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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    The mysterious death of Pablo Neruda

    In 1973, the poet and prominent communist tried to flee persecution in Chile

  2. The assassination of King Faisal

    In 1975, the king of Saudi Arabia was shot by his nephew

  3. Tsunami devastates Samoa

    In 2009 a tsunami killed 149 people. Lumepa Hald tells the story of destruction and loss

  4. The funeral of Nelson Mandela

    In 2013, South Africa's first black president was buried in his ancestral village

  5. Vatican citizen Emanuela Orlandi disappears

    In 1983, a suspected kidnapping led to scandal

  6. Anna Akhmatova: The poet who defied a regime

    How the great poet kept writing even through the darkest days of Soviet history

  7. Yeltsin speaks at the reburial of the Romanovs

    In 1998, the Russian president condemned the Soviet violence that killed Tsar Nicholas II

  8. Murder of the Romanovs

    In 1918, the Russian royal family were killed by the Bolsheviks

  9. The release of DOOM

    In 1993, a controversial sci-fi video game called DOOM was released

  10. ‘The disappeared’ of Argentina

    In 1977 a woman became one of thousands who disappeared from the streets of Buenos Aires

  11. A Greek coup: The day the colonels took power

    In 1967, army officers seized power in Greece in a US-backed coup

  12. Thousands of Danish brains in plastic buckets

    In 1945, a collection that would amass 9,479 brains was started

  13. La Haine: The film that shocked France

    How Mathieu Kassovitz's critique of policing shocked French society

  14. World's first solar-heated home

    In 1948, the Dover Sun House, in the US, was the first home to be heated by solar power

  15. Tanzania adopts Swahili to unite the country

    Tanzania's leader, Julius Nyerere, made Swahili the official language in the early 1960s

  16. Cameroon’s mysterious lake deaths

    In 1986, remote parts of Cameroon were turned into ghost villages overnight

  17. The bird that defied extinction

    In 1977, the white-winged guan was rediscovered in Peru after a century

  18. Cabbage Patch Kids

    Christmas 1983 saw frenzied shoppers buy three million Cabbage Patch Kids

  19. The Mumbai attacks

    In 2008, 10 gunmen killed more than 100 people in Mumbai’s busiest hot spots

  20. The Paris heatwave

    In 2003, Paris was overwhelmed by the hottest European heatwave for 500 years

  21. Kennedy’s nail-biter election victory

    In 1960, John F Kennedy became the youngest person to be elected United States president.

  22. The invention of bubble tea

    Chun Shui Tang tea house in Taiwan began selling bubble tea in 1987

  23. The independence of Zambia

    How Zambia became independent in 1964

  24. Discovering the ancient city of Thonis-Heracleion

    In 2000 Franck Goddio made one of the greatest ever underwater discoveries

  25. The Bolivian Water War

    How Bolivians in the city of Cochabamba fought against the “leasing of the rain”

  26. Rosalind Franklin: DNA pioneer

    The scientist produced an X-ray photograph in 1952, that helped show the structure of DNA

  27. Eyjafjallajökull: The volcano that stopped a continent

    In 2010, a cloud of volcanic ash brought Europe’s planes back to earth

  28. The invention of the EpiPen

    How engineer Sheldon Kaplan and his team made the EpiPen, the lifesaving allergy device

  29. The hippo and the tortoise

    In 2004, a hippo and a tortoise became friends. Their story gained worldwide fame

  30. Destruction of Mostar Bridge

    On 9 November 1993 the historic bridge was destroyed during the Bosnian War

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