Witness History

Forty years ago, a Hollywood director, some tech revolutionaries and a group of London skinheads created a commercial that would rock the advertising world. Based on George Orwell’s dystopic novel ‘1984’, and launched in the same year, the ad was like nothing that had been seen before. But its road to being shown was rocky, and the beleaguered advert almost never made it air. Mike Murray was Apple...

Flint was once one of the richest cities in the United States. But in the 1980s, it was badly affected by the downturn in car manufacturing and by 2014 it was nearly bankrupt. To save money, the city switched its water supply away from Lake Huron to its own Flint River, but state officials failed to treat the river water properly. As a result lead, a powerful neurotoxin, was released into the drin...

A warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners - this programme contains the names and voices of people who have died. In 1971, Neville Bonner became the first Aboriginal person to become a member of the Australian Parliament. In 1979, he was named Australian of the Year in recognition of his work fighting for the rights of indigenous Australians - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islan...

Ninety years ago, the first surviving quintuplets were born in a small village in northern Canada. The Dionnes grew up in a specially-adapted nursery where millions of people could visit them. But, years later they struggled to adapt to life back with their parents which led to a fight for compensation. This programme was produced and presented by Simon Watts in 2012 using BBC archive. Eye-witness...

In 1964, João Goulart, the president of Brazil, was overthrown in a military coup. In the repression which followed, hundreds of people were disappeared or killed, and many more detained and tortured. Carlos Lamarca was a captain who deserted the army and joined in the armed struggle against the military regime. He was shot dead in 1971. His friend and fellow fighter, João Salgado Lopes, tells Vic...

In 1984, Nike signed rookie basketball player Michael Jordan and created a shoe in his name – the Air Jordan. The unprecedented deal would change sports marketing forever. Former executive Sonny Vaccaro was the man who persuaded his bosses to put all their marketing budget on one untried player. He became convinced of Michael’s talent after seeing him make the winning shot in a college game. He te...

In 2001, more than 700 pairs of Imelda Marcos’s shoes were put on display at the Marikina Shoe Museum in the Philippines. The wife of the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos, became famous for buying shoes, while millions of Filipinos were living in poverty. It’s thought she had in around 3,000 pairs. Ella Rule has been through the archive to tell the story of Imelda and her shoes. Eye-witness acc...

How the Dassler brothers created two global sportswear firms. In 1948, Adi and Rudi Dassler who lived in a small German town fell out. They went on to set up Adidas and Puma. Adi Dassler played a crucial role in West Germany's victory in the 1954 World Cup with his game-changing footwear. In 2022, Reena Stanton-Sharma spoke to Adi's daughter Sigi Dassler, who remembers her dad’s obsession with spo...

In 1962, a new brand of footwear launched that would become one of Brazil’s most successful and best-known exports: Havaianas. As the country’s footwear industry started to expand, one company wanted to make something that was comfortable, inexpensive, and ideal for South America's long hot summers. Havaianas soon became the favourite of the working class because of their affordability. Fast forwa...

Bata was a Czech company which pioneered assembly line shoemaking and sold affordable footwear around the world. The factory near London was opened in 1933 and it became key to its expansion. In 2018, Dina Newman spoke to one of its senior engineers, Mick Pinion, about the company's remarkable history, including how it sold millions of shoes in Africa and Asia. Eye-witness accounts brought to life...

In 2001, the American Ana Montes, who was working for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested for espionage. Although the FBI knew that there was a spy they didn't know who it was. The Cubans always referred to Ana by a man's name. Former FBI agent, Pete Lapp, tells Gill Kearsley the fascinating story of how he and his team tracked down and arrested Ana, who is known as ‘Queen o...

In the late 1990s, a heavy metal band called Acrassicauda formed in Iraq, when the country was under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Over the next decade, the pioneering band found themselves on a collision course with the dictatorship militants and the west. The band was able to get inspiration from various bootleg tapes of heavy metal's greatest acts. Acrassicauda performed under Saddam's re...

It's 20 years since elections in French Polynesia in 2004, where the independence movement stunned the France-aligned government of the day, propelling pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru to the presidency. It was a landmark in the country's politics, where protests against French rule had increased due to the practice of using Polynesian islands for nuclear tests. Antony Geros, who helped lead t...

On 14 May 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. Tears and applause met the declaration, witnessed by 200 dignitaries, but fighting intensified in the days that followed. In 2010, Arieh Handler and Zipporah Porath spoke to Lucy Williamson about that day and its fallout. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the event...

In 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes in the Middle East. The period after World War Two in the region was tense, at times violent and politically complex. For Israeli Jews it was a chance to build their own nation after the genocide of the Holocaust. But for Arab Palestinian Muslims and Christians it was a time of loss. Many were intimidated by the vio...

In 1992, a photograph of Princess Diana alone on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal became one of the most famous photos in the world. Anwar Hussein was a photographer who documented the lives of the British royal family. His first visit to the Taj Mahal was to photograph Prince Charles in 1980. He tells Gill Kearsley about his relationship with the royal family and about taking the iconic photogra...

In 2009, the Indian government embarked on an ambitious task to register all of the country's billion-plus citizens with a unique digital ID. Aadhaar - which means foundation in many Indian languages - became the world's largest ever biometrics project. It allowed millions of people to open bank accounts or access a mobile connection for the very first time. But the project also attracted consider...

In 1963, Dr Jose Ignacio Barraquer Moner performed the first surgery on a human eye aimed at correcting short-sightedness. The ophthalmologist had been developing his technique for years, believing that there was a better solution for blurry vision than wearing glasses. But he had to move from Spain to Colombia to begin his experimental surgery which involved dry ice, a watchmaker’s lathe and rabb...

In the 1980s, a thirst for caffeine caused an unusual global collaboration. Coffee-loving East Germans were left without after a crop failure in the world’s biggest exporter of the drink, Brazil. So the East Germans hatched a scheme, linking up with fellow communist state Vietnam to create a mass of coffee plantations. The man behind the plan, Siegfried Kaulfuß, tells Michael Rossi about the scale...

When a new show called Friends hit American TV screens in September 1994, it made household names of its cast. Over 10 series, it charted the lives of six young New Yorkers, through marriages, divorces, births and deaths. The final episode was broadcast on 6 May 2004. In 2014, executive producer Kevin Bright told Farhana Haider how the show was born - and how it became one of the biggest comedies...

Thirty years on from the opening of the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France, we look at the moment the two halves of the tunnel were connected in 1990. Graham Fagg was the man who made the breakthrough, and the first person to cross by land between the two countries in 8,000 years. In 2010, he told Lucy Williamson about the festivities of that day. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by arc...

In February 2014, Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych fled the country. His estate was abandoned by security guards, so for the first time ordinary people got to see inside Mezhyhirya, the extraordinarily extravagant home of the former president. Denys Tarakhkotelyk was one of those early visitors, and went on to take charge of the estate. He tells Gill Kearsley his remarkable story, and...

In 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote one of the world’s most popular self help books - How to Win Friends and Influence People. The idea was suggested by a book editor who had attended one of Dale’s public speaking courses in New York. The result was a mix of psychology, philosophy and good old-fashioned common sense. Dale offered advice like: Smile. Give praise. Be a good listener. And remember people’s...

In 1961, the American psychologist Stanley Milgram began a series of controversial experiments on ‘obedience to authority’. His study aimed to show how ordinary people could be capable of committing evil acts, if ordered to do so. He wanted to understand the psychology behind genocide, telling the BBC: “How is it possible that ordinary people who were courteous and decent in everyday life, can act...

It’s 70 years since General Alfredo Stroessner seized power in Paraguay in a military coup. Stroessner remained in power for almost 35 years, before being toppled in 1989. More than 450 people were murdered under Stroessner's rule, with the fate of thousands more unknown. They are remembered as 'the disappeared' of Paraguay. One man has dedicated his life to finding the victims of Stroessner's dic...