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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    The unlawful death of Christopher Alder

    The black former soldier choked to death on the floor of a British police station in 1998

  2. The doctor who discovered how cholera spread

    How Dr John Snow found out the cholera bug was spread through contaminated water in 1854.

  3. How South Africa banned skin-lightening creams

    In 1990, South Africa banned skin-lightening creams containing hydroquinone

  4. The lost Nazi-era art trove

    How a secret collection of art missing since Nazi rule was found in Germany in 2012

  5. Quarantined in a TB sanatorium

    The life of a nine-year-old girl quarantined in a TB sanatorium for 4 years in the 1950s

  6. The Rolling Stones drugs trial

    Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went on trial for drugs offences in June 1967

  7. Jana Andolan – Nepal’s people power movement

    A people’s movement brought an end to Nepal’s absolute monarchy in 1990.

  8. Russia’s bitter taste of capitalism

    Chaos and hardship hit Russia with the sudden market reforms of early 1992.

  9. The Chilean economy and its 'Chicago Boys'

    Thinkers trained in free-market economics in Chicago shaped Chile after its military coup

  10. Tanzania's socialist experiment

    In the 1960s Tanzania tried out a new form of socialism called Ujamaa

  11. South Korea's economic miracle

    How a poor, war-ravaged nation became a global economic powerhouse

  12. The New Deal

    How the USA used public spending projects to battle through the Great Depression

  13. The ‘Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes’ anti-racist exercise

    A teacher decided to separate pupils according to eye colour to teach them about racism.

  14. The friendship train

    The passenger train service between India and Bangladesh was resumed after 43 years.

  15. Sex trafficking and peacekeepers

    Whistle-blowers implicated UN peacekeepers in sex trafficking in Bosnia in the late 90s

  16. Beethoven's role in China's Cultural Revolution

    Chairman Mao banned all classical music in 1966, but some musicians defied the order.

  17. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Five Stages of Grief

    The remarkable Swiss psychiatrist who changed the way we think about dying.

  18. Three Strikes Law

    One man's experience of the controversial US law that saw thousands locked up for life

  19. Rodney King and the LA riots

    People rioted in Los Angeles after police who had assaulted a black man were acquitted

  20. Black basketball pioneers - Texas Western

    How an all-black college team overturned racist assumptions about basketball in the USA

  21. The 16th Street church bombing

    Four young black girls were killed in a racist attack on a church in Alabama in 1963

  22. Brown v the Board of Education

    A landmark case about racial segregation in the USA.

  23. The portable defibrillator

    How Northern Irish doctor Frank Pantridge revolutionised heart-attack treatment.

  24. The origin of the WHO

    How the cold war helped shape the creation of the WHO and what role China played.

  25. How Christo wrapped the Reichstag

    The artist who delighted post-Cold War Berlin by wrapping its greatest monument

  26. The Zanzibar Revolution

    Just one month after gaining independence there was an uprising in Zanzibar in 1964.

  27. The start of eco-tourism

    How Costa Rica's Monteverde cloud forest reserve became a major tourist site

  28. Ann Lowe - African American fashion designer

    Ann Lowe designed Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress but for years few people knew her name

  29. Winston Churchill's doctor

    Winston Churchill's personal doctor published his memories of the British leader in 1966

  30. The Gwangju massacre

    The South Korean army crushed a popular uprising in the city of Gwangju on 27 May 1980

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