In 1963 a third of schools in the US had to change their rules on Bible reading after a Supreme Court decision. It all began when a teenager refused to read the Bible in class. 16 year old Ellery Schempp took his school to court accusing them of violating the first amendment by forcing him to read the Bible at the start of every school day. It challenged the principle of a separation of church and state enshrined in the US Constitution. Claire Bowes has been speaking to him for Witness.

Photo: Ellery Schempp aged 16 courtesy of Ellery Schempp

Audio of Supreme Court provided courtesy of Oyez, a free law project hosted at the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University.

In August 1936, the great poet and dramatist, Federico Garcia Lorca, was murdered by a fascist death squad at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Simon Watts introduces archive recordings of friends of Lorca and speaks to the Hispanist, Ian Gibson. This programme was first broadcast in 2010.

PHOTO: Federico Garcia Lorca around 1929 (Popperfoto/Getty Images)

At the end of WW2, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens who had ended up outside the USSR, escaped forced repatriation by the Red Army. Dina Newman hears from one family, originally from Soviet Belorussia, who disguised their ethnic origin and fled to Australia. Photo: Tanya Iwanow with her daughter Tamara, in Sydney, Australia (family archive)

In 1998, al-Qaeda killed over 200 people in a co-ordinated attack on two US embassies in East Africa. It was one of the first major bombings carried out by the group. We hear from George Mimba who was working in the embassy in Kenya when the attack took place.

In August 1963, work started on the excavation of one of Israel's most important archaeological sites - Masada by the Dead Sea, site of a famous mass suicide two thousand years ago. David Stacey was one of the volunteers on the dig.

PICTURE: An aerial photo taken on May 13, 2008 shows the ancient hilltop fortress of Masada in the Judean desert (MENAHEM KAHANA / AFP)

On August 7 1974, New Yorkers woke to the amazing sight of a figure walking on a cable strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre.

High-wire artist Philippe Petit remembers one of his most daring feats, high above the streets of New York.

(Photo: AP Photo/Alan Welner)

In August 1981 President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers. The strike, which was illegal under American law, lasted just two days, but it was to become a watershed moment in labour relations in the US. Witness speaks to John Dwyer, one of those sacked, and to Ken Moffett, who was involved in trying to settle the dispute.

(AP Photo/Dave Pickoff)

The Middle East's oldest arts festival was first held n the ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon in the summer of 1956. Some of the greatest names in music, theatre and dance performed there - Margot Fonteyn, Ella Fitzgerald, Herbert von Karajan, the Lebanese singer Fairuz. Witness talks to Mona Joreige whose aunt helped to organise the first Baalbek festival, and who was herself part of the organising committee for more than 20 years.

(Photo: Syrian singer Mayada al-Hinnawi performing at the 2015 Baalbek International Festival. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

It is 65 years since the publication of JD Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye. But as the book's fame grew, Salinger himself became more and more reclusive, eventually ceasing publishing altogether. Witness hears the story of how, more than 30 years later, a professor of American literature, Roger Lathbury, almost convinced the great man to change his mind.

(Photo: JD Salinger in 1951, five years before the publication of The Catcher in the Rye. Credit: Little, Brown & Co/AP)

In August 1965, at the age of just 20, the British cellist Jacqueline Du Pre recorded the Elgar cello concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbirolli. It became one of the most famous classical recordings of the 20th Century. Du Pre's career was cut short less than a decade later by multiple sclerosis.

(Photo: Jacqueline Du Pre in rehearsal)