Witness History

In Bolivia, on 25 October 1984, President Hernán Siles Zuazo announced he was going on hunger strike. He was trying to stop the booming cocaine industry in his country. It was the second time he had taken the job of president and he had been on hunger strike several times before. His daughter Marcela Siles, tells Laura Jones about her father.(Photo: President Zuazo. Credit: Getty Images) HISTORICA...

For two years, José Luis Peñas risked his life making secret recordings that revealed one of Spain's biggest corruption scandals. It forced the ruling party from power and brought down Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in 2018.José Luis Peñas speaks to Ben Henderson.(Photo: Mariano Rajoy (right) moments after resigning. Credit: Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Pool via Getty Images) HISTORICAL ARCHIVE & EVID...

On the 11 January 1998 in Mumbai, India, the first World Laughter Day took place. It was the idea of Dr Madan Kataria, a medical doctor who wanted to test the theory that laughter is the best medicine. He tells Gill Kearsley how this unusual event started. (Photo: World Laughter Day in Mumbai in 2016. Credit: Arijit Sen/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) HISTORICAL ARCHIVE & EVIDENCE The origin...

In 1970, Natalia Makarova became the first female ballet star to defect to the West from Russia. The dancer claimed asylum during a UK tour, nine years after another Russian dancer, Rudolf Nureyev, had defected. Natalia later joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York. She wouldn’t return to her home country for almost 20 years. Jane Wilkinson has been looking through the archive to discover t...

The fate of Louis-Charles, son of the last king of France, was for years shrouded in rumour. The little boy was said to have died in prison in 1795. But for years, rumours spread that he had been swapped with an imposter. It wasn't until a team of scientists took DNA samples from the heart of the imprisoned boy in 2000 that the mystery could be laid to rest. In 2021, Prof Jean Jacques Cassiman and...

On 1 April 2001, the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage. Four couples were chosen to take part in a collective wedding at midnight which was broadcast on TV.Hélène Faasen and Anne-Marie Thus tell Dan Hardoon about the wedding they thought they'd never have. (Photo: The four happy couples cut the cake. Credit: Marcel Antonisse/ANP/AFP/Getty Images) HISTORICAL...

On 13 March 1989, the Canadian province of Quebec suffered a nine-hour electricity blackout. Much of the state's infrastructure was damaged, but the power companies couldn't find any obvious cause. Physicist Aja Hruska was one of the only people in the country that knew the answer to Quebec's problem. A solar flare ejected by the sun had hit the earth's magnetic field, creating electrical havoc. A...

In 1937, the Hindenburg airship burst into flames during its mooring in New Jersey, in the US, killing 35 of the 97 passengers and crew. HISTORICAL ARCHIVE & EVIDENCE The original photo gallery, unedited witness statements, and the private archive documents mentioned in this historical report are now available for public access: 👉 ACCESS FULL ARCHIVE HERE: https://goo.su/pAcV16 Verification:...

The wingsuit is the ultimate in extreme sports clothing. The aerodynamic outfit allows base jumpers and skydivers to free-fall for longer before opening a parachute. The road to creating it was littered with casualties, but in 1999 skydivers Jari Kuosma and Robert Pecnik developed the first commercial wingsuits. In 2019, Jari told Jonathan Coates how exciting, but also how dangerous they can be.(P...

In 1985, British scientists made what would turn out to be one of the most important environmental discoveries of the 20th century - finding a hole in the earth’s ozone layer. The British Antarctic Survey, based in Cambridge, had been monitoring ozone levels for more than 30 years using the Dobson Ozone Spectrophotometer. But it was only when they compared previously uncharted figures from the 198...

In February 1990, Nasa space probe Voyager took a famous photo of Earth as it left the Solar System. Seen from six billion kilometres away, our planet appears as a mere dot lit up by the sun, giving a sense of humanity's small place in the universe. In 2020, Darryl Morris spoke to Nasa planetary scientist Candice Hansen, who worked on the Voyager programme. A Made in Manchester production for BBC...

In 1982, after a two-year global search, the BBC auditioned Ken Hom to be the star of a new Chinese cookery TV series. In the show, called Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery, he introduced viewers to dishes like dim sum and spicy braised aubergine. He also gave advice on choosing and using a wok. He tells Josephine McDermott about his sudden rise to celebrity and how he brought Chinese dishes to new audien...

It’s one of the most popular dishes in South East Asian cooking and for many it’s seen as Thailand’s national dish. However, the origins of pad Thai are disputed. Some believe it was created and taken to the country centuries ago by Chinese immigrants. Others believe it was invented during the rule of military dictator, Plaek Phibunsongkhram, as a way of cementing Thai nationalism in the 1940s. Th...

In 1994, biotech company Calgene brought the world's first genetically-modified food to supermarket shelves. The Flavr Savr tomato kept fresh for 30 days and could be shipped long distances without going off. Yet the world was wary of this new food, and it took 10 years and $100m of investment to get it to market. In 2017, the firm's then-CEO Roger Salquist told Claire Bowes about his mission to r...

The kiwi fruit is synonymous with New Zealand in the minds of most European and American shoppers. But the hairy fruit actually comes from China and was once known as the Chinese gooseberry. So how did New Zealand hijack a Chinese fruit and turn it into their biggest horticultural export? Former fruit exporter Don Turner tells Vicky Farncombe how his family named the kiwi fruit in the 1950s and cr...

In 1946, Italian confectioner Pietro Ferrero set out to bring chocolate to the masses. His recipe evolved over the years to become a world-famous product. Thomas Chatenier from the manufacturer tells Uma Doraiswamy how the chocolate and hazelnut formula spread across the globe.(Photo: The famous spread. Credit: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images) HISTORICAL ARCHIVE & EVIDENCE The o...

In the 1960s, the singer Dafydd Iwan started campaigning for the Welsh language to gain official status in Wales. For years, Dafydd received little support. In January 1969 he decided to up the pressure, defacing a police station sign written in English with paint. He ended up in prison, but soon young people across the country were picking up paint pots and taking up the cause. Today, the Welsh l...

In 2014 three journalists were sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt. Peter Greste, Mohammed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed became known as the Al Jazeera Three. The jail terms handed out to them led to an international outcry as protesters called for press freedom. Peter Greste tells his compelling story to Gill Kearsley.(Photo: Peter Greste inside the defendants’ cage. Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP vi...

In late 1973, Chile was in turmoil. General Augusto Pinochet had led a military coup deposing the socialist president Salvador Allende who was now dead. The army was rounding up leftists; torturing, imprisoning and killing them. In the capital Santiago, the country’s best-known poet Pablo Neruda was lying in a hospital bed. He was 69 and had cancer. As a prominent member of the Communist Party his...

On 25 March 1975, Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal was murdered, shot by his nephew as he bent to kiss him as a greeting. The king’s oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani was standing beside him when the gun went off. In 2017, Ahmed’s daughter, Dr Mai Yamani, told Louise Hidalgo of her father’s pain at witnessing the death.(Photo: King Faisal in 1967. Credit: Pierre Manevy/Getty Images) HISTORICAL ARCHIVE &amp...

On 29 September 2009, a devastating tsunami hit Samoa, killing 149 people and leaving a trail of destruction. For Lumepa Hald it was a terrifying day which resulted in a tragic loss. She tells her story to Gill Kearsley.(Photo: The devastation in Samoa after the tsunami in 2009. Credit: Phil Walter/Getty Images) HISTORICAL ARCHIVE & EVIDENCE The original photo gallery, unedited witness stateme...

On 15 December 2013, South Africa held the funeral of Nelson Mandela who led the struggle in defeating apartheid and became the country’s first black president. His ancestral home in the village of Qunu in South Africa’s Eastern Cape hosted 60 world leaders including four United States presidents and two UN secretary generals. It was the first state funeral held by the country. Nelson Mandela’s el...

In 1983, the disappearance of a teenage girl who was a citizen of Vatican City led to a scandal. When Pope John Paul II made a public appeal to the people holding Emanuela Orlandi captive, the world took notice and her case was treated as a suspected kidnapping. Forty years on, the reason she vanished is still unclear. Emanuela’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, speaks to Daniel Gordon about his life-long...

The great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova lived through some of the darkest chapters of Soviet history, but never stopped writing even though the communist regime repeatedly tried to silence her. One of Anna's most famous poems, Requiem, is about her son's arrest and the Stalinist terror. In 2022, art historian Era Korobova told Tatyana Movshevich about the poet's tumultuous relationship with her son....

In 1998, Russia’s President Boris Yeltsin shocked the nation with a last-minute decision to speak at the reburial of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, 80 years after their murder.“We must end an age of blood and violence in Russia,” he said, as he called for the country to face up to the crimes of its communist past. Lilia Dubovaya, a reporter for the state news service, told Robert Nicholson about...