
The invention of GPS
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There are few inventions that we rely on as much as the Global Positioning System, also known as GPS. But, when it was created in the late 1970s, nobo...
How bloodshed in Selma led to the US Voting Rights Act 1965
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In March 1965, hundreds of peaceful civil rights protesters in Selma were brutally beaten by Alabama state troops.They had been marching to demonstrat...
The Great Toyota War
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1987, a decades-long war in Chad reached a dramatic turning point in what would come to be known as the Great Toyota War. Named after the rugged pi...
The US invasion of Panama
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1989, more than 20,000 US soldiers descended on the tiny Central American country of Panama. The Americans sought to remove the country’...
The invention of the shopping trolley
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1937, American supermarket owner Sylvan Goldman came up with a way to get his customers to spend more.He introduced his 'folding basket carriers' i...
The Calais 'Jungle' migrant camp
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, Europe was in the grip of a migrant crisis, as more than one million people fled regions including the Middle East. Many set their sights on ...
Africa’s stolen Metis children
28 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1953, in what was then the Belgian Congo, four-year-old Marie-José Loshi was forcibly removed from her family’s village and taken more than 600k...
Surviving Chile's tsunami
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck the coast of Chile. It shook the central and southern parts of the country for more than three minutes, ca...
Denmark’s Inuit children experiment
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1951, a group of 22 Inuit children from Greenland were sent to live with foster parents in Denmark. It was part of a social experiment aimed at imp...
The Nellie massacre
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Nellie massacre on 18 February 1983 was the worst bloodshed in the country since Indian independence in 1947. It is estimated that 3,000 people di...
Discovering the structure of haemoglobin
24 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What was it in September of 1959 that caused an Austrian scientist to rush out from his lab and buy children's modelling clay?Austrian born Dr Max Per...
Assassination of Malcolm X
21 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sixty years ago, on 21st February 1965, the controversial black leader, Malcolm X, was assassinated in Harlem, New York as he was preparing to speak ...
Murder at the Berlin Wall
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 29 March 1974, Czesław Kukuczka stormed into the Polish embassy in East Berlin, threatening to detonate a bomb unless he was allowed to escape to ...
Bolivia’s first indigenous president
19 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In December 2005, Evo Morales made history in Bolivia when he became the country’s first indigenous president. The country is one of the poorest in...
Bo: The death of a language
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, one of the oldest languages in the world died after the death of its last remaining speaker.For 40 years, Boa Senior from the Indian Andaman ...
The world's longest kiss
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, Guinness World Records deactivated the record for the longest kiss after 15 years, saying it had become too dangerous and some of the rules c...
Eva Peron: Argentina’s Evita
14 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Eva Peron – otherwise known as Evita - became an icon in 1940s Argentina, famous for her passionate speeches and populist rhetoric. Born into povert...
Paul Keating's Redfern speech
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 10 December 1992, Australia’s Prime Minister, Paul Keating, addressed a crowd in a Sydney suburb called Redfern, to mark the UN’s International...
Mary Fisher's 'A Whisper of Aids' speech
12 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Mary Fisher was diagnosed with HIV in 1991 she did not represent the typical stereotype of someone HIV-positive. She was white, heterosexual and ...
Eisenhower's farewell address
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In January 1961, US President Dwight Eisenhower ended his time in the White House with a farewell address regarded as one of the greatest speeches mad...
La Pasionaria: Heroine of the Spanish Civil War
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dolores Ibárruri was nicknamed La Pasionaria for her fiery speeches to the anti-fascist forces during the Spanish civil war. The fighting had begun i...
Heathers: The making of a cult classic
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1989, a dark teen comedy exploring self-harm and suicide flopped at cinemas.Heathers would have to wait years before achieving cult status through ...
The first global case of coral bleaching
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998, a mysterious phenomenon turned many of the world’s most colourful coral reefs deathly white.It was the first recorded global coral bleachin...
Cuban blindness
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1990s, as Cuba faced a devastating economic crisis, leading to severe food shortages and malnutrition, around 50,000 Cubans were inexplic...
Oradour massacre
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1944, a village in France was destroyed in just one day. German soldiers entered Oradour-sur-Glane and gathered the villagers together. They ...
Jacques Derrida: ‘Rock star’ philosopher
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, at Johns Hopkins University in the US, a little-known glamorous French philosopher called Jacques Derrida took to the stage and eviscerated t...
English TV lessons in China go primetime
31 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1981 the first major series of English lessons was broadcast on Chinese television.President Deng Xiaoping had allowed private enterprise and was p...
1968 New York City teachers' strike
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A series of unprecedented teachers’ strikes temporarily shut most of New York’s schools in the late 1960s, provoked by an ongoing dispute over whe...
Lithuania's 'wolf children'
29 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of World War Two, children were left orphaned, or separated from their families. They were forced to flee East Prussia when the Red A...
The Baltic chain protest
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 23 August 1989, approximately two million people joined hands to form a 690-kilometre human chain across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.It was a key...
The Milltown Cemetery attack
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 16 March 1988, loyalist paramilitary Michael Stone killed three mourners and injured 60 others attending a funeral for IRA members killed in Gibral...
The launch of Windows 95
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1995, Microsoft released a new operating system - Windows 95 – following one of the computer industry’s biggest and most expensive marke...
Replacing the Panchen Lama
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 29 November 1995, Tibetan Buddhist leaders attended a secret ceremony in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. They were present to witness the choice of the...
The murder of Maurizio Gucci
22 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On 27 March 1995, fashion heir Maurizio Gucci was shot dead outside his office in Milan, Italy.Five people, including his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani, ...
Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, an obscure Japanese religion launched a chemical attack on the Tokyo metro. Members of the doomsday cult, which called itself Aum Shinrikyo, ...