Witness History: Witness Archive 2015

In December 1995, the first disability rights legislation was passed by India's parliament. An estimated 60 million people, almost six percent of India's population, are affected by physical or mental disabilities. Witness been speaking to Javed Abidi who led the campaign to change the law.

Photo: Disability rights campaigners protest in Delhi, December 19th 1995. Credit: Javed Abidi)

In the mid-1970s, English classical actor Anthony Daniels was asked to audition for a role as a droid in a new science fiction film by a little-known Hollywood director. The film turned out to be Star Wars and the director, George Lucas. Star Wars went on to become one of the biggest blockbusters of all time; while Anthony Daniels turned C3PO into one of the most famous robots in cinema history.

(Photo: Anthony Daniels with C3PO. Credit: Associated Press)

In 1974, a Hungarian architect, Ernő Rubik invented his best selling puzzle. Over the next forty years, more than 350 million Rubik's Cubes were sold all over the world. Mr Rubik tells Dina Newman how he came up with the idea and how it became a global phenomenon.

When Bangladesh fought for independence from Pakistan, thousands of Pakistani troops were sent to fight in what was then called East Pakistan. Shujaat Latif was sent to the town of Jassore where he fought, and then surrendered. He spent two and a half years as a prisoner-of-war. Hear his story.

Photo: Indian army soldiers fire on Pakistani positions, December 15th 1971. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.

In December 1960, while the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, was out of the country, his Imperial Bodyguard took over the capital Addis Ababa and proclaimed his son the new emperor. We speak to Dr Asfa-Wossen Asserate, the grand nephew of Haile Selassie, about the coup. Dr Asfa-Wossen is the author of King of Kings, a new history of Haile Selassie's rule. Photo: Emperor Haile Selassie in the Royal Palace in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, circa 1960. (Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On December 11th 1965, seminal alternative rock band the Velvet Underground played their first gig at a high school in New Jersey. Rob Norris was there.

Picture credit: Getty Images - c1968 - Lou REED and John CALE and VELVET UNDERGROUND (photo by Charlie Gillett Collection/Redferns)

In December 1965, three members of the Ku Klux Klan were found guilty over the murder of white civil rights activist, Viola Liuzzo, in one of the first successful prosecutions of its kind in the United States. Viola Liuzzo was killed on the final day of the Selma to Montgomery march, when thousands of civil rights activists marched to demand that blacks be allowed to register to vote. Witness talks to one of the lawyers involved in the landmark case.

Photo: A Ku Klux Klan meeting in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1965. (Credit: Harry Benson/Getty Images)

After the Taliban fell from power in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001, the hunt for Osama bin Laden began in earnest. One American in particular led the search. He was CIA commander, Gary Berntsen, who had been tracking the al-Qaeda leader for years. In December 2001 he ordered a small group of special forces soldiers and Afghan fighters into the White Mountains close to Pakistan in the hope of cornering bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora.

(Photo: Afghan fighters look out over a smoking valley after a U.S. B-52 aircraft bombed a front line position in the mountains of Tora Bora in north-eastern Afghanistan. Credit: Associated Press)

In 1915, an Anglo-Indian attempt to capture Baghdad from the Ottoman empire ended in disaster. Thousands of British and Indian troops spent five months besieged in the small town of Kut, south of Baghdad, until they were forced to surrender to Ottoman forces. Only half of those taken prisoner survived their captivity. Hear archive recordings of those who took part in Britain's Mesopotamia campaign.

(Photo: Troops of the Ottoman Empire on their way to Kut, Mesopotamia, September 1915. Credit: Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In the 1980s Angola was a front line in the Cold War between communism and the West. In 1987 tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were sent to the Southern African country to support the Marxist government in its fight against UNITA rebels who were backed by South Africa and the USA. Alberto Lahens was a young special forces officer who was flown from Cuba to Africa to take part in the fighting.

(Photo: Cuban fighters in Angola. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)