Main content

Witness History Episodes

  1.

    The Battle of Gondar

    In 1941, Italian colonial rule in Africa ended after a last stand by Mussolini's soldiers

  2. Domestic violence in Brazil

    In 2006 Brazil passed the ground-breaking 'Maria da Penha law' to tackle domestic abuse

  3. England's summer of riots

    How six weeks of race riots gripped towns in northern England in 2001

  4. When the Taliban took Kabul

    Taliban fighters first took control of Afghanistan's capital city Kabul in 1996

  5. Jane Goodall and chimpanzees

    Chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall has died aged 91. This is a programme from our archive

  6. Prisoner of the Cultural Revolution

    Kim Gordon and his parents were locked up for two years in a hotel in China in the 1960s

  7. The race for the jet engine

    Inspiration, rejection and war - a personal account of the invention of the jet engine

  8. The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior

    In July 1985 the Greenpeace boat was bombed in New Zealand by French secret agents

  9. The first World Romani Congress

    Roma people from all around Europe met up in England in 1971

  10. The famine in North Korea

    After the fall of the Soviet Union communist North Korea suffered a famine in the 1990s

  11. Britain's wartime gold

    When Britain went to war with Germany in 1939 it had to find somewhere to keep its wealth

  12. Cuba's blindness epidemic

    Up to 50,000 Cubans were inexplicably struck down with sight loss in the early 1990s

  13. China's trailblazing foreign students

    We hear from one of the first students to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution

  14. The Chinese Communist Party

    A small group of revolutionaries founded the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921

  15. The world's first offshore wind farm

    The world's first offshore wind farm was built off the coast of Denmark in 1991

  16. The Syrian playwright who challenged the regime

    A play staged in Damascus undermined official propaganda after the 1967 Six Day War

  17. Zimbabwe's mass UFO sightings

    Around 60 children said they saw 'aliens' near their school playground in September 1994

  18. The repeal of 'Don't ask, don't tell'

    For decades LGBT people in the US military had to keep their sexuality secret

  19. China's LGBT 'cooperative marriages'

    Thousands of gay men and lesbians in China hold fake marriages to avoid family pressure

  20. The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'

    How the sexually explicit journals of a 19th-century English lesbian came to light

  21. Woubis, yossis and travestis: LGBT activism in Côte d’Ivoire

    In 1992, a group of LGBT Ivoirians stormed the office of a national newspaper

  22. The Stonewall Inn

    How a protest outside New York's Stonewall Inn inspired the modern gay rights movement.

  23. China's 'Economic Miracle'

    Massive economic growth has been possible because of migrant labour, but at what cost?

  24. The Trabant

    The iconic East German car that dominated the roads of communist Central Europe

  25. The police rape interview that shocked Britain

    The documentary that changed the way British police treated women reporting rape.

  26. Mindfulness for the masses

    Scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered a meditative approach to treat pain and depression.

  27. The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race

    Why an activist removed the Confederate flag from South Carolina's state house grounds

  28. The Fall of Madrid

    How the Spanish capital fell to General Franco's forces in 1939, ending a civil war

  29. The elections that Hamas won

    Palestinians voted to elect a new government in 2006. The outcome surprised everyone.

  30. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem

    The emotional first performance at the newly-built Coventry Cathedral in 1962

  2. 1
  3. …
  4. 44
  5. 45
  6. 46
  7. 47
  8. 48
  9. …
  10. 155