Witness History

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...

In 2005, the pieces of an ancient monument were flown back to Ethiopia, having been stolen by Italy. The Obelisk of Axum, built around 1,700 years ago, was 24-metres (78 feet) high and weighed around 160 tons. It was looted from Ethiopia on the orders of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. He had it re-erected in Rome outside the former Ministry of the Colonies building near Circus Maximus. Despite...

In 1980, Abebech Gobena was on a pilgrimage to Wollo in Ethiopia, when she witnessed the devastating effects of a severe famine and drought, one of the worst in the country's history. Within a year she had rescued 21 orphans and brought them to live with her in Addis Ababa. The organisation she founded has since raised thousands of Ethiopian orphans. Dan Hardoon speaks to Hannah Merkana, one of th...

In 1994, a college student called Yohannes Haile Selassie unearthed a 4.4 million-year-old skeleton in Ethiopia. She was the first near-complete skeleton of a species of human ancestor called Ardipithecus ramidus. The paleoanthropologists who discovered her called her Ardi. The discovery upended how scientists view human evolution. Yohannes Haile Selassie speaks to Ben Henderson. Eye-witness accou...

In 1936, Haile Selassie came to Bath in the west of England to escape Mussolini and the fascists who had invaded Ethiopia. He bought a property – Fairfield House - and moved his entire family and staff there. He quickly became the talk of the town. The local paper ran daily updates on the Emperor’s schedule and dispelled rumours such as the Emperor’s beard "having turned white with anguish" or tha...

Haile Selassie was Emperor of Ethiopia. His dynasty ruled for centuries, supposedly descending from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In 1974 he was overthrown in a coup by a Marxist-Leninist military junta called the Derg. Over the following months, the insurrectionists executed 60 members of Haile Selassie's government, before murdering the former Emperor in his bed in 1975. Lij Mulugeta Asse...

In 1988, Jorge Gonzalez was a basketball star in Argentina and became the first athlete from this country drafted by an NBA team, the Atlanta Hawks. He was over 2.5m tall due to gigantism, which led to big day-to-day challenges like finding shoes his size. But it also gave him great opportunities. The Atlanta Hawks’ never put Jorge on the court because he was too heavy to play. But the owner of th...

On 13 April 1970, a Moon mission almost ended in tragedy, after an explosion on board the spaceship. Fred Haise was one of the Apollo 13 astronauts. In 2010, he spoke to Richard Howells about how they managed to get back to Earth against the odds. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our wor...

Until 1973, married women in Ireland were banned from working in state jobs. It was one of the longest lasting marriage bars in the world. Rachel Naylor speaks to Bernie Flynn, who postponed her wedding and became one of the first married women in the public service. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that...

In 1976, the 3,000-year-old mummy of Ramesses II was found to have a fungal infection. The embalmed body of the Egyptian pharaoh was flown from Cairo to Paris for a once-in-a-deathtime makeover. It received a royal welcome at the airport, and was guarded throughout its restoration, which took place at the Musee de l’Homme. Anne-Marie Goden worked as a receptionist at the museum. She tells Gill Kea...

On the 26 September 2014 Nathan Law stood on a makeshift stage outside Hong Kong's central government complex and chanted ‘Democracy Now’ and ‘Freedom’ into a microphone. He was leading hundreds of protesters who had gathered to demand that China grants Hong Kong free and fair elections. As the day went on the protest continued to grow and it wasn’t long before Nathan’s face was all over the news....

Amateur radio enthusiast Maggie Iaquinto spent a year trying to make contact with Russian cosmonauts on the Mir space station using special equipment. It took careful planning as she had to know when they were orbiting past her house in Australia and what frequency they’d be on. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Maggie relayed crucial information to cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. Magg...