Witness History

Witness History episodes:

• 04.18.2024

  Deadly Everest avalanche

  On 18 April 2014, an avalanche on Mount Everest killed 16 men, who were carrying supplies for commercial expeditions to higher camps. The sherpas were on the Khumbu Icefall, just above Base Camp in Nepal, when the avalanche happened. It...

  
• 04.17.2024

  West Africa's Ebola virus epidemic

  The 2014 Ebola outbreak devastated West Africa, killing more than 11,000 people over a two year period. One country that suffered was Sierra Leone. The disease started in Guinea, but quickly spread to neighbouring countries. Before May 2014, there...

  
• 04.16.2024

  The friendship train: Connecting India and Bangladesh

  When the train service between India and Bangladesh was suspended in 1965, following war between Pakistan and India, it lay dormant for 43 years. But in a day of celebration in 2008, the Maitree (or Friendship) Express rumbled into life...

  
• 04.15.2024

  Egypt and the ‘Cairo 52’

  A group of men known as the ‘Cairo 52’ were arrested in Egypt in May 2001. They were on board the Queen Boat, a floating gay nightclub on the River Nile. Omer, not his real name, was arrested and imprisoned...

  
• 04.12.2024

  Hiroo Onoda, Japan’s last WW2 soldier to surrender

  Hiroo Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who spent nearly 30 years in the Philippine jungle, believing World War Two was still going on. Using his training in guerilla warfare, he attacked and killed people living on Lubang...

  
• 04.11.2024

  St Teresa of Avila's severed hand

  After winning the Spanish Civil War in 1939, Franco's dictatorship began. During the war, he acquired St Teresa of Avila's severed hand and kept it for spiritual guidance, it was returned when he died in 1975. The hand was...

  
• 04.10.2024

  The Scream: A stolen masterpiece

  When Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream was stolen in 1994, an undercover operation was launched to get it back. Thirty years on from its recovery, hear from the art detective at the centre of the story. In 2013, Charley Hill...

  
• 04.09.2024

  How Lake Karla in Greece was drained

  Lake Karla supported hundreds of families in Thessaly, providing fish for all of the region and beyond. Christos and Ioanna Kotsikas grew up on the shores of the wetland and have mixed memories of the lake. They too lived...

  
• 04.08.2024

  The 2010 Kampala bombings

  In July 2010, two bombs went off at a rugby club in Uganda's capital Kampala. It was where hundreds had gathered to watch the football World Cup final. The attack killed 74 people and injured 85 others. The militant Islamist...

  
• 04.06.2024

  Bonus: The Black 14

  A bonus episode from the Amazing Sport Stories podcast – The Black 14. Sport, racism and protests are about to change the lives of “the Black 14” American footballers. It’s 1969 in the United States. They’ve arrived on scholarships at...

  
• 04.05.2024

  Sweden's Cinnamon Bun Day

  Sweden’s most beloved pastry is the cinnamon bun and every year on 4 October, locals celebrate the sweet, spiced snacks. The country’s first official Cinnamon Bun Day (or Kanelbullens dag in Swedish) took place in 1999. The woman behind the...

  
• 04.04.2024

  The Bluetooth story

  In the 1990s, Bluetooth was invented in a lab in Lund, Sweden. The technology is used today to wirelessly connect accessories such as mice, keyboards, speakers and headphones to desktops, laptops and mobile phones. It’s named...

  
• 04.03.2024

  Sweden's pioneering paternity leave

  Fifty years ago Sweden became the first country in the world to offer paid parental leave that was gender neutral. The state granted mothers and fathers 180 days that they could divide between them however they saw fit. The pioneering...

  
• 04.02.2024

  The man who invented the seat belt

  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 around the world. In 2022, Nils's stepson Gunnar Ornmark told Rachel Naylor about the inventor’s...

  
• 03.31.2024

  Fifty years of Abba

  It's 50 years since Swedish pop group Abba won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. The victory provided a platform for the band to become one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time. Abba's current manager, Görel...

  
• 03.29.2024

  Surviving the Rwandan genocide

  April 1994 was the start of the Rwandan genocide, 100 days of slaughter, rape and atrocities. As part of the Tutsi ethnic group, Antoinette Mutabazi’s family were a target for the killings. So her father told her to run, leaving...

  
• 03.28.2024

  The founding of Nato

  Nato - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - was formed in 1949 by 12 countries, including the US, UK, Canada and France. Its aim was to block expansion by the then Soviet Union - a group of states which included...

  
• 03.27.2024

  Britain's first beach for nudists

  In 1980, the seaside town of Brighton opened a very unusual attraction. It was the first British beach dedicated to nudists. The opening followed a passionate battle between two local politicians and caused controversy among some locals. In 2011, Madeleine...

  
• 03.26.2024

  The Heimlich Manoeuvre

  Since its adoption as a first aid method, the Heimlich Manoeuvre has saved untold numbers of lives around the world. Developed by American physician Dr Henry Heimlich as a way to save choking victims from dying, his manoeuvre would...

  
• 03.25.2024

  Britain's Mirpuri migration

  In 1967 a dam was built in Mirpur, Pakistan, that would spur a huge global migration. Water diverted by the dam forced around 100,000 people to leave their homes. Thousands migrated to the UK and today between 60% and 70%...

  
• 03.22.2024

  Wham! in China

  In 1985, the British band Wham! became the first Western pop act to play in China. Around 12,000 fans packed into the Worker’s Gymnasium in Beijing to hear such hits as Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Freedom. Wham!’s...

  
• 03.21.2024

  Discovering the Terracotta Army

  It's 50 years since a chance find by Chinese farmers led to an astonishing archaeological discovery. Thousands of clay soldiers were uncovered in the province of Shaanxi after being buried for more than 2,000 years. They were guarding the tomb...

  
• 03.20.2024

  The 'comfort women' of World War Two

  Between 1932 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of women and girls across Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Referred to as "comfort women", they were taken from countries including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and...

  
• 03.19.2024

  Surviving re-education in China’s Cultural Revolution

  In 1968, Jingyu Li and her parents were among hundreds of thousands of Chinese people sent to labour camps during Mao Zedong’s so-called cultural revolution. The aim was to re-educate those not thought to be committed to Chairman’s Mao drive...

  
• 03.18.2024

  Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write

  In 1958, a brand new writing system was introduced in China called Pinyin. It used the Roman alphabet to help simplify Chinese characters into words. The mastermind behind Pinyin was a professor called Zhou Youguang who'd previously worked in...

  
• 03.15.2024

  The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

  The Mount Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii in 79AD is well known, but far fewer people know about the last time the volcano erupted in 1944. It was World War Two, and families in southern Italy had already lived through...

  
• 03.14.2024

  Winifred Atwell: The honky-tonk star who was Sir Elton John’s hero

  Winifred Atwell was a classically-trained pianist from Trinidad who became one of the best-selling artists of the 1950s in the UK. She played pub tunes on her battered, out-of-tune piano which travelled everywhere with her. Her fans included...

  
• 03.13.2024

  Paraguay adopts its second language

  In 1992, Guarani was designated an official language in Paraguay’s new constitution, alongside Spanish. It is the only indigenous language of South America to have achieved such recognition and ended years of rejection and discrimination against Paraguay’s majority Guarani speakers....

  
• 03.12.2024

  Finding the longest set of footprints left by the first vertebrate

  In 1992 off the coast of Ireland, a Swiss geology student accidentally discovered the longest set of footprints made by the first four-legged animals to walk on earth. They pointed to a new date for the key milestone in evolution...

  
• 03.11.2024

  11M: The day Madrid was bombed

  A regular morning turned into a day of nightmares for Spanish commuters on 11 March 2004. In the space of minutes, 10 bombs detonated on trains around Madrid, killing nearly 200 people and injuring more than 1,800. With a general...

  
• 03.08.2024

  MH370: The plane that vanished

  On 8 March 2014, a plane carrying 239 passengers and crew disappeared. What happened to missing flight MH370 remains one of the world's biggest aviation mysteries. Ghyslain Wattrelos’ wife Laurence and teenage children Ambre and Hadrien were on the plane,...

  
• 03.07.2024

  Rehabilitating Kony's child soldiers in Uganda

  In 2002, a Catholic nun arrived in Gulu, a town in northern Uganda, to help set up a sewing school for locals. For years, the town had been the target of brutal attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army,...

  
• 03.06.2024

  The Carnation Revolution in Portugal

  25 April is Freedom Day in Portugal. Five decades ago on that date, flowers filled the streets of the capital Lisbon as a dictatorship was overthrown. Europe’s longest-surviving authoritarian regime was toppled in a day, with barely a drop of...

  
• 03.05.2024

  French child evacuees of World War Two

  In August and September 1939, tens of thousands of children began to be evacuated from Paris. The move, part of France's 'passive defence' tactic, aimed to protect children from the threat of German bombardment. Colette Martel was just nine when...

  
• 03.04.2024

  Uruguay v the tobacco giant

  Uruguay was one of the first countries in the world to introduce anti-smoking laws. But in 2010, the tobacco giant Philip Morris took the country to court claiming the measures devalued its investments. The case pitted the right of a...

  
• 03.01.2024

  The Whisky War: Denmark v Canada

  In 1984, a diplomatic dispute broke out between Canada and Denmark over the ownership of a tiny island in the Arctic. The fight for Hans Island off the coast of Greenland became known as the Whisky War. Both sides would...

  
• 02.29.2024

  The discovery of the Lord of Sipan in Peru

  In 1987, Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva received a call from the police urging him to look at ancient artefacts confiscated from looters. The seized objects were so precious that Walter decided to set up camp in Sipan, the site where...

  
• 02.28.2024

  The lost Czech scrolls

  On 5 February 1964, an unusual delivery was made to a synagogue in London. More than 1,500 Torah scrolls, lost since the end of World War Two, were arriving from Czechoslovakia. The sacred Jewish texts had belonged to communities destroyed...

  
• 02.27.2024

  Crimea's Soviet holiday camp

  Artek, on the shores of the Black Sea in Crimea, was a hugely popular Soviet holiday camp. Maria Kim Espeland was one of the thousands of children who visited every year. In 2014, she told Lucy Burns about life in...

  
• 02.26.2024

  Russia annexes Crimea

  In 2014, Russia annexed the strategic Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, a move seen by Kyiv and many other countries as illegal. The crisis it caused was so acute the world seemed on the brink of a new cold war. In...

  
• 02.23.2024

  Whistler: Creating one of the world’s biggest ski resorts

  In 2003, Whistler Blackcomb won its bid to host the Winter Olympic Games for the first time. It was sixth time lucky for the Canadian ski resort which had been opened to the public in 1966. The mountain...

  
• 02.22.2024

  Columbus Lighthouse

  In 1992, Columbus Lighthouse opened in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. It was designed to house the ashes of explorer, Christopher Columbus. The huge memorial is built in the form of a horizontal cross and...

  
• 02.21.2024

  Trans murder in Honduras

  In June 2009, transgender sex worker and activist Vicky Hernandez was murdered in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. The killers were never identified or punished, but in 2021 the Inter-American Human Rights Court found the Honduran state responsible...

  
• 02.20.2024

  Icelandic women's strike

  In October 1975, 90% of women in Iceland took part in a nationwide protest over inequality. Factories and banks were forced to close and men were left holding the children as 25,000 women took to the streets. In 2015, Vigdís...

  
• 02.19.2024

  The Soviet scientist who made two-headed dogs

  In the 1950s, Soviet scientist Dr Vladimir Demikhov shocks the world with his two-headed dog experiments. He grafts the head and paws of one dog onto the body of another. One of his creations lives for 29 days. He wants...

  
• 02.16.2024

  Supermalt: The malt drink created after the Nigerian civil war

  In 1972, a food supplement used by soldiers during the Nigerian civil war was turned into a popular malt drink by a brewery in the Danish town of Faxe. It was called Supermalt and it became so popular that the...

  
• 02.15.2024

  The small Irish town known as ‘Little Brazil’

  Gort in the west of Ireland is known by the nickname ‘Little Brazil’ because it’s home to so many Brazilians. They first came to Ireland in the late 1990s to work in the town’s meat factory. Lucimeire Trindade was just...

  
• 02.14.2024

  The Juliet letters

  The Juliet Club is in Verona, Italy, a place known throughout the world as being the city of love. The club has been replying to mail addressed to Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, Juliet since the early 1990s. The story...

  
• 02.13.2024

  Patty Hearst: Rebel heiress

  When wealthy newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by far-left militants in February 1974, America saw her as a victim. But two months later, she announced she had decided to join the group. Soon, she was accompanying it on an...

  
• 02.12.2024

  The WW2 escape line that fooled the Nazis

  In 1940 a daring rescue operation began to help Allied servicemen escape from Nazi-occupied France. French resistance fighter Roland Lepers was among those who guided stranded Allied soldiers and airmen to neutral Spain during World War Two. The 1,000 km...