Witness History

In 1986, a world record attempt was launched by the city of Cleveland, in the US.One and a half million balloons were blown up by volunteers ready to be released into the sky, with thousands of people watching. It was meant to be a dazzling publicity stunt, but due to strong winds and a cold front, the balloons didn't float away as expected. Colm Flynn speaks to Tom Holowatch, who was the project...

On 29 July 2000, retired Spanish politician Juan Mari Jáuregui was assassinated by Basque separatists Eta. Deemed a terrorist organisation by the European Union, Eta killed more than 800 people between 1968 and 2010. Its goal was to create an independent Basque state out of territory in south-west France and northern Spain. Following Jáuregui’s murder, his widow Maixabel Lasa worked to help victim...

In 1907, the men who would go on to lead the Russian Revolution met in London for a crucial congress. But the revolutionaries – including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky – were nearly stranded after running out of funds. The late British journalist Henry Brailsford played a key role in securing their fare home. In 1947, he told the BBC how the meeting marked a point of no return fo...

It's 50 years since theatre history was made - the premiere of A Chorus Line. It was seen as a seminal moment, turning the spotlight on the people who make the show for the first time. Baayork Lee tells Josephine McDermott how she played Connie Wong in the original production. Like many of the first cast, her true life experiences made it into the show which was developed in workshops by director...

In 1965, a new fibre was discovered by Polish American scientist Stephanie Kwolek. It was called Kevlar and it was found to be five times stronger than steel. Since that discovery it’s been used to save thousands of lives through its use in bulletproof vests, but it’s also used in hundreds of other products from aeroplanes to protective clothing for motorcyclists. Stephanie was one of the only fem...

In January 1994, two presidents enjoyed a memorable night in the Czech Republic – ending with an impromptu jazz performance. Five years after the fall of communism, the US president Bill Clinton visited Prague to share his hopes for a new transatlantic alliance. Key to his vision was his friendship with the Czech president Vaclav Havel, a playwright who had been imprisoned for dissidence during th...

On 22 July 2005, an unarmed Brazilian man was shot dead by anti-terrorism police at Stockwell Tube station, in London. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times in the head because he was mistaken for a terror suspect. The killing made headlines all over the world and his family demanded justice. Matt Pintus spoke to Jean Charles’ cousin and best friend, Patricia da Silva, in 2022. Eye-witness...

Irawati Karve became India’s first female anthropologist - studying tribes that nobody had investigated, and taking her children on expeditions deep in the rainforest. In 1927, she dared to defy the racist theory of Eugen Fischer, a famous German professor during her PhD in Berlin. Irawati scientifically rejected human differences to justify discrimination, and was the first to do so. Her granddau...

In the late 1970s, disco died in America and a new wave of Italian producers took advantage of the advances in electronic instruments to craft their own dancefloor fillers. The result was Italo disco – a genre of music recognisable for its synthesiser beats, heavily accented English lyrics and catchy melodies. One of the biggest hits was Dolce Vita. Singer Ryan Paris – real name Fabio Roscioli – t...

In 1995, an international row broke out between Canada and Spain over fishing quotas. It started with gunfire and ended with a deal. The dispute began after Canada set up restrictions to protect fish stocks, including the turbot. A 320km (200 mile) controlled zone was placed around the country’s north Atlantic coast. Fishermen also had to stick to quotas. But, according to Canada, some boats from...

It was a week that brought the future of Greece and the Eurozone to the brink. Ten years ago, on 6 July the Greek people voted against the terms of a financial bailout which included raising taxes and slashing welfare spending. Greece owed €323bn to various countries and banks within Europe. Its banks were closed. A quarter of the population and half of Greece’s young people were unemployed. The m...

On 14 July 2015, Iran agreed to temporarily limit its nuclear programme. The deal was signed in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it was agreed between Iran and a group of world powers known as the P5+1 – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, together with the EU. The accord came after years of tension over Iran’s alleged e...

In March 2025, radio frequencies worldwide stopped carrying Voice of America broadcasts for the first time in 83 years. President Donald Trump’s administration had imposed funding cuts on the US Agency for Global Media with the White House accusing the broadcaster of being "anti-Trump", "radical" and "leftist”. While the cuts are being disputed in courts, Josephine McDermott traces the beginnings...

In 1941, Walt Disney made a tempting offer to a fellow pioneer of the animation industry, Quirino Cristiani - the author of the first animated feature film. Cristiani was an Italian immigrant raised in Argentina who built a career creating animated political satires in the early days of cinema. He authored full-length movies that he drew entirely on his own, sketching and cutting thousands of figu...

On 3 June 2015, tens of thousands of people gathered in the capital, Buenos Aires, and in dozens of cities and towns demanding an end to violence against women. There were demonstrations in Chile and Uruguay in solidarity too. Argentina was reporting a female murder rate of one every 31 hours. The killing of a 14-year-old pregnant girl by her boyfriend was seen as a tipping point. Something had to...

In 1982, Argentine geneticist Victor Penchaszadeh was living in exile in New York when he received a call that would change the course of his career. Two founding members of the campaign group, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, were asking for his help to find their kidnapped grandchildren. Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina was under military rule. During this period, thousands of mainly young...

When Eva Peron, Argentina's most famous First Lady, died in 1952, her body was embalmed. Three years later, her widower, Juan Peron, was deposed in a coup. But military officers feared her corpse would become a rallying point of protest against the new government. So they stole it. Over the next few decades, Evita’s body was stored in several different places in several different countries, inspir...

In 1985, Argentina’s former military leaders were put on trial accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering thousands of their own people. The ‘trial of the juntas’ was the first major prosecution of war crimes since the Nuremberg trials following World War Two. Between 1976 and 1983, around 30 thousand people disappeared or were murdered in Argentina during the so-called Dirty War. Military lea...

In July 1985, music legends Mick Jagger and David Bowie were asked to perform a duet with a twist at Live Aid, the biggest concert in pop history. Utilising the latest satellite technology, Mick would perform on the US stage in Philadelphia, while David would perform on the UK stage at Wembley Stadium. As the technical issues were being discussed, it soon became obvious that a half-second delay in...

On 3 July 1985 Back to the Future was released. The film tells the story of Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, played by Michael J Fox, who is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-travelling DeLorean car invented by his friend, Doc Brown. The screenplay for the genre-bending story was rejected 40 times, but it became a Hollywood blockbuster, dominating contemporary cultu...

Judging by how often US President Donald Trump has repeated the slogan “Drill, baby, drill”, you might think he coined it. But the phrase actually dates back to 2008. It was at the Republican National Convention that former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele first used it, arguing the United States needed to become energy independent. The slogan, the result of what Michael describes as a...

On 1 July 2015, a much-loved lion was killed in Zimbabwe by an American trophy hunter. Black-maned Cecil was one of the star attractions at Hwange National Park. He was baited outside the park and shot with a bow. American dentist Walter Palmer, who reportedly paid a local guide $50,000 to shoot Cecil, was widely condemned. He said he didn’t know Cecil was a known local favourite and had relied on...

In 2008, an earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed almost 90,000 people. Many were crushed when school buildings collapsed, exposing their poor construction quality. To counter perceived government suppression of information, the artist Ai Weiwei made an artwork from 90 tonnes of steel bars salvaged from the schools' wreckage. In 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained in harsh conditions for 81 days...

Between 1945 and 1952, ‘happiness trains’ transported 70,000 children from southern to northern Italy to live with wealthier families. It was a scheme organised by the Union of Italian Women and the Italian Communist Party in an attempt to make the lives of southern Italian children better. Ten-year-old Bianca D’Aniello was one of the passengers to travel from Salerno in the south to Mestre in the...

When the Medellin Metro opened in 1995, the Colombian city had recently been called the “murder capital of the world” due to the high homicide rate caused by Pablo Escobar’s drug wars. The network has grown to include a large cable car network which stretches to the neighbourhoods built into the sides of mountains that surround Medellin. It has helped transform the city into a tourist hot-spot – s...