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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    The Nairobi US Embassy bombing

    A survivor's account of the al-Qaeda attacks in East Africa in 1998 which killed hundreds

  2. Meeting Osama bin Laden

    One man's story of his journey to talk to the Al-Qaeda leader in 1996

  3. The siege of Mecca

    In 1979 Islamist militants took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam

  4. The first space shuttle mission

    How the space shuttle Columbia revolutionised manned space exploration

  5. How the NRA became a US political lobbying giant

    How the National Rifle Association turned into a US political lobbying colossus.

  6. The Raymond Davis Incident

    How a shooting in the streets of Lahore brought US-Pakistani relations to the brink

  7. The return of Blue Lake

    How an ancient Native American sacred lake was finally returned to the Taos Pueblo people

  8. The Eichmann trial

    In April 1961 the Nazi official who ran holocaust death camps was put on trial in Israel

  9. China's 'Kingdom of women'

    An ancient matrilineal society which doesn't believe in marriage and where the women rule

  10. The vultures saved from extinction

    South Asian vultures started dying in huge numbers in the 1990s but no one knew why.

  11. Fighting for Castro at the Bay of Pigs

    Hear from a Cuban who fought against the US-backed exiles that invaded Cuba in April 1961

  12. How a worm helped explain human development

    The nematode worm c. elegans has enabled all sorts of discoveries about human biology

  13. The US Supreme Court's first woman justice

    In 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman judge at America's top court

  14. Discovering the Jet Stream

    Air raids and balloon bombs - the strange story behind the discovery of the Jet Stream

  15. From Leningrad to St Petersburg

    How the people of Russia's second city dropped the great communist leader's name

  16. David Attenborough's First Expedition

    The story of David Attenborough's first expedition.

  17. Mexico's female serial killer

    Juana Barraza was found guilty of murdering at least eleven elderly women in Mexico city

  18. The women who reclaimed the night

    How women in England took to the streets to protest against a serial killer

  19. Black Jesus

    In 1967 an African American church minister began preaching that Jesus was black.

  20. Kidnapped on an orchid hunt

    How two Englishmen were seized by Colombian rebels while crossing the lawless Darien Gap

  21. Mrs Thatcher’s ground-breaking Soviet TV interview

    How Mrs Thatcher shook up the Soviet media with a landmark interview in Moscow.

  22. When the prisoners ran the prison

    Prisoners at Walpole maximum security prison were in charge for three months in 1973

  23. Anorexia nervosa

    The death of the singer, Karen Carpenter, showed how devastating the illness could be.

  24. The fight against slavery in Mauritania

    Brahim Bilal Ramdhane was born into slavery in the 1960s, now he fights against it.

  25. South Africa takes on big pharma

    The fight between Big Pharma and South Africa over the right to import cheap drugs.

  26. The woman who got America talking about sex

    Dr Ruth Westheimer first became popular on a radio show in New York in the early 1980s

  27. Banksy’s first street art mural

    It’s difficult to pinpoint the first major piece of Banksy street art, could this be it?

  28. The Ulster Workers' Strike

    Protestant workers went on strike in Northern Ireland in 1974

  29. The dirtiest chess match in history

    How the 1978 World Chess Championship was overshadowed by allegations of dirty tricks

  30. Mars-500 isolation experiment

    Why six men were locked inside a spacecraft on earth for 520 days

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