Witness History: Archive 2010
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Witness History: Archive 2010
The story of our times told by the people who were there.
Neueste Episoden
39 Episoden
Albert Luthuli Receives the Nobel Peace Prize
When Chief Albert Luthuli won the Nobel Peace Prize he was living under a banning order in rural South Africa. His daughter Albertina talks to Witnes...
Jamaica Slave Rebellion
*** Contains descriptions that some listeners may find upsetting ***
Enslaved Africans are forced to work in sugar cane fields - the hours are...
Chiapas Uprising
People in the Chiapas region, led by the charismatic, ski-mask wearing, sub-commandante Marcos, rose up against the Mexican state. They called themsel...
Hamlet
The play Hamlet can tell us a great deal about the time in which it was written.
At the turn of the 16th century England was faced with many o...
Assad and Syria
Hafez al Assad was the Syrian Defence Minister in the winter of 1970 when his struggle for power came to a head. His former friend, the hardline Baath...
The Great Escape
The film, The Great Escape, has become an all-time favourite. It is about a mass breakout from a German prison camp during World War 2. Flight Lieuten...
Christmas Truce
For several days over Christmas in 1914 the fighting stopped on the battlefields of the First World War.
British and German soldiers left thei...
Andrei Sakharov
The nuclear physicist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov had spent seven years in internal exile in the Soviet city of Gorky.
His return...
Georgia in crisis
Christmas 1991 was a difficult time for the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Economic and political difficulties crippled the government.
Lockerbie
On December 21 1988 a US passenger plane blew up over Scotland.
Pan Am flight 103 was heading for the USA when a bomb exploded on board, killing...
US invasion of Panama
On 20 December 1989 more than 20,000 US soldiers descended on Panama.
General Manuel Noriega - the country's leader - sought refuge with the P...
Washington Snipers
It is seven years since one of the Washington snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo, was convicted of murder.
He and John Allen Muhammad had terrorised the...
Operation Desert Fox
On 16 December 1998 the US and Britain began a four day bombardment of Iraq.
Their justification for Operation Desert Fox was Iraq's failure to...
Siege of Grozny
"The destruction of Grozny was apocalyptic... I saw a lot of deaths. I saw people who got wounded by shrapnel from mortar fire and they were dying ver...
Capture of Saddam Hussein
Hiding in a hole in the ground, bearded and unkempt, the former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, was dragged blinking into the light by American spe...
Argentina's disappeared
After eight years of military rule, thousands of mainly young, left-wing, Argentinians had gone missing - 'the disappeared'.
Miriam Lewin was o...
Smallpox Eradication
Smallpox was once one of the most feared diseases in the world - disfiguring and often deadly.
Donald Henderson is the American doctor who led t...
John Lennon
It is exactly 30 years since the former Beatle, John Lennon, was shot dead in New York.
Two days before John Lennon was killed, he spent several...
Pearl Harbour
When Japanese bombers and fighter planes attacked the US fleet in the Pacific it came as a huge surprise to many. Listen to some archive recordings fr...
Somalia Marines
In December 1992, the US sent armed troops into Somalia to help protect aid convoys carrying food to the hungry. They called it Operation Restore Hope...
Kindertransports
The first trains full of Jewish children left Berlin in early December - heading for sanctuary in Britain. The Kindertransports only stopped with the...
El Salvador killings
The killing of 4 American churchwomen brought to light the extent of the violence in El Salvador, and the ruthless military tactics used against the l...
Channel Tunnel
The first man to cross by land from Britain to France in 8000 years tells us what it was like.
Tomb of Tutankhamun
Howard Carter was an English archaeologist who had searched the Valley of the Kings for years - hoping to find the burial place of Tutankhamun. He kep...
Inca defeat
In 1532 a few hundred Spanish conquistadors took on tens of thousands of Inca warriors.
As the two sides met, the Spanish governor Pisaro put...
Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury's personal assistant remembers the last days of the musician's battle with Aids.
Mishima Suicide
The story of how acclaimed Japanese writer Yukio Mishima ended his life in a violent and bloody way.
Afghan Prison Massacre
We hear a graphic account of the killing of hundreds of captured Taliban after they rose up inside a prison in Mazar-e-Sharif in Northern Afghanistan...
The Roswell incident
It is over 60 years since men at the Roswell air base in New Mexico first reported strange lights above the desert.
Then they found strange deb...
Piracy Trial
With Somali pirates on trial in the United States, we go back to the era of America's Civil War and a piracy trial that gripped the country.
Greek Student Protest 1973
Tank on Athens street. Getty Images
The leader of a student protest in Greece nearly 40 years ago tells us of the moment when the country's mili...
The Young Benazir Bhutto
What was Benazir Bhutto like as a young woman and why did she follow her father into politics?
Victoria Schofield met her at Oxford university...
Coventry blitz
In November 1940 sustained German bombing raids left the ancient English city of Coventry in ruins. Its medieval cathedral burned down and hundreds of...
World War I poetry
World War I produced a generation of British poets like no other.
Witness hears from the son of Robert Graves, about his father's wartime exper...
Barack Obama's Indonesian childhood
When Barack Obama was about six years old his mother remarried and the family moved to the Indonesian capital Jakarta. There, he learnt the local lang...
Blasted
Some listeners may find parts of this programme disturbing.
With enough sex, violence, and swearing to outrage even London audiences, the play B...
Suez canal invasion 1956
When the Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez canal in 1956, he took control of one of the main oil routes from the Middle East...
Burma Elections
It's twenty years since Burma last held a general election. We hear from someone who was there about the atmosphere, the excitement and the risks of...
Rabin Assassination
On 4 November 1995 the Israeli rock star Aviv Geffen sang at a peace rally in Tel Aviv alongside Israel's leader Yitzhak Rabin. Moments later the Prim...