Bombs planted on Spanish commuter trains and detonated at the height of the morning rush hour caused chaos in Madrid.

The attacks killed 191 people and injured almost 2,000. One rescue worker remembers that day.

Photo: One of the wrecked trains outside Atocha station (AP)

In 1996, a heavily-armed gunman killed sixteen children at a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane.

The attack caused shock not just in Britain, but around the world.

Witness speaks to the father of one of the victims. The loss of his daughter made him a campaigner for gun control.

We hear what it was like to be trapped in the Herald of Free Enterprise car ferry when it sank off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in 1987 - killing more than 190 people.

To mark a century of International Women's Day we bring you a portrait of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg.

Feminist icon, writer and theorist - Lenin called her the Eagle of the Revolution.

In 2002, a brutal civil war broke out in Ivory Coast.

It turned the once prosperous city of Abidjan into a place where African migrants and westerners all feared for their lives.

Paul Welsh covered the Civil War for the BBC. He recalls the atmosphere in Abidjan and how journalists themselves were targetted.

In March 1970, three white middle-class revolutionaries from the Weatherman movement accidentally killed themselves at their New York safehouse.

They died when the pipe bombs they were planning to use at a military base accidentally went off in the basement.

Witness speaks to Cathy Wilkerson, one of the survivors of the blast.

"I felt a slap in the face, this was a declaration of a racial war."

Wilf Mbanga was a young journalist when the white minority government in Rhodesia declared the country a republic.

Photo: Wilf Mbanga

The city of Krakow in Poland was home to a large Jewish community before World War II.

But with the arrival of the Nazis many of its Jews were deported, or fled. Then in 1941 a Jewish ghetto was built.

This programme begins with a deeply disturbing recollection.

Photo: Dr Ludwik Zurowski

When Colonel Muammar Gaddafi first took control in Libya in 1969 - few people had heard of him.

He and a group of fellow army officers carried out a coup while the King was out of the country.

Two ordinary Libyans remember that day.

(This programme was first broadcast last year.)

When Edward VIII fell in love with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, he had to choose between his throne and her.

We take you back to their low-key wedding in France, in 1937.

Part of the Witness Royal Weddings series.

(Photo:Getty images)