Witness History: Witness Archive 2016
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Witness History: Witness Archive 2016
History as told by the people who were there. All the programmes from 2016.
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243 Episoden
Russia's 'Dog Man'
In November 1994, the Russian conceptual artist Oleg Kulik posed in front of an art gallery in central Moscow, naked, pretending to be a guard dog and...
The Launch of Vogue Russia
After the collapse of the USSR, Vogue Magazine launched in Russia in 1998. But it was a difficult beginning for the glossy fashion publication as the...
The Nuclear Legacy
One of the most potentially dangerous legacies of the collapse of the Soviet Union was its huge nuclear arsenal and nuclear weapons industry. There we...
Georgia In Crisis
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991, freedom came at a price for some of the newly independent Soviet states. Georgia found itself...
The Break-Up of the Soviet Union
In December 1991 the leaders of three Soviet Republics - Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia - signed a treaty dissolving the USSR. They did it without as...
Apollo 8
The biggest audience in TV history watch NASA's Apollo 8 mission beam back the first pictures from an orbit around the moon at Christmas 1968. The bro...
Samuel Beckett
On December 22nd 1989, the great Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett died. Beckett, whose play Waiting for Godot had revolutionised post-war...
Turkey-Greece Island Dispute
A Turkish cargo ship ran aground on a tiny rocky island in the Aegean Sea in December 1995. But a dispute between Turkey and Greece over who owned the...
Derek Jarman
The experimental film-maker made his first full-length film in 1976, it was called Sebastiane - and it was in Latin. It was the first openly gay feat...
Death of an Anarchist
Giuseppe Pinelli was an Italian anarchist arrested by police in Milan. A few days later he was seen falling out of the police station window. It is...
The First Latin American 'Telenovela'
Vida Alves starred in Latin America's first soap opera, or telenovela. 'Sua Vida Me Pertence' was broadcast in Brazil in December 1951. It kick-starte...
Cot Death
In December 1991 a British government campaign was launched to help prevent the sudden unexpected deaths of apparently healthy babies. The incidences...
The Hindu 'Milk Miracle'
In September 1995, millions of Hindus around the world were gripped by reports of their God, Ganesha, 'drinking' milk. Rachael Gillman hears from Hind...
Sara Ginaite Lithuanian Jewish Partisan
During World War Two, a young Jewish woman, Sara Ginaite, escaped from the Kaunas Ghetto in Lithuania to fight the Nazis, With her husband Misha, she...
Yoyes - Woman leader of ETA
In the 1970s, Maria Dolores Gonzalez Katarain, known as Yoyes, became the first woman to reach the leadership of the Basque separatist group, ETA, who...
Fighting for Rural Women in South Africa
In the 1990s Sizani Ngubane began the Rural Women's Movement to fight for the rights of one of the most marginal groups in South Africa. It's estimate...
Recreating Down Syndrome in Mice
In 2005 British scientist Elizabeth Fisher and a colleague successfully transplanted a human chromosome into a mouse for the first time. It transforme...
Wangari Maathai Wins Nobel Prize
In 2004, Kenyan Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was an environmentalist and human rights activist who...
Soviet Woman Bomber Pilot
Yelena Malyutina was a Soviet female bomber pilot who fought in WW2 and was wounded in action in 1944. She was in one of the three Soviet women's flyi...
Colombia's 'Lost City'
In 1976, Colombian archaeologists found the ruins of a huge indigenous settlement hidden in a remote mountain range near the Caribbean coast. Known to...
Digging up the Truth
In the early 1980s Mercedes Doretti, a student of anthropology in Buenos Aires, began helping in the search for some of the victims of Argentina's mil...
Bob Marley Survives Assassination Attempt
In December 1976 unidentified gunmen tried to kill Bob Marley at his home in Kingston, Jamaica. The legendary reggae singer miraculously survived with...
India's City of the Future: Chandigarh
After India's traumatic Partition Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru persuaded the maverick Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, to help reinvent a newl...
Car Safety and Ralph Nader
In the early 1960s there were virtually no laws covering car safety in the USA. Even seatbelts weren't compulsory. Then a campaigning young lawyer c...
The Assassination of the Mirabal Sisters
On November 25th 1960, three sisters and political activists in the Dominican Republic were beaten to death on the orders of the dictator, General Tru...
The 1948 French Miners' Strike
How coal miners in post-war France went from being seen as heroes to being seen as pariahs. Their left-wing views were even perceived as a threat to d...
The Silk Letters Movement
In 1916 the authorities in India uncovered what they believed was a plot to overthrow British rule in the subcontinent. It involved an Islamic teacher...
Saving Orphaned African Elephants
Amid the slaughter of African elephants by poachers, a Kenyan-British woman became the first to successfully hand-rear orphaned baby African elephants...
Plane spotters arrested in Greece
In November 2001 a group of British tourists was arrested and put on trial for spying in Greece. But they were not spies, they were aeroplane enthusia...
The Musical Cabaret
In November 1966 the hit musical opened on Broadway. Set in 1930s Berlin as the Nazis are rising to power, the show chronicles the love story between...
Smuggling Endangered Birds
In November 1996 the renowned international ornithologist Tony Silva was convicted of smuggling endangered birds into the US. Some of the animals had...
The Madagascar Palace Fire
In 1995 one of Madagascar's most historic sites was destroyed by fire. The palace complex, which contains the stone clad Queen's Palace, dominates the...
East Timor Massacre
On 12 November 1991, Indonesian troops opened fire on independence activists in East Timor's capital, Dili. Marco Silva has spoken to the British came...
The Burning of the Satanic Verses
The publication of Salman Rushdie's book in the autumn of 1988 outraged many Muslims who believed the book was blasphemous. There were protests agains...
The James Bond Theme Tune
In 1962 Monty Norman wrote the music for the first James Bond film, Dr No, including the theme tune which has featured in all the 24 Bond films since....
Kurdish Singer Ahmet Kaya
In 1999 the famous folk singer was awarded one of Turkey's most prestigious musical awards. But his announcement at the ceremony that he would record...
Rolling Stone Magazine
In November 1967 an iconic popular culture magazine was launched in the US. It quickly became known for its music coverage, interviews with stars and...
The First Loebner Prize
In 1991, the first Loebner Prize was held. The judges at the competition had to determine whether they were communicating with humans or computer prog...
The Pitcairn Sex Abuse Trial
In 2004 a child sex abuse trial on a remote island in the Pacific shocked the world. Nearly half the adult male population of Pitcairn Island stood ac...
War Photographer, Dickey Chapelle
On 4 November 1965, the American war photographer, Dickey Chapelle, was killed in Vietnam by shrapnel from a booby-trapped mortar. She was the first A...