In February 1998, the great war correspondent and writer, Martha Gellhorn, died. She had defied the conventions of her time to report on many of the major conflicts of the 20th century. Her stepson Sandy Matthews tells Witness her story, and how she changed the face of war reporting.

Photo: Martha Gellhorn (centre) talks to Indian soldiers of the British Army during the battle for Italy in the Second World War (credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

The Burmese independence leader was born on February 13th 1915. He negotiated with the British over the end of colonial rule but was assassinated just months before his country made it to independence. Hear a rare interview with one of his contemporaries - Ba Aye.

(Photo: Aung San in 1947. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On February 13th 1945 the Allies began a series of air raids against the German city of Dresden. The bombing started a firestorm in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, and the cultural and architectural centre of Dresden was completely destroyed.

(Photo: Dresden in the aftermath of the bombardment. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In the late 1950s thousands of people in the far south west of Japan were poisoned by industrial waste. A factory was pumping heavy metals into a river which led to the sea. Locals who ate fish and seafood from the surrounding area suffered all sorts of disabilities as a result.

Fujie Sakamoto lost one daughter to what was being called 'Minamata disease', her second daughter was born severely disabled.

Photo: Fujie Sakamoto today.

In the early months of 1940, Finland was in a desperate fight for survival against the might of the Soviet Union. Hear from Finnish veteran, Antti Henttonen, who was 17 when he joined up. He survived the war but lost his family home.

(Photo: Finnish troops on skis on the Russo-Finnish border in 1939. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On 9 February 1955 apartheid South Africa forcibly evicted residents from Sophiatown, a multi-racial suburb in Johannesburg. It was demolished and turned into a whites-only area called Triomf. Victor Mokine was a child at the time and shares his memories with Witness.

(Photo: Victor Mokine at the Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre in Sophiatown. Credit: THMC)

In 1993 a message arrived in London which kickstarted the Northern Irish Peace Process. But had the prominent Irish Republican, Martin McGuinness, really announced that 'the conflict is over'? Owen Bennett Jones has been speaking to one of the mediators involved in secret negotiations - Denis Bradley.

Photo: Martin McGuinness. Copyright: Press Association.

Four young black men began protesting against racial segregation in February 1960 by staging a sit-in at a whites only lunch counter in a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the four, was Franklin McCain - he spoke to Witness in 2011.

(Photo: Franklin McCain in 2010. Copyright: Getty Images)

In January 1990 the global fast food giant opened its first restaurant in the capital of the USSR. Witness speaks to George Cohon, the man behind the deal; and to Sveta Polyakova, one of the first Russians to work there.

(Photo: McDonald's in Moscow. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

In February 1950, the first spy of the Cold War, German-born physicist Klaus Fuchs, was arrested after he confessed that he had been passing top secret information about Britain and America's nuclear programme to Moscow. During the war, Fuchs had worked in America on the first atomic bomb. His nephew Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski tells Witness about his uncle.

(Photo: Physicist and spy Klaus Fuchs (left) is met by his nephew at an airport in East Berlin in 1959 after being released from a British prison where he spent nine and a half years for spying for the Soviet Union. Credit: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)