Witness History
BBC World Service
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.
We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.
You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.
We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.
You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest, the disastrous D-Day rehearsal, and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jul 28, 2020 • 9min
Australia's 'Black Saturday' bushfires
The forest fires of 2019-2020 in Australia were the worst the country had ever experienced - but ten years earlier Australia had a foretaste of that disaster when 400 separate bushfires burnt their way across the state of Victoria. At the time they were the worst fires Australia had ever seen. Rachael Gillman has been speaking to one of the firefighters who battled to bring the fires under control.Photo Credit: Getty Images
Jul 27, 2020 • 10min
The writer who put Latinos centre stage
The Cuban-American Dolores Prida wrote with a distinctive voice in her plays, newspaper columns and as an agony aunt in the Latina magazine. She challenged perceptions of how Latin Americans should be viewed in the US. When she died in 2013, President Obama paid tribute to her "conviction, compassion and humour." Mike Lanchin speaks to Prida's close friend, the former editor at New York's Daily News, Maite Junco.Photo: Dolores Prida (left) with Maite Junco, Jan 2013 (courtesy of Maite Junco)
Jul 24, 2020 • 9min
The fastest vaccine ever developed
In the 1960s five-year-old Jeryl Lynn Hilleman got ill with mumps. Her father Dr Maurice Hilleman took a swab from the back of her throat and used it to help create a vaccine for the disease - more quickly than any previous vaccine had ever been completed. During his decades long career Dr Hilleman worked on vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis and meningitis.Photo: Jeryl Lynn Hilleman with her sister, Kirsten, in 1966 as a doctor gave her the mumps vaccine developed by their father Maurice Hilleman. Courtesy of Merck.
Jul 23, 2020 • 14min
The first safe house for Afghan women
In 2003 the first refuge for women fleeing violence and abuse was opened in Kabul, Afghanistan, a country that has been labelled one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. The UN estimates that over 50% of women in Afghanistan face domestic abuse from their partner in their lifetime. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Mary Akrami who risked her life to help set up and run Afghanistan's first women's safe house.
Photo Mary Akrami Credit Getty
Jul 22, 2020 • 10min
The struggle to save Borneo's rainforests
The rainforests of Sarawak in Malaysia on the island of Borneo are some of the richest and most biodiverse ecosystems on earth - but for decades they've been under threat from commercial logging, permitted by the Malaysian government. In the 1980s, local people from the Penan and Kelabit ethnic groups began to fight back against the logging, setting up blockades and appealing to international environmental groups for support. Their campaign would make headlines around the world.Lucy Burns speaks to activist Mutang Urud, who helped organise the blockades and later went on a world tour to attract attention to their cause.PICTURE: Tribespeople with spears block the road as plantation company vehicles approach a blockade in Long Nen in Malaysia's Sarawak State in August 2009. (AFP photo/Saeed Khan via Getty Images)
Jul 21, 2020 • 9min
The Million Man March
On 16th October 1995 hundreds of thousands of African American men marched on Washington D.C. in an attempt to put black issues back on the government agenda and to present a positive image of black men.
Aquila Powell – 23 at the time – was one of the few women who attended the march. She was working for the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation and trying to encourage attendees to register to vote.
She talks to Ben Carter about her recollections of that day.(Photo:The Million Man March, Credit:TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Jul 20, 2020 • 9min
The man who tried to kill Hitler
On 20th July 1944 Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg put a bomb under Adolf Hitler's desk. Although the bomb exploded, it failed to kill the German Nazi leader. Alex Last spoke to Berthold von Stauffenberg, son of the WW2 army officer, in 2014.Photo:Claus von Stauffenberg. Credit: Gedenkstaette Deutscher Widersta/AFP/Getty Images
Jul 17, 2020 • 9min
South Korea's 1980s prison camps
A so-called Social Purification project led to thousands of ordinary citizens being imprisoned under the military government in South Korea in the 1980s. Under the pretence of clearing the streets of vagrants and undesirables, people were sent to camps disguised as 'social welfare centres' where many of them suffered torture, forced labour, and physical and sexual abuse. Bugyeong Jung has been speaking to Seung-woo Choi who was taken to a centre in the port city of Busan when he was just 13 years old.Photo: Seung-woo Choi talking to reporters outside South Korea's National Assembly. Credit BBC.
Jul 16, 2020 • 9min
The scandal of Liverpool's missing Chinese sailors
During World War Two, thousands of Chinese sailors and engineers served in the British Merchant Navy, keeping supplies flowing into the port of Liverpool and risking their lives in crossings of the Atlantic. Many settled in the port city and started families with local women but, after fighting ended in 1945, the British authorities began forcing them to leave. Simon Watts talks to Yvonne Foley, whose Chinese father was pressured to return to Shanghai, never to be seen again.PHOTO: Chinese sailors in Liverpool in 1942 (Getty Images).
Jul 15, 2020 • 12min
Returning Ethiopia's looted history
The Stele of Axum, a 4th century Ethiopian treasure, was finally returned by Italy in 2005. It had been taken from the ancient town of Axum in northern Ethiopia by invading Italian fascist forces in 1937. The huge 24 metre tall stele was originally erected to mark the site of a royal tomb during the Kingdom of Axum. The Axumites were a powerful and sophisticated civilisation which emerged in northern Ethiopia more than 2000 years ago. Alex Last spoke to Ethiopian archaeologist Tekle Hagos of Addis Ababa University about the return of the great monument. Photo: The Stele of Axum , now re-erected back in Axum, northern Ethiopia.(Getty Images)
