Witness History: Archive 2013
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Witness History: Archive 2013
The story of our times told by the people who were there.
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Edith Piaf
In 1963, the funeral of the legendary French singer brought Paris to a standstill. In this programme, Piaf's friends and lovers recall the career of t...
Anti-Shah Demonstrations in Iran
Millions of people took to the streets of Iran's main cities in December 1978. They were demonstrating against the Shah and his authoritarian governme...
Prison Camp in WW2 Manila, Philippines
Thousands of foreign civilians were interned in camps when Japanese troops occupied the Philippines in World War II. Many of the inmates suffered from...
The Murder of Dian Fossey
Gorilla expert Dian Fossey was murdered in her cabin at her research centre in Rwanda on 26 December 1985. Lucy Burns speaks to Kelly Stewart, who wor...
Grand Theft Auto
A new computer game - designed in Scotland - became a surprise global hit in 1997. But Grand Theft Auto also courted controversy and sparked debate ov...
The MP Who Faked His Own Death
British MP John Stonehouse faked his own death in Miami in November 1974 - and was discovered just weeks later in Australia on 24 December. Lucy Burns...
Murder in the Amazon
In December 1988 the Brazilian environmental campaigner, Chico Mendes, was shot dead by cattle ranchers. The 44-year-old leader of the rubber tappers...
Lockerbie Bombing
On 21 December 1988 an American airliner was blown out of the sky above Scotland. A bomb had been planted in its luggage hold. All of the 259 people...
The Assassination of Spain's Prime Minister
On December 20, 1973 Luis Carrero Blanco, the Spanish PM was killed by a massive bomb which was detonated under his car in Madrid. It had been planted...
Indonesia Invades East Timor
In December 1975, East Timor was invaded by its neighbour Indonesia, just a few days after the Timorese had declared independence from Portuguese colo...
The Kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr
In December 1963 the 19-year-old son of Frank Sinatra - Frank Jr - was kidnapped for a ransom. He was released unharmed after two days. Barry Keenan,...
International Space Station
In December 1998, NASA astronaut Bob Cabana and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev were the first on board the International Space Station, after the f...
South Africa Wins the Rugby World Cup
In 1995, post-apartheid South Africa hosted, and won, the Rugby World Cup. It was a hugely unifying moment for the country. Hear from Francois Pienaar...
The Soweto Uprising
In June 1976 South African police opened fire on schoolchildren protesting against having to learn Afrikaans at school. Hear from Bongi Mkhabela who...
The ANC's Armed Struggle
In 1961 the African National Congress decided to take up arms against Apartheid. The organisation's military wing was called Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spe...
Apartheid in the 1950s
Following the death of Nelson Mandela we remember the system he was fighting against. Using BBC archive we present a snapshot of the attitudes and emo...
The Destruction of the Mosque at Ayodhya
In December 1993, Hindu activists demolished a Muslim holy site.
Prohibition in the USA
On 5 December 1933 prohibition came to an end. For almost 14 years it had been illegal to sell alcohol in the USA. The law was widely flouted and orga...
Psychiatry and Homosexuality in the USA
From the 1950s until the 1970s, homosexuality was classed as a mental illness in the USA. Hear from Charles Silverstein, a campaigner who persuaded th...
Vietnamese Boat People
In the late 1970s, after the end of the Vietnam War, over a million people fled the country on small overcrowded boats. Hear the story of just one Vi...
Murder of Churchwomen in El Salvador
In December 1980 three US Roman Catholic nuns and a layworker were abducted and murdered in El Salvador. Their work speaking out on behalf of the poor...
Portugal Attacks Guinea
In November 1970, Portugal launched a surprise raid on the independent West African nation of Guinea, which had been supporting liberation fighters o...
The Tehran Conference of World War Two
In November 1943, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill all met together for the first time to discuss the progress of World War Two. The meeting was held i...
How Child Road Deaths Changed the Netherlands
In 1973, the campaign group Stop de Kindermoord or Stop the Child Murder launched in the Netherlands. It would change the face of the nation's infrast...
The First Panda in America
In November 1936, a US socialite and her Chinese-American guide captured a giant panda cub in the forests of China. Ruth Harkness took the cub to the...
The Trojan Room Coffee Pot
In 1993 the first webcam went online. Its camera was focused on a coffee pot so that computer scientists in Cambridge, in the UK could see if there wa...
Making Doctor Who
On 23rd November 1963, the first episode of one of the world's best loved TV sci-fi programmes was shown.
But the BBC's debut of Doctor Who was...
Birmingham Pub Bombings
In 1974, bombs exploded at two busy pubs in the English city of Birmingham, killing 21 people. The IRA were blamed. Witness speaks to Les Robinson, wh...
The Execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa
In November 1995, Nigeria's military government provoked international outrage when it executed the writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and eight other activists f...
Lee Harvey Oswald in the USSR
Before he shot President John F Kennedy, Oswald spent two and a half mysterious years living in Minsk. We hear from two people who got to know him dur...
The Jonestown Massacre
In November 1978 an American cult leader, Jim Jones, ordered more than 900 people to kill themselves. He had brought his followers to live in a remot...
Yemen Civil War
Red Cross doctors tried to treat both royalist and republican casualties in Yemen in the 1960s. Witness Pascal Grellety-Bosviel first journeyed to th...
Baby Fae and the Baboon Heart Transplant
In 1984 doctors in California tried a revolutionary operation on a two-week-old baby girl. She had been born with a fatal heart condition - but there...
Death in the Boxing Ring
In November 1982, the boxer Deuk-Koo Kim died of brain damage after a world title fight against the American Ray Mancini. Kim fell into a coma after b...
Dustbowl Storms in the US
In November 1933, one of the first in a series of dust-storms hit the central United States. In the following years, hundreds of thousands of farmers...
Armistice Day 1918
On November 11th 1918 at 11am, the guns of World War One finally fell silent.
Listen to voices from the archives remembering that moment.
...
Canada's Biggest Peacetime Evacuation
On 10 November 1979 a train carrying hundreds of tonnes of dangerous chemicals crashed in Canada. It led to one of the biggest peacetime evacuations...
The Death of Dylan Thomas
In November 1953 the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died in New York aged just thirty-nine. Witness presents interviews from the BBC archives.
Picture...
The Green March in the Sahara
In November 1975, King Hassan the Second ordered hundreds of thousands of Moroccans to march into disputed territory in the desert. He wanted to claim...
Waterford Kamhlaba multi-racial school
In 1963 southern Africa's first multi-racial school opened in Swaziland.
It was a direct challenge to neighbouring South Africa's apartheid regi...