In July 1999 two members of British celebrity royalty tied the knot.

Victoria Adams of the Spice Girls, and David Beckham of Manchester United were both at the top of their professions.

When they announced their wedding, the British press went into celebrity overdrive.

For 65 years the BBC World Service has broadcast in Russian, this weekend it stops.

The Russian Service came into its own during the attempted coup by communist hardliners in August 1991.

Mikhail Gorbachev said he got his news from the BBC, while being held under house arrest in Crimea.

When Leonardo da Vinci, the great Renaissance painter, was invited to paint a huge fresco in Florence - he could not have imagined that he would end up in direct competition with Michelangelo.

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In September 1999 there was a nuclear accident at Tokaimura in Japan. Workers mixing nuclear fuel had managed to start a nuclear reaction by mistake. For several days radiation leaked into the surrounding area.

The English author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin throughout the 1930s. His vision of the city has been linked with the German capital ever since.

In March 1994, the first women were ordained as Anglican priests. Witness speaks to Angela Berners-Wilson, one of 32 women ordained that day. She speaks about her long fight to become a priest in the Church of England.

It was during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 that Saddam Hussein's jets carried out a gas attack against Halabja in northern Iraq.

Five thousand people were killed in the Halabja attack, considered one of the worst atrocities of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Mariwan Hama-Saeed was a small boy living in the town at the time.

When a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania malfunctioned - Victor Galinsky was one of the men charged with putting things right. He talks to Witness.

This programme was first broadcast last year.

They lasted for less than 12 minutes, but US air strikes against targets in Libya in April 1986, shook the country.

Three of Colonel Gaddafi's children were among the injured - his adopted daughter died.

But did they strengthen or weaken his hold on power?