Witness History
Episodes
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...
Discovering Tutankhamun’s tomb
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 16 February 1923, the sealed burial chamber of ancient Egypt’s most famous pharaoh Tutankhamun was opened for the first time. Mike Gallagher take...
'I developed Pokémon'
15 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 27 February 1996, gamers were first introduced to characters Pikachu, Eevee, and Charmander when the first Pokémon games were released in Japan. K...
First Danish queen for 600 years
14 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In January 1972, King Frederick IX of Denmark died after a short illness at the age of 72. He was succeeded by his daughter Margrethe who became the f...
'Hot Autumn': When Italy’s workers revolted
13 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1969 and 1970, thousands of workers in Italy went on strike, protesting against low pay and poor working conditions. It became known as the ‘Hot ...
'I told the world Pope Benedict XVI was resigning'
10 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 11 February 2013, Benedict XVI shocked the world by becoming the first pope in nearly 600 years to quit. All other popes in the modern era had held...
The Pope and Jews
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In April 1986, Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to a Rome synagogue.It was aimed at healing centuries of deep wounds between Jews and Catholics...
Pope John Paul I’s sudden death
08 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cardinal Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul I on 26 August 1978. He died unexpectedly 33 days later.He was discovered in the early morning lying on ...
Reforming the Catholic Church with Vatican II
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In January 1959, Pope John XXIII announced a council of all the world's Catholic bishops and cardinals in Rome. It led to sweeping reforms, including ...
How a Pope is chosen
06 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Following the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005. He was elected after four ballots of the p...
The first black music station in Europe
03 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1981, Rita Marley’s brother Leroy Anderson aka Lepke launched the Dread Broadcasting Corporation (DBC), Europe’s first dedicated black music st...
The assassination of Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1993, Melchior Ndadaye became Burundi’s first democratically elected president.He was also the first president to come from the country’s ...
Columbia space shuttle disaster
01 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The US space shuttle Columbia broke up on its way back to Earth on 1 February 2003. It had been in use since 1981. Iain Mackness spoke to Admiral Hal ...
Czechoslovakia's 'Velvet Divorce'
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
30 years ago this month, Czechoslovakia split into the separate states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was a rare instance of a state separatin...
Palestine Post bombing
30 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Mordechai Chertoff was the foreign editor on the Palestine Post (precursor to the Jerusalem Post) when it was bombed on 1 February 1948. He tells Lucy...
Invention of the MP3
27 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Karlheinz Brandenburg from Germany spent more than a decade developing MP3 technology, which was developed to convert audio into digital for...
Albert Pierrepoint: Britain's executioner
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Using archive recordings, Alex Last tells the story of Britain's most famous hangman. During the 1940s and 1950s, Albert Pierrepoint was responsible f...
Smolensk air disaster
25 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2010, a plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczyński, crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing everyone on board. It was one of t...
Japanese death row guard
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Yoshikuni Noguchi spent time as a guard in one of the prisons in Japan that would carry out the death penalty, and witnessed the hanging of a condemne...
When Britain tried to censor the Troubles in Northern Ireland
23 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frontman of punk-rock band The Undertones, Paul McLoone, recalls the “weird, slightly funny, slightly sad, slightly surreal” time he was the voice...
Swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy
20 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009, hundreds of teenagers’ lives were changed forever, when a vaccine designed to protect them against swine flu appeared to trigger a sleep di...
France's nuclear tests in Algeria
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara. High levels of radioactivity, and a failure to safely dispose of nu...
Kosovo’s house schools
18 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1990s Kosovo, a generation of Albanians received their education crammed into thousands of private homes. When Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb national...
Europe's horse meat scandal
17 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2013, horse meat was discovered in Irish beef burgers. The scandal snowballed and within six weeks horse meat was found in beef products in more th...
Miracle on the Hudson
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 15 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River in New York, after geese struck both its engines shortly after take off.All 155 ...
World’s first tidal power station
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The world’s first tidal power station is on the estuary of the River Rance in France. It was opened in 1966 by President Charles de Gaulle and has b...
Galápagos Islands’ sea cucumber dispute
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A boom in demand for sea cucumbers in Asia in the 1990s set off a confrontation between fishermen and conservationists in the waters off the Galápago...
Paul Robeson and the transatlantic phone line
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In September 1956, a telephone cable called TAT-1 was laid under the Atlantic Ocean, making high-quality transatlantic phone calls possible for the fi...
Dutch North Sea flood
10 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1953, a winter storm combined with high tides breached sea defences in the Netherlands, more than 1,800 people drowned.Ria Geluk, remembers the onc...
Plastics in oceans
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1971, marine biologist Edward Carpenter made a shocking discovery finding small bits of plastics floating thousands of miles of the east coast of A...
Pussy Riot’s cathedral protest
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In February 2012, Diana Burkot and other members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot protested inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour aga...
The man Pinochet wanted dead
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After the 1973 military coup in Chile, Miguel Enriquez led resistance against the dictatorship. The secret police were ordered to track him down and a...
When America banned silicone breast implants
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On 6 January 1992, the US Government ordered a suspension of all procedures involving silicone breast implants. More than 2,000 women had complained o...
Arctic African
03 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tété-Michel Kpomassie grew up in West Africa but he was obsessed with the Arctic. When he was 16 years old he ran away from his village in Togo dete...
One team in Tallinn
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1996, Scotland took to the field for a football World Cup qualifying tie in the Estonian capital city of Tallinn. The only problem was that there w...
The birth of the Slow Food Movement
30 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1986, thousands of people gathered in the middle of Rome to protest against the opening of Italy’s first McDonalds fast food restaurant. One of t...
Inventing instant noodles
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In August 1958, the Japanese entrepreneur, Momofuku Ando, came up with the idea of a brand new food product that would change the eating habits of peo...
Malta's bread strike
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1977 the bakers of Malta went on an unprecedented strike.It sent shock waves through the Maltese people who couldn’t imagine life withou...
Inventing Chicken Manchurian
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Chef Nelson Wang created his signature dish Chicken Manchurian in 1975. It was the birth of modern Indo-Chinese cuisine which went on to become hugely...
Creating ciabatta bread
26 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1982, rally driver Arnaldo Cavallari created ciabatta bread in Adria, in northern Italy.His family owned a flour mill and he wanted to invent a loa...
Chile mine rescue
23 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On 5 August 2010, 33 miners were trapped underground after a rockfall in the San José copper and gold mine in Chile.They were rescued 69 days later.R...
Grozny siege
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In December 1994, Russian forces began the siege of Chechnya’s capital Grozny. Dr Aslan Doukaev was a university teacher when the first Chechen war ...
Colombia's 'false positives' killings
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 2008, it was revealed that Colombia’s army had been executing civilians and pretending they were rebels killed in the country’s ongoing civil w...
The BBC broadcasting through the Iron Curtain
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It is the 90th anniversary of the BBC World Service. Broadcasting to countries behind the Iron Curtain without a free or independent media between 194...