Witness History
Episodes
A right royal night out
07 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The tale of an extraordinary night at a legendary British gay pub.Princess Diana, disguised as a man, along with star broadcaster Kenny Everett and Qu...
When tourism came to the Maldives
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1972 the first tourists arrived in the Maldives.They stayed in humble lodgings in three houses, looked after by young Maldivians including Ahmed Na...
The National Health Service begins
05 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 5 July 1948, the UK’s National Health Service began as part of a series of reforms with the aim of supporting and protecting Britain's citizens f...
Longest-serving democratically elected communist government
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1977 what was to become the world’s longest-serving democratically elected communist government came to power in eastern India.Poverty and absolu...
The trial of John Demjanjuk
03 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1986 a car factory worker from the United States was accused of being ‘Ivan the Terrible’, a notorious concentration camp guard at Treblinka du...
I made Lady Gaga's meat dress
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 12 September 2010 Lady Gaga, won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year. She accepted the award in a dress made entirely out of beef. 13 ...
The 'graveyard' for communist statues
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Hungarian city of Budapest's communist statue 'graveyard' opened on 29 June 1993. Statues representing communism were not destroyed, instead they ...
Sampoong department store disaster
28 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 29 June 1995, the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea, collapsed due to structural failures.The disaster killed 502 people and injured ...
First reports of Ebola
27 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1976 in a small Belgian missionary hospital in a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as Zaire, people were dying from an un...
JFK’s Ich Bin Ein Berliner speech
26 Jun 2023
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 Wes...
My dad played golf on the moon
23 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alan Shepard played golf on the moon in 1971.He became the first and only person to enjoy the sport on the lunar surface.The astronaut golfer’s daug...
The Empire Windrush arrives
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in England on 22 June 1948 with 802 people on board from the Caribbean.The former passenger liner's arrival on t...
Anti-gay police raid at Tasty nightclub
21 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early hours of 7 August 1994, police raided Tasty, a gay nightclub in downtown Melbourne, Australia. On the hunt for drugs they strip-search...
The Somali pilot ordered to bomb his own country
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of May 1988, rebels from the Somali National Movement launched a series of lightning attacks on cities in northern Somalia - the area that ...
Uprising in East Germany
19 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
East German workers went on strike in protest at Soviet rule on 16 June 1953.Demonstrations spread throughout the country but were soon crushed by com...
Ming Smith makes history at MoMA
16 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979, The Museum of Modern Art, (MoMA) purchased photographs from an African-American woman for the first time in its history. Ming Smith was famou...
Sir Don McCullin’s photo of a US marine
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, British photographer Sir Don McCullin travelled to Vietnam for his second ever war assignment. His graphic photographs of the fighting made h...
Malick Sidibé: Mali’s star photographer
14 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Malian photographer, Malick Sidibé, is one of Africa’s most celebrated artists. His most famous photographs show black and white scenes of youn...
A Great Day in Harlem: The story behind the iconic jazz photo
13 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's 65 years since aspiring photographer Art Kane persuaded 58 of the biggest names in jazz, including Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Mo...
Lee Miller in Hitler's bath
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Vogue's war correspondent Lee Miller found herself in Adolf Hitler's Munich apartment when the news broke that he was dead.Earlier that day, she and f...
1955 Le Mans disaster
09 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 11 June 1955, more than 80 people were killed and 100 injured at the Le Mans 24-hour race.A car driven by Pierre Levegh crashed into the crowd of a...
Last communist march before Hitler
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 25 January 1933 the last legal communist march was held in Berlin.Just a few days later Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany.Soon the Communis...
Facial reconstruction: From mummy to murder
06 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1975, British forensic artist Richard Neave used a pile of modelling clay, two prosthetic eyes and a woman’s wig to reconstruct the face of an Eg...
Inuit children taken from families
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1960s, the Canadian government launched an experimental programme to take academically promising Inuit children from their homes to be ed...
The first Indian woman to conquer Everest
02 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As a child, Bachendri Pal never dreamt of conquering mountains but a chance meeting with a climber changed all that.She applied for a mountaineering c...
Tragedy on Everest
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Michael Groom is one of the survivors of a tragic climbing expedition to Mount Everest in Nepal. In 2010, Jonny Hogg spoke to Michael Groom about the ...
Mallory on Everest
31 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1999 the body of the legendary British mountaineer, George Mallory, was found on Mount Everest. Mallory disappeared on the mountain in 1924 after m...
Tenzing Norgay conquers Everest
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had tried to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, six times before his successful climb with Edmund Hillary i...
Edmund Hillary conquers Everest
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 29 May 1953 Edmund Hillary, climbing with sherpa Tenzing Norgay, became the first people to reach the summit of Everest.The two men instantly becam...
The deadliest glacial avalanche in the world
26 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 31 May 1970, the Huascarán avalanche, caused by the Ancash earthquake, destroyed the town of Yungay, in Peru.Only 400 people, out of a population ...
Trying to unite Africa
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 25 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...
Chasing the world’s biggest tornado
24 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 31 May 2013, a huge tornado hit an area close to El Reno in the US state of Oklahoma.It was the widest tornado ever recorded and produced extreme w...
Fikret Alić
23 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1992, a shocking photograph of a starving, emaciated man behind a barbed wire fence of a Bosnian concentration camp stunned the world. The ...
The sergeants' coup in Suriname
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1980, a group of 16 army sergeants, led by Dési Bouterse, seized power in the small South American country of Suriname, overthrowing the governmen...
Pippi Longstocking
19 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Stockholm in 1941, Astrid Lindgren made up a story for her seven-year-old daughter, Karin, about a young girl who lived alone and had super-human s...
Creating New Zealand's national walking trail
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011 a 3,000 km long walking trail was opened in New Zealand. Geoff Chapple had spent years lobbying for the creation of Te Araroa. He’d written ...
The Dambusters
17 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early hours of 17 May 1943 a bold World War II attack destroyed two dams in the Ruhr Valley in Germany's industrial heartland, causing 1,600 ca...
German child evacuees of World War Two
16 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in 1940 thousands of German children were evacuated to camps in the countryside to avoid the bombs of World War Two.These camps were seen as...
Singapore executes Filipina maid
15 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, the execution of Flor Contemplacion caused protests, a government resignation and a diplomatic crisis between the Philippines and Singapore. ...
World War II victory in North Africa
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Royle, 103, endured a month of solid fighting in the hills outside of Tunis in 1943. Eventually the Allies prevailed and took more than 250,000 ...
Warsaw Ghetto uprising
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In May 1943, the uprising in the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw in Poland came to an end. The Germans had crushed the uprising and deported surviving ghetto ...
The last commercial flight out of Kai Tak
10 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998, one of Hong Kong’s best known landmarks, Kai Tak airport, closed after 73 years. Kai Tak, which was built between the mountains and the c...
The sinking of the SS Tilawa: the ‘Indian Titanic’
09 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 23 November 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, a ship called the SS Tilawa was carrying more than 950 passengers and crew from India to E...
United States bomb the Chinese embassy in Belgrade
08 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1999, NATO carried out a bombing campaign in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. On 7 May, five American bombs hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, k...
The removal of Scotland's Stone of Destiny
05 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On Christmas Eve 1950, four young Scottish students took the 'Stone of Destiny' from Westminster Abbey in London.The symbolic stone had been taken fro...
Last King of Bulgaria
04 May 2023
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...
The 'execution' of Oliver Cromwell
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1661 in England, following the restoration of the monarchy, the body of Oliver Cromwell was dug up for ritual execution. Cromwell had overthrown Ki...
Jean-Bédel Bokassa's coronation
02 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Republic in a lavish ceremony on 4 December 1977.He'd already been president for se...
The king under the car park
01 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, archaeologists from the University of Leicester discovered the lost grave of King Richard III under a car park in Leicester in the English Ea...
The fight to televise the Queen's Coronation
28 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953 was a watershed moment for television as millions watched the ceremony live.But it nearly never happened as th...
The Met Gala goes global
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Met Gala takes place annually on the first Monday in May. In 1995, Vogue’s editor-in-chief Anna Wintour chaired the huge fashion celebration for...
Guatemala's outspoken bishop
26 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 26 April 1998 leading human rights campaigner, Bishop Juan Gerardi, was attacked and killed in his home, just two days after presenting the conclus...
Discovering the secrets of DNA
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
James Watson and Francis Crick first published their discoveries about the structure of DNA on 25 April 1953.Their findings were to revolutionise our ...
Althea McNish: 'I designed fabrics for the Queen'
24 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1966, the artist Althea McNish designed fabrics for the Queen's tour of the West Indies when she visited Trinidad and Tobago.Althea, who was born i...
The Russian man who pretended to be a dog
21 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1994, Russian conceptual artist Oleg Kulik posed naked, pretending to be a guard dog, attacking passers by in Moscow. He was protesting conditions ...
Smoky the World War II dog hero
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1944, Bill Wynne who was serving with the U.S. Army during World War II, adopted a tiny Yorkshire terrier called Smoky. When Bill caught dengue fe...
Roselle the 9/11 guide dog
19 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, a New York guide dog called Roselle was hailed as a hero for helping her owner safely down 78 flights of stairs...
The world's first labradoodle
18 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1989, Australian dog breeder Wally Conron was tasked with finding a suitable dog for a blind woman in Hawaii whose husband was allergic to pet hair...
The first dog in space
17 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Laika the Russian stray was the first dog to orbit the Earth. She was sent into space on a flight in 1957 which had been timed to mark the anniversary...
Richard Dimbleby describes Belsen
14 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The BBC’s Richard Dimbleby was the first reporter to enter the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His report describing the unimaginable ho...
I led the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 15 April 2013, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off two bombs at the Boston Marathon and killed three people.After the attack they disap...
Mass grave at Sernyky
12 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1990, archaeologist Richard Wright flew half way around the world to unearth a mass grave in Sernyky, Ukraine as part of an Australian Nazi war cri...
The universal recycling symbol
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1970, American architecture student Gary Anderson won a competition, to mark the first Earth Day on 22 April, to design a logo for recycled paper p...
Emperor Tewodros II
10 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Emperor Tewodros II is one of the towering figures of modern Ethiopian history. He tried to unify and modernise Ethiopia but his reign was also marked...
The Good Friday Agreement referendum
07 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 22 May 1998, a referendum was held in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland asking voters if they supported the Good Friday Agreement.In bot...
Beto Perez: 'I created Zumba by accident'
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2001, Colombian born choreographer Beto Perez created Zumba, a fitness craze which would go on to become a global phenomenon. The aerobic workout...
Awaji Kannon: One of the world's tallest statues
05 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, a Japanese businessman unveiled one of the tallest statues in the world called the World Peace Giant Kannon in Awaji Island, Japan. At 100 me...
Pan-European picnic
04 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1989, a picnic was held on the border between Austria and Hungary, as a demonstration for peace and European integration. It prefigured the end of ...
Escaping national service in Eritrea
03 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2002, the Eritrean government extended its programme of compulsory national service to make it open-ended. Instead of serving 18 months as the gove...
A Brief History of Time
31 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A Brief History of Time, the best-selling book written by the renowned theoretical physicist Prof Stephen Hawking, was published in March 1988.In this...
The first photo sent from a phone
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 11 June 1997, French software engineer Philippe Kahn shared the first ever photo from a mobile phone. It was of his newborn daughter, Sophie. He cr...
Godfather of manicures
29 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In November 1975, Vietnamese Navy commander Minh Nguyen, left behind his macho military life and retrained as a manicurist. He migrated from Vietnam t...
How Bengaluru became India’s Silicon Valley
28 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The city of Bengaluru in southern India, previously called Bangalore, is renowned for its huge technology companies and buzzy start-up culture. But, 5...
The windmill that revolutionised wind power
27 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1978, with energy prices rocketing due to the oil crisis, a group of volunteers in Denmark took matters into their own hands and built a wind turbi...
Keiko: Freeing 'Free Willy'
24 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998, Keiko became the first ever killer whale to be released back into the wild after a life of captivity.Keiko shot to fame as the star of the 19...
The man who lived in an airport
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1988, Mehran Karimi Nasseri, from Iran, flew into Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris intending to transfer onto a flight to London. But he wasn’t...
DDLJ: India’s longest running movie
22 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, Bollywood film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was released to critical acclaim. It premiered at the Maratha Mandir cinema in Mumbai. It's been ...
Alcatraz: The strangest escape
21 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In June 1962 three prisoners escaped from the maximum security US jail on the island of Alcatraz.They achieved this using a homemade raft, papier-mâc...
Kieu Chinh: A real Hollywood story
20 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974, legendary Vietnamese actress Kieu Chinh found herself on a farm in Canada cleaning up after chicken.She had narrowly escaped the fall of Sai...
Iraq War: US security guards killed my son
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War.On 16 September 2007, private security guards employed by the American firm Blackwater opened fir...
Iraq War: The capture of Saddam Hussein
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War.On 13 December 2003 the deposed president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was captured by US forces.Muwa...
Iraq War: 'Most wanted' playing cards
15 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War.In April 2003, the US military unveiled a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-w...
Iraq War: Refugees escaping
14 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War.Millions of citizens attempted to flee the country after America and its allies invaded in March ...
Iraq War: The beginning
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It has been 20 years since the start of the Iraq War. In March 2003, the United States launched its invasion, dropping bombs on Iraq's capital Baghdad...
From a goddess to a graduate
10 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2000, when Chanira Bajrycharya was just five years old, she was chosen to be a Kumari - a child goddess in Nepal. For the next 10 years, she remain...
Monica McWilliams’ role in the Northern Ireland peace process
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Monica McWilliams played one of the most pivotal roles in the Northern Ireland peace process. She spent two years at the negotiating table which final...
First all-women peacekeeping unit
08 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2007, the UN deployed its first all-female contingent of peacekeepers in Liberia in West Africa. The country was still recovering from its long civ...
Mexico's first female presidential hopeful
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, human rights campaigner Rosario Ibarra became the first woman and first political outsider to stand for president in Mexico.Her presidential ...
Octavia E. Butler: Visionary black sci-fi writer
06 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, Octavia E Butler became the first author to receive a MacArthur “genius” award for science fiction writing. From a young age she dreamed ...
Zoran Djindjic: The murder of Serbia's prime minister
03 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Zoran Djindjic, the prime minister of Serbia, was assassinated on 12 March 2003. He was murdered by an associate of former president, Slobodan Milosev...
The museum at the end of the world
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1992, the late zoologist Nigel Bonner opened one of the world's most remote museums, the South Georgia Whaling Museum, on South Georgia, a British ...
Grenada's underwater sculpture park
01 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2004 Jason deCaires Taylor started building the world's first underwater gallery.He wanted to attract divers away from fragile coral reefs, so he s...
Pink Triangles: Gay men in Nazi concentration camps
28 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009, Rudolf Brazda, one of the last known survivors of the Pink Triangles, returned to the former site of Buchenwald concentration camp where he’...
Wounded Knee siege
27 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty years ago, indigenous American activists staged a historic protest against the US authorities.A siege began which lasted for two months and resu...
When the Queen 'jumped out of a helicopter'
24 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How did an estimated 900 million people come to witness Her Majesty the Queen apparently parachuting from a helicopter with James Bond?Frank Cottrell-...
Families interned in WW2 China
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Despite facing malnutrition, starvation and disease, Christopher John Huckstep's father set up a school in the Japanese internment camp where his fami...
The invention of Semtex
22 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1958, Stanislav Brebera invented Semtex. It was a malleable, odourless and stable plastic explosive which became the choice weapon for those seekin...
Seggae riots in Mauritius
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mauritian musician Kaya, who pioneered a new genre called seggae, fusing reggae and sega, died in police custody on 21 February 1999.His death sparked...
Battle for the capital: Bonn v Berlin
20 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany had to decide which city would be the new capital. The contenders were the West German city of Bonn and the ...
First winter ascent of Everest
17 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 17 February 1980, the first people climbed Everest in winter.John Beauchamp hears from Leszek Cichy and Krzysztof Wielicki from Poland who were the...