Witness History

In 1971, the publishing world was rocked by one of the biggest hoaxes in literary history – a fake autobiography of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Hughes was an aerospace engineer, film producer, record-breaking aviator and business tycoon, who’d built a $2 billion fortune to become one of the richest people in the world. But for years he’d been living as a recluse, reportedly so terrifi...

In 1995, a cathedral was built 180m underground in the Zipaquirá Salt Mine in Colombia. The idea came from the miners building makeshift altars in the mine in the 1930s, to pray for their safety before starting their shifts. It’s now a major tourist attraction, attracting more than 600,000 visitors a year. Rachel Naylor speaks to the engineer behind it, Jorge Enrique Castelblanco. Eye-witness acco...

Released in 1995, this buddy movie about a cowboy doll and a toy astronaut was the first to use entirely computer-generated images. The story, about a group of toys who come alive when humans are not around, appealed to audiences around the world. In 2017, animator Doug Sweetland spoke to Ashley Byrne about his work on the Pixar film. This was a Made in Manchester production. Eye-witness accounts...

The Dayton Peace Accords were signed on the 21 November 1995, ending the three-and-a-half-year war in Bosnia. The war was part of the break-up of Yugoslavia; it is estimated that 100,000 people were killed. In 2010, Lucy Williamson spoke to Milan Milutinović who was one of the leading negotiators for the Serbian delegation about the final 24 hours of negotiations. Eye-witness accounts brought to l...

In 1975, the death of General Francisco Franco was announced in Spain, bringing to an end 36 years of dictatorship. Franco had already chosen his successor: Prince Juan Carlos, grandson of the last monarch, Alphonso XIII. This was the man who - Franco thought - would continue his authoritarian, anti-democratic and deeply conservative regime. But Juan Carlos defied expectations. In the years that f...

General Francisco Franco died in November 1975, ending 36 years of dictatorship over Spain. The general had been in power since 1939 after winning the country’s bloody civil war, and his death followed a long illness. He was mourned by conservative Spaniards but those on the left celebrated, calling him a fascist who had once been an ally of Hitler and Mussolini. In 2015, Louise Hidalgo spoke to J...

In the summer of 2015, there was a surge in the number of people from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, seeking asylum in Europe. Social Democrat politician Aydan Özoğuz was Angela Merkel's minister of state concerned with immigration, refugees and integration from 2013 to 2018. She describes to Josephine McDermott visiting her father's home city of Kilis in Turkey, near the Syrian border in 2015, wher...

Forty years ago, in November 1985, two of the world’s most powerful leaders met for the first time. With Cold War tensions running high and the nuclear arms race dominating global politics, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came together for the first time at the Geneva Summit. Using archive recordings, Megan Jones explores what happened during this landmark meeting. E...

On 17 October 2009, the Maldives’ top government officials donned their scuba gear for the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. Fish floated around while ministers communicated with hand gestures, white boards and special underwater pencils. Meanwhile on the surface, journalists jostled to see what was happening. The watery meeting was filmed and photographed and subsequently broadcast across...

On 13 November 2015, 90 people were shot dead by gunmen at the Bataclan theatre in France during an Eagles of Death Metal concert. A further 40 people were killed in co-ordinated terror attacks by jihadists across the city on the same night. Rachel Naylor speaks to British couple Justine Merton-Scott and Tony Scott, who managed to escape the venue by climbing out of a skylight. Eye-witness account...

In November 1945, the first major war crimes trial in history opened in the German city of Nuremberg. Senior Nazis who had committed atrocities during World War Two were prosecuted by the victorious Allied powers of Britain, the USA, France and the Soviet Union. In 2014, Louise Hidalgo spoke to Benjamin Ferencz, who helped unearth evidence of mass murder by the Nazi mobile death squads and prosecu...

In November 1975, a summit took place at Rambouillet, France, where the heads of six of the world’s most industrialised nations and their finance ministers came together. The leaders of the US, France, Germany, Britain, Japan and Italy hoped to solve the ongoing economic crisis. The summit marked the birth of an institution now known as the G7. France’s former Finance Minister, Jean-Pierre Fourcad...

On 14 October 1947, American Chuck Yeager became the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound. Despite having two broken ribs, Chuck reached Mach 1.06 – a speed of more than 1,100km per hour. He flew an orange, single-seated, rocket-powered Bell X-1, 13,000m above the Mojave Desert in California. Produced and presented by Rachel Naylor, in collaboration with BBC Archives. Eye-witness acco...

In 2012, a shepherd uncovered a bone belonging to a new species of dinosaur on a ranch in Patagonia, in Argentina. A team from the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio found more than 150 bones, belonging to six skeletons. The Patagotitan, a type of titanosaur, was 40 metres long, 20 metres tall and weighed 77 tonnes. Rachel Naylor spoke to Dr Diego Pol, a palaeontologist who led the dig. Eye-wi...

In 1971, an American historical document typed out on a university computer played a vital role in the digital revolution of electronic books. It became the foundation of Project Gutenberg. Michael Hart, the visionary behind the project, later became known as the ‘father of e-books’. His close friend, Greg Newby, who was Project Gutenberg’s CEO and director, tells Gill Kearsley how a bike ride to...

It's 70 years since Miffy was created. The little rabbit with two dots for eyes and an X for a mouth went on to feature in 32 books translated into more than 50 languages. The Dutch author and illustrator Dick Bruna reveals in his own words from the BBC archive that in the beginning, his black outlined illustrations with bold colours were controversial with parents. But children loved them. Miffy,...

In 1999, the US Senate chamber in Washington DC was turned into a court to put President Bill Clinton on trial, after he admitted lying about an affair with an intern called Monica Lewinsky. In 2011, Bill Clinton’s former press secretary spoke to Neil Razzell. Joe Lockhart recounted the impeachment and the fight to save his presidency. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness Histo...

In 1965, a groundbreaking children's show using cutting-edge puppets first blast onto television screens. Thunderbirds was set in 2065 and followed the antics of secret organisation ‘International Rescue’ which was manned by Jeff Tracy, his team of five sons and agent Lady Penelope. Set up to save humanity, the characters travelled in futuristic vehicles across land, sea and air from their remote...

Emerante de Pradines was a Haitian singer, dancer and folklorist who became the first person from her country to sign a record deal. She was dedicated to de-demonising vodou music and folklore and went on to teach dance at some of America’s most prestigious universities. Her son Richard Morse speaks to Emma Forde about his mother’s life and her legacy. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archi...

The night before Halloween in 1938, 23-year-old Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air performed a radio adaptation of HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds. It would become one of the most notorious radio broadcasts in history. In their own words, from the BBC's archive, Orson Welles, producer John Houseman and writer Howard Koch describe how it was "a very boring show" until they had the ide...

It's 30 years since a massacre of Bosnian Muslims during the war in the former Yugoslavia. The Srebrenica massacre, recognised by the United Nations as a genocide, was the shocking climax of the war in Bosnia. In 2014, Louise Hidalgo talked to Hasan Nuhanović whose father, brother and mother were among the 8,000 Bosnians killed. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is f...

An estimated 2 million stents are implanted into people’s hearts around the world each year – making it one of the key treatments for heart disease. The treatment was invented by Argentinian doctor Julio Palmaz, who credits a piece of metal being left by a construction worker in his home as inspiration for the structure of the stent. Collaborating with a US Army cardiologist and getting funding fr...

The 1977 murder of Father Rutilio Grande sent shockwaves through El Salvador. The 48-year-old Jesuit priest was an outspoken champion of the poor in the deeply divided central American nation. In the immediate aftermath of his murder, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, took the unprecedented step of holding just one single mass, ordering all other churches in his archdiocese to cancel t...

In May 1974, scratch cards went on sale for the first time in the US State of Massachusetts. Free giveaway and coupon games from stores had been commonplace across the USA during the 1950s and '60s – but players could easily cheat. The mathematician John Koza was hired to make the games more secure; he succeeded in making the modern-day scratch card. He tells Johnny I’Anson how he convinced the st...

In the 1980s, scientists made a discovery that would eventually lead to the development of drugs now used worldwide to treat diabetes and to help people manage obesity through weight loss injections. One of the key scientists behind this breakthrough was Svetlana Mojsov. She discovered that a hormone called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) plays an important role in how our bodies respond to food....