Witness History: Witness Archive 2017

Thousands of scientists moved to deepest Siberia to dedicate their lives to research. The Soviet authorities began building the city in 1957. Academics were enticed there by the promise of housing and interesting work. Olga Smirnova spoke to Dr Victor Varand who made his life in Akademgorodok, or Academic City.

Photo: Scientists at work in Academic City. Credit: Victor Varand.

Alexander Litvinenko was a former colonel in the Russian secret service, but fled to London seeking political asylum when he became critical of the Putin government in 2000. In November 2006 he was poisoned with the highly radioactive substance Polonium 210. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to his wife, Marina, about his life and excruciating death.

(PHOTO: Alexander Litvinenko in a London hospital a couple of days before his death in November 2006. Credit Getty Images.)

In November 2002, an oil tanker, the Prestige, sank off the coast of Galicia in north-west Spain, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history. In the following months, thousands of people from all over Spain travelled to Galicia to help clean up the spill. Simon Watts talks to Xavier Mulet, one of the volunteers.

(Photo: Volunteers cleaning up after the Prestige. Credit: Xavier Mulet)

Colonel Domingo Monterrosa was one of El Salvador's most successful and ruthless military commanders in the fight against leftist rebels. But in October 1984 the rebels carried out an audacious plan to kill him. Mike Lanchin has spoken to one former rebel and a war correspondent about the man and the plot.

(Photo: Colonel Domingo Monterrosa (R), speaking with one of his company commanders, 1983. Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

It was one of the most notorious spy cases in US history. On 27th November 1954, former US diplomat Alger Hiss was released after spending four years in jail for allegedly lying about being a Soviet agent. Alger Hiss had been seen as a potential secretary of state, but was unable to shake off allegations that he'd passed official documents to Moscow. His conviction was the prelude to a Communist witch-hunt in America that became known as the McCarthy era. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Alger Hiss's son Tony Hiss about growing up in the shadow of the scandal, and his belief that his father was innocent.

Picture: US state department official, Alger Hiss, denying he was a member of a Communist cell before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Washington on 28th August 1948. (Credit: William Bond/Keystone/Getty Images)

East Germany's most famous singer-songwriter was exiled to the West in November 1976, causing an international outcry. Wolf Biermann was stripped of his GDR citizenship while on tour in West Germany.

Wolf Biermann speaks to Lucy Burns about his political songs and his fame on both sides of the Berlin Wall.

Picture: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The buddy movie about a cowboy doll and a toy astronaut used computer-generated images to tell a story that appealed to audiences around the world.

Photo: Woody (R) and Buzz Lightyear (L) in a Japanese cinema. (Credit:Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)

The president of South Vietnam was overthrown and murdered in a coup in November 1963 - with the support of the American government.

Lucy Burns speaks to Ngo Dinh Diem's niece Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, and American official Rufus Phillips.

Picture: Keystone/Getty Images

Charles Manson's followers murdered nine people on his orders. But how to prove his guilt when he wasn't on the scene at the time of the killings? Vincent Bugliosi was the young prosecutor who succeeded in bringing him to trial. Mr Bugliosi spoke to Chloe Hadjimatheou for Witness - the former prosecutor died in 2015.

Photo: Charles Manson in 2009. Credit: Getty Images.

In 1979 Islamic militants seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. Hundreds were killed as Saudi security forces battled for two weeks to retake the shrine. The militants were ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims who believed that the Mahdi, the prophesied Redeemer, had emerged and was a member of their group. The BBC's Eli Melki spoke to eyewitnesses who were inside the Grand Mosque during the siege.