Witness History

After the Six Day War in June 1967, the Suez Canal in Egypt was closed. It meant 14 ships from eight different countries, including the United States, Bulgaria and France, were trapped in an area called the Great Bitter Lake. They would remain there for eight years, and would become known as the ‘yellow fleet’. Two of the ships were the MS Melampus and MS Agapenor. Former assistant steward, Phil S...

In 1969, a new sound began to dominate the airwaves in the UK, reggae. This was terrible news for two Jamaican men, Len Dyke and Dudley Dryden who were making their money selling 'slices of home' records on market stalls in London. They had been pushed out by big labels but being true businessmen, they established themselves in an area with little-to-no commercial competition - black women’s hairc...

In 1999, Waheed Arian left his family in Afghanistan to seek refuge in the UK. He was just 15. He was escaping violence, poverty and the threat of being recruited as a child soldier. He tells Vicky Farncombe about how a dream of one day becoming a doctor sustained him. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events th...

In November 2003, the people of Georgia ousted veteran president Eduard Shevardnadze. Protestors stormed the parliament building in the capital Tbilisi, holding flowers in their hands. It would become known as the Rose Revolution. In 2011, Nino Zuriashvili, who was one of the protestors, spoke to Damien McGuinness. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fasci...

Between 18 March and 10 April 2014, more than 500,000 people in Taipei, Taiwan, protested against a new trade deal with China. It was one of the largest social movements in Taiwanese history. Rachel Naylor speaks to Brian Hioe, one of the demonstrators, who stormed Parliament and occupied it for 23 days. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by th...

After the death of her brother, engineer Thérèse Izay Kirongozi got to work handmaking huge robots to direct traffic and save lives. In 2013 they were installed on the streets of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have green lights on their hands, a red light in their chest, can turn around and live stream to a police control centre, they also sing when children cross the road. Yo...

In 1994, bar codes were in widespread use in businesses around the world, but the Japanese car component company, Denso Wave, wanted something quicker. So they asked one of their engineers, Masahiro Hara, to come up with a solution. After playing his favourite board game, Go, he came back with an idea. He designed a black and white square of data that was fast, practical, and could handle more tha...

In 1946, one of the world’s first electronic computers was unveiled in Philadelphia, in the USA. It was called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, and was initially designed to do calculations for ballistics trajectories. It was programmed by six female mathematicians. Rachel Naylor speaks to Gini Mauchly Calcerano, whose dad John Mauchly co-designed it, and whose mum, Kay...

Scientists at Waseda University in Japan built the world's first humanoid robot in 1973. They called it the 'WABOT', the Waseda robot. It could see, walk and even talk. It was a huge leap forward in the history of artificial intelligence and robotics. Dr Hiromichi Fujisawa tells Ben Henderson how he was tasked with making the robot speak. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness Hi...

Eliza is the name of a 1966 invention by German born scientist, Joseph Weizenbaum, that is said to be the first chatbot. Eliza worked by someone typing their feelings into a computer keyboard, and then the programme repeated it back to them, often as a question. Joseph’s daughter, Miriam tells Gill Kearsley about Eliza. We also hear from Joseph through archive interviews from Carnegie Mellon Unive...

In 1973, two men pretending to be Colombian guerrillas took a plane and flew across Latin America for 60 hours. It was the longest hijacking of an aircraft in the region. The SAM Airlines plane stopped in countries that included Aruba, Peru, and Paraguay, making its last landing in Argentina, where local authorities were surprised to see the hijackers had vanished. Former flight attendant Edilma P...

In November 1967, the Maltese diplomat, Arvid Pardo, addressed the United Nations with a remarkable speech that shaped the laws governing the sea. Pardo's message is immortalised in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was adopted in 1982, and is now the fundamental legislation governing difficult topics such as deep sea mining. Artemis Irvine spoke to Christina Pardo Menez,...

In 1989, South Africa became the first, and only country to make and then dismantle nuclear weapons. The project was conducted at Kentron Circle, a secret weapons facility. André Buys was plant manager and systems engineer at Kentron Circle and was involved in making the weapons. He tells Gill Kearsley about his work on this once top-secret project. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive....

In 2009, a UN-backed war crimes tribunal opened in Cambodia to try the senior Khmer Rouge commanders responsible for genocide. An estimated two million people were killed during Pol Pot's regime in the 1970s. Aged 26, New Zealander Kerry Hamill was on a sailing trip with friends when he mistakenly found himself in Cambodian waters. He was taken to Tuol Sleng prison where thousands of people were t...

In November 1938, the Nazis organised a night of terror against Jews in Germany. Windows of homes, businesses and synagogues were broken. Kurt Salomon Maier was eight years old, living with his Jewish family in Kippenheim, Germany. He survived what became known as Kristallnacht or ‘the night of broken glass’ and escaped to the United States. Kurt Salomon Maier, now 94-years-old, speaks to James Ja...

In 1994, the MS Estonia ferry sank in the Baltic Sea with the loss of 852 lives. It was one of the deadliest shipping tragedies since the sinking of the Titanic. The Estline ferry was sailing overnight from Estonia to Sweden, in bad weather and heavy seas, when it sent a distress signal saying it was listing heavily. Survivors later reported the boat sank within five minutes, and many passengers d...

In 1949, inter-racial marriage and relationships were banned by South Africa’s apartheid government. In June 1985, the ban was lifted. Suzanne La Clerc and Protas Madlala were the first couple to tie the knot under the new rules. Ashley Byrne was speaking to them in 2015. Protas Madlala died in 2023. A made in Manchester production for the BBC World Service Eye-witness accounts brought to life by...

In 1969, a white man and an Indian woman were put on trial in South Africa for conspiring to have sex. Dr Zureena Desai and Professor John Blacking were the most high profile couple to be arrested under the Immorality Act. Their case made headlines all over the world and made a laughing stock of South Africa's ruling National Party and its racist regime. Dr Desai tells Vicky Farncombe about the ri...

In 1993, a gritty and unflinching crime movie called Menace II Society was released to huge acclaim. The debut picture from the teenage directors, Allen and Albert Hughes, provided a deep dive into the harsh realities faced by many young African Americans growing up in Los Angeles. But behind the scenes, all was not well and the violence on-screen bled into real life. Rap sensation, Tupac Shakur –...

In 2014, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission meant the country was the first in the world to successfully place a satellite into orbit around Mars on its initial attempt. The mission, named Mangalyaan, was one of the cheapest interplanetary missions ever. It cost less than a Hollywood film. Indian scientist, Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, also known as ‘moon man of India,’ was programme director for the mission....

Millions of us see the Google logo every day. Ruth Kedar is the designer of the logo. The story of how she got the job starts in a martial arts class in 1998. The Brazilian artist and designer was invited to meet company founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and asked to present them with some ideas. Ruth tells Gill Kearsley her story of meeting the tech owners and how the design developed into a...

On 2 December 1972, Joan Wiffen, her husband, son and daughter started a camping trip. But it was far from ordinary. They were obsessed fossil-hunters and they were deep in the largest rainforest of New Zealand's north island at a spot by a river described casually in an old geological map as having “Saurian” bones. For Joan, as she started to search for remains, it was “like opening up the Christ...

In 1994, the pneumonic plague broke out in the city of Surat, causing mass panic. It saw the largest migration across India since independence was declared in 1947. Ashley Byrne speaks to Doctor Vibha Marfatia who fled along with her family. This is a Made in Manchester production for the BBC World Service. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by...

It’s 85 years since the start of World War Two. During the conflict, the Russian city of Leningrad came under siege in 1941. To camouflage the landmarks from enemy attack, a small group of mountaineers climbed up high with paint and canvas. Mikhail Bobrov was just 18 years old when he first got sent up the city’s spires. Mikhail was speaking to Monica Whitlock in 2017. He died in 2018. Eye-witness...

In 1971, the CT scanner was invented by South African physicist Allan Cormack and British engineer Sir Godfrey Hounsfield. It was a ground-breaking moment in modern medicine and they're now in almost every hospital around the world. Rachel Naylor speaks to Allan's son, Robert Cormack. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you...