By BBC World Service
History as told by the people who were there.
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In 1973, a fashion show was held in France which became known as the Battle of Versailles, a duel between designs from modern America and the capital of couture, Paris. Five American designers, including Oscar de la Renta and...
Rosa Parks was brought up in Alabama during the Jim Crow era, when state laws enforced segregation in practically all aspects of daily life. Public schools, water fountains, trains and buses all had to have separate facilities for white people...
Lucha Reyes was one of Peru’s greatest singers. She was born into poverty in 1936 and fought terrible health problems and racism throughout her life. But it didn’t stop her becoming a star of Peruvian Creole music - a fusion...
In March 2002, a young Nigerian Muslim woman was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and conceiving a child out of wedlock. Amina Lawal’s case attracted huge international attention and highlighted divisions between the Christian and Muslim regions...
In May 1986, 16-year-old Charlotte Mensah went to work in the UK’s first luxury Afro-Caribbean hair salon, Splinters. In London’s glamorous Mayfair, Splinters had earned a world-class reputation and hosted the likes of Diana Ross. Charlotte says it looked more...
The first commercial internet cafe opened in London on 1 September 1994. Eva Pascoe, from Poland, is one of the founders of Cyberia. She claims that Kylie Minogue was amongst the famous visitors and learnt how to use the...
In January 2008, seeds began arriving at the world's first global seed vault, buried deep in a mountain on an Arctic island, 1,000km north of the Norwegian coast. The vault was built to ensure the survival of the world's food...
In 1980, poor rural workers set up camp on land owned by the rich at Encruzilhada Natalino in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Brazil's government sent in the army to evict them and violent clashes followed. It was...
In September 1984, the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was summoned to Rome, facing accusations that his writing and teachings were "dangerous to the faith". He is a leading proponent of liberation theology, which says the Church should push for social...
During the 1970s, the US and Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War. The US, along with other Western countries, was a member of Nato, while the Soviet Union joined forces with central and eastern European countries...
The Magnificent Magyars were Hungary’s golden football team of the 1950s. But behind their shine lay a dark secret. In 1951, defender Sándor Szűcs was executed for trying to defect from the communist regime. The married centre-back had wanted to...
In 1937, Japan invaded China committing atrocities including the Nanjing Massacre. Wang Jingwei was a Chinese national hero and second-in-command of China’s ruling Nationalist Party. He wanted to negotiate with Japan but his colleagues wouldn’t listen. So he defected, and...
In 1949, Mildred Gillars – otherwise known as Axis Sally – became the first woman in American history to be convicted of treason. The former Broadway showgirl broadcast antisemitic Nazi propaganda on German State Radio during World War Two. Her...
In December 1939, fascist Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling travelled to Berlin from Oslo for a secret meeting with Adolf Hitler. Quisling suggested to Hitler that the British were planning to move into Norway for their own strategic needs. Norway...
In the early 2000s, a woman called Jamuna Tudu set out on a mission to protect her home state of Jharkhand's forests from India's so-called timber mafia. She inspired thousands of people to care for their natural environment and...
British zoologist Bob Golding turned the University of Ibadan's zoo into one of Nigeria's biggest tourist attractions in the 1970s. The zoo was famous for two gorillas he rescued from traffickers. And Bob's animal kingdom even had its own TV...
In June 2009, millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest against what they considered a rigged presidential election. The hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won 62% of the vote. All three defeated candidates disputed the results. The protests gave...
On 6 November 1975, tens of thousands of Moroccans poured into Spanish Sahara in a bid to claim it for their own. They danced, waved flags and played music as they faced off, unarmed, against gun-carrying Spanish soldiers. The so-called...
In Bolivia, on 25 October 1984, President Hernán Siles Zuazo announced he was going on hunger strike. He was trying to stop the booming cocaine industry in his country. It was the second time he had taken the job...
For two years, José Luis Peñas risked his life making secret recordings that revealed one of Spain's biggest corruption scandals. It forced the ruling party from power and brought down Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in 2018. José Luis Peñas speaks...
On the 11 January 1998 in Mumbai, India, the first World Laughter Day took place. It was the idea of Dr Madan Kataria, a medical doctor who wanted to test the theory that laughter is the best medicine. He tells...
In 1970, Natalia Makarova became the first female ballet star to defect to the West from Russia. The dancer claimed asylum during a UK tour, nine years after another Russian dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, had defected. Natalia later joined...
The fate of Louis-Charles, son of the last king of France, was for years shrouded in rumour. The little boy was said to have died in prison in 1795. But for years, rumours spread that he had been swapped with...
On 1 April 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage. Four couples were chosen to take part in a collective wedding at midnight which was broadcast on TV. Hélène Faasen and Anne-Marie Thus...
On 13 March 1989, the Canadian province of Quebec suffered a nine-hour electricity blackout. Much of the state's infrastructure was damaged, but the power companies couldn't find any obvious cause. Physicist Aja Hruska was one of the only...
The Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany. In May 1937, it flew over the Atlantic from Frankfurt, in Germany, to New Jersey, in the United States. During its mooring at Lakehurst Naval Air...
The wingsuit is the ultimate in extreme sports clothing. The aerodynamic outfit allows base jumpers and skydivers to free-fall for longer before opening a parachute. The road to creating it was littered with casualties, but in 1999 skydivers Jari Kuosma...
In 1985, British scientists made what would turn out to be one of the most important environmental discoveries of the 20th century - finding a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. The British Antarctic Survey, based in Cambridge, had been...
In February 1990, Nasa space probe Voyager took a famous photo of Earth as it left the Solar System. Seen from six billion kilometres away, our planet appears as a mere dot lit up by the sun, giving a sense...
In 1982, after a two-year global search, the BBC auditioned Ken Hom to be the star of a new Chinese cookery TV series. In the show, called Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery, he introduced viewers to dishes like dim sum and...
It’s one of the most popular dishes in South East Asian cooking and for many it’s seen as Thailand’s national dish. However, the origins of pad Thai are disputed. Some believe it was created and taken to the country...
In 1994, biotech company Calgene brought the world's first genetically-modified food to supermarket shelves. The Flavr Savr tomato kept fresh for 30 days and could be shipped long distances without going off. Yet the world was wary of this new...
The kiwi fruit is synonymous with New Zealand in the minds of most European and American shoppers. But the hairy fruit actually comes from China and was once known as the Chinese gooseberry. So how did New Zealand hijack...
In 1946, Italian confectioner Pietro Ferrero set out to bring chocolate to the masses. His recipe evolved over the years to become a world-famous product. Thomas Chatenier from the manufacturer tells Uma Doraiswamy how the chocolate and hazelnut formula spread...
In the 1960s, the singer Dafydd Iwan started campaigning for the Welsh language to gain official status in Wales. For years, Dafydd received little support. In January 1969 he decided to up the pressure, defacing a police station sign...
In 2014 three journalists were sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt. Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed became known as the Al Jazeera Three. The jail terms handed out to them led to an international outcry as...
In late 1973, Chile was in turmoil. General Augusto Pinochet had led a military coup deposing the socialist president Salvador Allende who was now dead. The army was rounding up leftists; torturing, imprisoning and killing them. In the capital Santiago,...
On 25 March 1975, Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal was murdered, shot by his nephew as he bent to kiss him as a greeting. The king’s oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani was standing beside him when the gun went off. In...
On 29 September 2009, a devastating tsunami hit Samoa, killing 149 people and leaving a trail of destruction. For Lumepa Hald it was a terrifying day which resulted in a tragic loss. She tells her story to Gill Kearsley....
On 15 December 2013, South Africa held the funeral of Nelson Mandela who led the struggle in defeating apartheid and became the country’s first black president. His ancestral home in the village of Qunu in South Africa’s Eastern Cape...
In 1983, the disappearance of a teenage girl who was a citizen of Vatican City led to a scandal. When Pope John Paul II made a public appeal to the people holding Emanuela Orlandi captive, the world took notice and...
The great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova lived through some of the darkest chapters of Soviet history, but never stopped writing even though the communist regime repeatedly tried to silence her. One of Anna's most famous poems, Requiem, is about her...