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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    Soweto uprising: Children who marched against apartheid

    In 1976, an uprising was sparked when demonstrating children were gunned down

  2. South Africa's referendum on apartheid

    The last whites-only vote in South Africa was held in 1992

  3. Major Charity Adams and the Six-Triple-Eight

    The first African-American woman to lead a World War Two battalion

  4. Deadly Everest avalanche

    In 2014, an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 sherpas on Mount Everest

  5. West Africa's Ebola virus epidemic

    In 2014, Sierra Leone was devastated by Africa's biggest Ebola outbreak on record

  6. The friendship train: Connecting India and Bangladesh

    In 2008, India and Bangladesh were reconnected by train after 43 years

  7. Egypt and the ‘Cairo 52’

    In May 2001, 52 men were arrested in a gay nightclub floating on the River Nile

  8. Hiroo Onoda, Japan’s last WW2 soldier to surrender

    Hiroo Onoda spent 30 years fighting in the jungle, believing the war was still going on

  9. St Teresa of Avila's severed hand

    How General Franco kept the hand of St Teresa of Avila for spiritual guidance.

  10. The Scream: A stolen masterpiece

    In 1994, an undercover operation was launched to recover the Scream painting

  11. How Lake Karla in Greece was drained

    In 1962, Thessaly’s Lake Karla was drained by the Greek government

  12. The 2010 Kampala bombings

    Bombings in Uganda in 2010 killed 74. Many were football fans watching the World Cup

  13. Sweden's Cinnamon Bun Day

    In 1999, a delicious new tradition was born in Sweden's kitchens

  14. The Bluetooth story

    The story of how a Viking inspired wireless technology.

  15. Sweden's pioneering paternity leave

    Fifty years ago Sweden introduced gender neutral parental leave

  16. The man who invented the seat belt

    In 1958, Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt for cars

  17. Fifty years of Abba

    In 1974, Swedish act Abba won the Eurovision song contest

  18. Surviving the Rwandan genocide

    April 1994 was the start of the Rwandan genocide. One hundred days of atrocities followed

  19. The founding of Nato

    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed to block the Soviet Union's expansion

  20. Britain's first beach for nudists

    In 1980, a seaside town opened a beach where people could strip off as they pleased

  21. The Heimlich Manoeuvre

    How the life-saving method to stop choking was developed

  22. Britain's Mirpuri migration

    In 1967, the Mangla Dam was built in Mirpur spurring a huge global migration

  23. Wham! in China

    How Wham! became the first Western pop act to perform in communist China

  24. Discovering the Terracotta Army

    In 1974, Chinese farmers stumbled upon an astonishing archaeological site

  25. The 'comfort women' of World War Two

    Hundreds of thousands of Asian women were forced into sex slavery in the 1930s and 1940s

  26. Surviving re-education in China’s Cultural Revolution

    Thousands of people were sent to re-education camps during China’s cultural revolution

  27. Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write

    In 1958, Zhou Youguang introduced a new writing system in China

  28. The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

    Vesuvius is famous for burying Pompeii but it last erupted in 1944, during World War II.

  29. Winifred Atwell: The honky-tonk star who was Sir Elton John’s hero

    The forgotten story of Winifred Atwell, the pianist from Trinidad who broke sales records

  30. Paraguay adopts its second language

    How Guarani was officially recognised in Paraguay’s new constitution

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