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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    'Jane' - the underground abortion service

    An underground feminist network performed illegal abortions in 1960s Chicago.

  2. The Algerians who fought with France

    When Algeria won independence in 1962 thousands of local French allies faced persecution

  3. The Paris hotel that hosted Holocaust survivors

    The Hotel Lutetia became a reception centre for French Holocaust survivors after WW2

  4. Margaret Thatcher's anti-Europe speech

    The British Prime Minister started expressing doubts about the European Union in 1988

  5. The fall of the Berlin Wall

    The border between communist East Germany and the West opened on November 9th 1989

  6. The Leipzig demonstrations

    The Berlin Wall fell just a month after mass protests in the East German city of Leipzig

  7. East German refugees in the Prague embassy

    Thousands of East Germans sought refuge in the West German embassy in Prague in 1989.

  8. The reburial of a Hungarian hero

    The body of Imre Nagy who had led the Hungarian Uprising was reburied in 1989

  9. The legalisation of Solidarity

    The Polish trade union organisation was banned by the communists until April 1989

  10. Wangari Maathai Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist

    Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai fought to save forests and protect human rights

  11. Britain's worst nuclear accident

    A reactor caught fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in the north of England in 1957

  12. The man who fed the world

    Dr Norman Borlaug’s pioneering work on disease-resistant grains saved millions.

  13. Mexico City slashes car use

    How Mexico City cut its dangerously high air pollution levels

  14. Proving climate change: The Keeling curve

    An American scientist began recording carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in 1958

  15. Britain's World War Two 'Brown Babies'

    The stigma of growing up as a mixed race child in post-war Britain

  16. The Bristol bus boycott

    How British black activists fought for employment rights in the 1960s

  17. The Notting Hill riots

    Inter-racial violence broke out in west London in the summer of 1958

  18. The first black woman MP in Britain

    In 1987 Diane Abbott became the first black woman to be elected to the British Parliament

  19. Learie Constantine - fighting racism in the UK

    The great West Indian cricketer who fought against racism in the UK

  20. China opens up to capitalism

    How China's Communist rulers established the country's first Special Economic Zones

  21. The 1967 Hong Kong riots

    How workers and students filled the colony's streets, pressing for an end to British rule

  22. Mao's Cultural Revolution

    We hear from one man who took part in China's brutal Cultural Revolution.

  23. My memories of Chairman Mao

    China's legendary Communist leader in the words of an American who knew him well

  24. The birth of the People's Republic of China

    On 1 October 1949 Chairman Mao declared China a communist state

  25. The death of a matador

    The fatal goring of the legendary bullfighter Francisco Rivera Pérez - "Paquirri".

  26. The Large Hadron Collider

    In September 2008, the world's biggest science experiment was switched on.

  27. Fighting the Islamic State group online

    How one historian living in Mosul took aim at the Islamic State group on the internet.

  28. Being black in Nazi Germany

    Theodor Wonja Michael was a child when Hitler came to power in Germany.

  29. The Sound of Music on Broadway

    The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was performed on stage before it became a movie.

  30. Sir Anthony Blunt - Soviet spy

    The distinguished art historian was exposed as a former Soviet spy in the autumn of 1979.

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