Witness History

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...

Una Marson and the BBC Caribbean Service

19 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

To mark the 90th anniversary of the BBC World Service, we trace the development of the Caribbean Service.Its beginnings go back to the early 1940s whe...

Felix Baumgartner's huge leap

16 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2012, former Austrian paratrooper Felix Baumgartner was watched live by millions as he ascended into the stratosphere in a helium balloon. He then ...

Soviet fashionista

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Slava Zaitsev was the first designer to create high fashion collections in the Soviet Union.He tells Dina Newman about the challenges he faced working...

Returning to District Six

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

When Zahra Nordien was forced out of District Six in Cape Town in 1977, she vowed to one day return. She was one of the 60,000 people who were forcibl...

The Nazi occupation of Jersey

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Shopkeeper Louisa Gould risked her life to hide a Russian prisoner who had escaped from the Nazis during the German occupation of Jersey in World War ...

Mongolian revolution

12 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1990, a peaceful revolution brought democracy to Mongolia after almost 70 years of Soviet backed rule. University lecturer Ganbold Davaadorj was on...

Creating Teletubbies

09 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It’s 1994 and the BBC is looking for a brand-new children’s TV series. TV producer Anne Wood decides she’s going to make a show aimed at an audi...

'The Dismissal' of Gough Whitlam

08 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In November 1975, the Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, was controversially sacked by an unelected official in the country's biggest constitut...

The Killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

07 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On 22 July 2005, an unarmed Brazilian man was shot dead by anti-terrorism police at Stockwell Tube station, in London.Jean Charles de Menezes was shot...

Demolishing the Babri Masjid

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hindu extremists demolished a 16th century mosque in the Indian city of Ayodhya in December 1992 prompting months of communal violence across India. P...

Quebec’s 1995 referendum

05 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In October 1995, the people of Quebec went to the polls to decide whether the province should declare independence from Canada. Kevin Caners hears the...

Miss World protest

02 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1970, feminists stormed the stage at the Miss World pageant in London. They were protesting against the objectification of women. Sally Alexander w...

The woman who smuggled HIV into Bulgaria in her handbag

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, Bulgaria was a strictly controlled communist dictatorship. It was also facing a wave of infection and death ca...

The islands Japan and Russia can’t agree on

30 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1947, thousands of Japanese families were expelled from their island homes by Soviet troops. They were taken from the Northern Territories, also kn...

CrossFit: The fitness phenomenon that changed the industry

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2000, an American personal trainer invented CrossFit. They now have gyms around the world and hold an annual international competition.Rachel Naylo...

Mombasa terror attacks

28 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2002, journalist Kelly Hartog was on a press trip in Mombasa, in Kenya, when suicide bombers drove a car packed with explosives into the hotel wher...

How cat's eyes were invented

25 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1934, the late Percy Shaw almost crashed while driving home from the pub on a foggy night in West Yorkshire, in England. He was saved when his head...

The corruption and sodomy trials of Anwar Ibrahim

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On 20 September 1998, the former deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, was arrested and charged on suspicion of committing fraud and sodom...

When Sweden’s roads went right

23 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In September 1967, all Swedish traffic had to change the habit of decades and swap to driving on the right-hand side of the road.It brought them into ...

First women’s minister in Iran

22 Nov 2022

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 positio...

The invention of the seat belt

21 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1958, the late Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt for cars.It's estimated to have saved more than one million lives ...

Qatar's first female published author

18 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1978, Kaltham Jaber published her first book – a collection of short stories. She is an assistant professor and acclaimed writer from Qatar. Her ...

First Emirati female teacher

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It was rare for women in what is now the United Arab Emirates to go to school in the 1960s. At the time, the future country was a collection of emirat...

Inventing robot camel jockeys

16 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 2003, a Qatari engineer came up with the idea for a robot jockey, to replace child jockeys in camel racing.Two years later, the robot was approved ...

Burj Khalifa: Designing the world’s tallest building

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The tallest building in the world opened in 2010. There was a glitzy firework display to celebrate the occasion. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Ara...

Formation of the United Arab Emirates

14 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A new country, the United Arab Emirates, was formed in 1971. It’s a federation of seven states that has grown from a quiet backwater to one of the M...

The child evacuees of World War Two

11 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The 1 September 1939 was Kitty Baxter’s ninth birthday, it was also the day her life and millions of other people’s changed with the beginning of ...

Māori protests stops South African rugby tour

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1981, the South African rugby tour of New Zealand was disrupted by Māori anti-racism campaigners who invaded pitches. They wanted to highlight the...

The assassination of Pim Fortuyn

09 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It has been 20 years since one of the most controversial politicians in Europe was assassinated just days before a general election. On 6 May 2002, Pi...

First rape crisis centres in the US

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

1972 was a time of feminist action in the US. People were talking more openly about rape and sharing their experiences. It led to rape crisis centres ...

Polynesian Panthers

07 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1970s, New Zealand’s government cracked down on Polynesian migrants who had overstayed their work permits. They carried out what became...

Umuganda: Rwanda's community work scheme

04 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1975, President Juvénal Habyarimana introduced Umuganda in Rwanda, where citizens had to help with community projects like planting trees and buil...

Dame Carmen Callil: Feminist publisher

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Carmen Callil, who died in October this year, founded feminist publisher Virago Press in 1972 to promote women’s writing. In this programme fir...

Campaigning against sex-selection in India

02 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last 50 years an estimated 46 million girls have been aborted in India. The cultural preference for boys and the development of pre-natal sex...

Albania’s Stalinist purges

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1970s, Albania’s Stalinist leader, Enver Hoxha, launched a new series of purges against government ministers and officials, following numerou...

The Little Black Book survival guide

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1985, Carol Taylor wrote a survival guide for young black men in the Unites Stated who were stopped by the police. Her son, Laurence Legall, tells ...

Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech

28 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In October 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard made an impromptu speech in the Australian parliament setting out the misogyny she endured for years as ...

Arrested for wearing trousers in Sudan

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1991, a law was introduced in Sudan which was used to control how women acted and dressed in public. It resulted in arrests, beatings and even deat...

Theatre siege in Moscow

26 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It is 20 years since heavily-armed Chechen rebels took an entire theatre full of people hostage. They threatened to kill them all if the Russian gover...

The Iranian Revolution and women

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Many women supported Iran’s 1979 revolution against the monarchy but some later became disillusioned. Islamic rules about how women dressed were jus...

Indonesia’s indigenous people take a stand

24 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998 President Suharto of Indonesia resigned after more than thirty years of military rule. It meant people from indigenous communities were finall...

Founder of the Cuban National Ballet

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We go back to 1959 when Cuba’s most famous ballet dancer Alicia Alonso turned her back on a successful career on the world stage and returned home t...

Cuba's boxing ban

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year, Cuba lifted a 60-year ban on professional boxing, which Fidel Castro imposed in 1962. Before then, amateur boxers who wanted to tur...

The ‘army’ that taught Cuba to read and write

19 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1961, Fidel Castro launched a nationwide campaign aimed to eradicate illiteracy in Cuba. An ‘army’ of volunteers known as brigadistas equipped ...

Cuban Missile Crisis: The showdown

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Jo Fidgen hears what was happening in the Pentagon and the Kremlin in the final days of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrush...

Cuban Missile Crisis: The photos

17 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1962, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Jo Fidgen spoke to American Intelligence officer Dino Brugioni who p...

Cesar Chavez’s campaign for farm workers

14 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s, a wave of strikes and protest marches by Mexican-American farm workers inspired Latinos across the US. The movement was led by Cesar Cha...

Torturing strikers in South Korea

12 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Park Heongjun takes us back to May 1980, when a strike in the city of Gwangju became one of the most divisive moments in South Korea’s history and l...

Disney animators' strike

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Walt Disney cartoonists went on strike for nine weeks in 1941. They were led by Art Babbitt, Disney’s top animator who created Goofy.The picket line...

UK’s ‘Winter of Discontent’

10 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1979, British public sector workers went on strike over pay. Among those taking industrial action were gravediggers. But the media, politicians and...

The beginnings of Notting Hill Carnival

07 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On 30 January 1959, the late Trinidadian activist Claudia Jones held a Caribbean party in St Pancras Town Hall in London, planting the seeds for the f...

The Harder They Come

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1972, a low-budget Jamaican film and its legendary soundtrack helped popularise reggae music in the world. Ben Henderson speaks to one of the most ...

The fall of Slobodan Milosevic

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On 5 October 2000, protests in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade spiralled into an attack on the parliament building. Hours later President Slobodan Milos...

The release of Gilad Shalit

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On 18 October 2011, Israeli solider Gilad Shalit was freed after spending over five years in captivity in Gaza. His release was part of a controversia...

The funk and soul club that changed Manchester

03 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1962, Nigerian man Phil Magbotiwan opened a brand new nightclub in Manchester, England. In part because of his own personal experiences of racism, ...

Dassler brothers’ rift

30 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1948, brothers Adi and Rudi Dassler who lived in a small German town fell out. They went on to create globally renowned sportswear firms Adidas and...