Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes. Our guest is European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who completed the longest uninterrupted space flight of any European.

First, we go to Australia in the 1990s when amateur radio enthusiast Maggie Iaquinto befriended Soviet cosmonauts on the Mir space station. She updated them on global news as the USSR crumbled back on Earth.

Then, the inspiring story of Waris Dirie, who walked barefoot across the Somalian desert to escape child marriage and became an international supermodel.

We hear a harrowing account of Guatemala's civil war that ended in 1996.

Then, why the author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers, hated the Disney film.

Finally, the Canadian town that welcomed aliens in 1967.

Contributors:

(Photo: Mir Space Station in 1995. Credit: Space Frontiers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)