For more than 50 years, Mulatu Astatke has been performing at venues around the world, inspiring audiences with his original genre of music known as Ethio-jazz. He recorded the volumes of ‘Afro-Latin Soul’ with his band, The Ethiopian Quintet, in 1966. They were the first experiments of this new sound, fusing Ethiopian traditional notes with Afro Latin and jazz forms. Mulatu Astatke tells Vicky Carter how he created the genre of Ethio-jazz. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witnes...
Mar 28, 2025•10 min
Harold Riley was the only artist in the world granted a sitting to capture Nelson Mandela on canvas. The unique portrait was unveiled in 2005 and raised over $1m for South African children's charities at an auction held at the Rockefeller Centre in New York. Mandela sat for the English artist six times in Cape Town and Johannesburg over 18 months which Harold Riley described as "one of the greatest experiences" of his life. This programme was produced and presented by Reena Stanton-Sharma using ...
Mar 27, 2025•10 min
As Yugoslavia began to break down, the Balkans conflict began - a series of brutal wars characterised by disputes over territory, identity, and ethnic divisions. In 1991, the Croatian War of Independence started – the first of the major wars. One of its defining moments came in October, when the Yugoslav People’s Army advanced on the south of the country leading to the Siege of Dubrovnik. One of the Yugoslav People’s Army commanders in the region was Rear Admiral Krsto Durović, a Montenegrin who...
Mar 26, 2025•9 min
In 2015 Goodluck Jonathan became the first Nigerian president to concede election defeat. It allowed the transfer of power to the opposition party in Africa's biggest democracy - a country that had hitherto experienced vote-rigging and violence. His special adviser on media and publicity Dr Reuben Abati tells Josephine McDermott about the moment when the president phoned his opponent Muhammadu Bahari to congratulate him on winning the election. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Wi...
Mar 25, 2025•11 min
When General David Galtier hovered above the French Alps in a helicopter on 24 March 2015 he could not see the 60-tonne plane he was looking for. Instead he saw thousands and thousands of little pieces of metal. “There was nothing,” he says. “Only these little stars shining in the mountains.” Ten years on, he recalls to Josephine McDermott how he led the police’s search operation, from the moment he heard about the disappearance of Flight 4U 9525, to the handing back of the victims’ possessions....
Mar 24, 2025•10 min
In October 2012, the founding father of the European Space Agency was honoured when a spacecraft named after him was sent to the international space station. Within the probe – called the Edoardo Amaldi Automated Transfer Vehicle – was a letter which had been written by Edoardo in 1958 detailing his plans for an organisation which would bring together the continent’s greatest minds in space science. It was in response to the brain drain Europe was facing in the years prior when its best scientis...
Mar 21, 2025•10 min
In July 1975, former competitors the Soviet Union and the United States both launched rockets into the sky within hours of each other, as part of a joint project. They wanted two spacecraft, from two different countries, to achieve the first international docking in space. While millions watched on TV, the cosmonauts and astronauts opened the hatches between the two vehicles and shook hands, then shared meals and conducted joint science experiments. In 2022, former NASA chief historian, Bill Bar...
Mar 20, 2025•10 min
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.” These are the opening lines of the 'In Event of Moon Disaster' speech, written in 1969 in case the moon landing astronauts did not make it home. They were composed by President Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire, who died in 2009, at the age of 79. The speech continued: “These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But the...
Mar 19, 2025•12 min
On 18 March 1965, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to spacewalk. He spent around 10 minutes floating above the Earth, tethered to the spaceship by a 5m “umbilical cord”. Recalling that moment, he said: “I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe. At the same time, I felt enormously powerful.” But the mission didn’t go smoothly. The lack of atmospheric pressure in space had caused the Soviet’s spacesuit to inflate and become stiff – meani...
Mar 18, 2025•10 min
In 2003, 21 people died when a space rocket exploded at Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Centre, three days before its planned flight. It was the country’s third – and most serious - rocket failure in six years. But despite the setback, just 14 months later, Brazil revived its space ambitions by successfully launching its first rocket since the tragedy. Jacqueline Paine spoke to engineer Felix Palmerio, who spent decades working on a special project to develop a space rocket in Brazil, and who watched ...
Mar 17, 2025•9 min
On 18 March 2015, 22 people, mostly foreign tourists, were killed at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. Hamadi Ben Abdesslem, a tour guide who led tourists to safety, tells Anouk Millet what it was like that day. A Whistledown production. 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 world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we tak...
Mar 14, 2025•10 min
In 1997, Isatou Ceesay, who lives in The Gambia had an idea to make bags and purses out of old discarded plastic. Her idea to help the environment started with a group of five women and has grown to become a national project that supports women in the country to improve their skills and income. She is now recognised worldwide for her environmental work and has become known in Africa as the ‘"Queen of Recycling". Isatou tells Gill Kearsley her story. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archiv...
Mar 13, 2025•10 min
By the beginning of 1990, the United States Congress stalled on passing the Americans with Disabilities Act, a piece of legislation aimed at prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities. Frustrated by the government’s inaction, more than 1,000 disability activists showed up in Washington DC to protest on 12 March that year. When the group reached the Capitol Building’s stairs, hundreds of activists pulled themselves out of their wheelchairs and began to crawl up in a dramatic and ...
Mar 12, 2025•10 min
In 1959, Todd Matshikiza composed the score for King Kong, it was South Africa’s first musical with an all-black cast and it opened to critical acclaim. About the rise and fall of the heavyweight boxer Ezekiel Dlamini, it defied apartheid with the collaboration between black and white artists. Starring Miriam Makebe, it launched the singer's international career and went on to tour, arriving in London’s West End in February 1961. Todd’s daughter Marian was eight when the family moved to London f...
Mar 11, 2025•10 min
There are few inventions that we rely on as much as the Global Positioning System, also known as GPS. But, when it was created in the late 1970s, nobody wanted it. Prof Brad Parkinson and his team at the US Air Force built it, and the first GPS satellite was launched in 1978. However, GPS wasn’t widely used until an air disaster in 1983 highlighted the need for satellite navigation. Nowadays, GPS helps countless people travel in the right direction. But, we also rely on it for many things you mi...
Mar 10, 2025•10 min
In March 1965, hundreds of peaceful civil rights protesters in Selma were brutally beaten by Alabama state troops. They had been marching to demonstrate against the denial of voting rights to Black Americans. The bloodshed in Selma prompted President Lyndon B Johnson to push for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress. The landmark Act was brought in to tackle racial discrimination during elections and to guarantee the rights of Af...
Mar 07, 2025•10 min
In 1987, a decades-long war in Chad reached a dramatic turning point in what would come to be known as the Great Toyota War. Named after the rugged pick-up trucks that transformed modern desert warfare, this campaign saw the lightly armed Chadian forces out manoeuvre Libya’s heavily fortified military. They achieved a string of astonishing victories, including the capture of the Libyan airbase at Ouadi Dum. Former Chadian officer Mahamat Saleh Bani recalls the speed, ingenuity, and bravery that ...
Mar 06, 2025•10 min
In December 1989, more than 20,000 US soldiers descended on the tiny Central American country of Panama. The Americans sought to remove the country’s leader, General Manuel Noriega, who sought refuge from the invading forces with the Papal Ambassador. Noriega was a dictator and had been indicted in Florida over drug trafficking. In 2010, Neal Razzell spoke to Enrique Jelenszky, who assisted communications between the US troops and Noriega. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness...
Mar 05, 2025•10 min
In 1937, American supermarket owner, Sylvan Goldman, came up with a way to get his customers to spend more. He introduced his 'folding basket carriers' in his Humpty Dumpty chain in Oklahoma, hiring models to push them round his stores. They caught on, becoming known as shopping carts in the USA. Rachel Naylor uses clips from a 1977 CBS interview of Sylvan with Charles Kuralt to tell the story. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. ...
Mar 04, 2025•10 min
In 2015, Europe was in the grip of a migrant crisis, as more than one million people fled regions including the Middle East. Many set their sights on a new life in the UK. But, in order to get there, they had to cross the English Channel. One of the most common methods was to hide aboard vehicles destined for Britain at the French port city of Calais. This led to the creation of a squalid migrant camp outside Calais, known as the "Jungle". It was populated by seven to ten thousand people at its ...
Mar 03, 2025•10 min
In 1953, in what was then the Belgian Congo, four-year-old Marie-José Loshi was forcibly removed from her family’s village and taken more than 600km away to live in a Catholic institute. The cause of her kidnapping was the colour of her skin. Under Belgium’s colonial rule, thousands of mixed-race children were taken from their homes and separated from their families. The state hoped the actions would quash any sense of revolt against the colony. More than 70 years later, Marie-José and four othe...
Feb 28, 2025•10 min
In 2010, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck the coast of Chile. It shook the central and southern parts of the country for more than three minutes, causing widespread damage which destroyed buildings, bridges and roads. The earthquake triggered a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, which travelled 600 kilometres west to the remote island of Juan Fernandez where Alison Campbell and her family were on holiday. Hundreds of people died, and thousands were left injured and homeless. Alison Campbell tells J...
Feb 27, 2025•10 min
In 1951, a group of 22 Inuit children from Greenland were sent to live with foster parents in Denmark. It was part of a social experiment aimed at improving the lot of the Inuit people. But, for the children involved it was a confusing experience. Helene Thiesen was one of those children. She spoke to Ellen Otzen in 2015. 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 world through the eyes of t...
Feb 26, 2025•10 min
The Nellie massacre on 18 February 1983 was the worst bloodshed in the country since Indian independence in 1947. It is estimated that 3,000 people died that day. Bedabrata Lahkar was a journalist working for the Assam Tribune newspaper at the time. He tells Gill Kearsley about the events that led up to the massacre and the devastating scenes he witnessed. A warning this programme contains descriptions of violence and language that some people may find offensive. Eye-witness accounts brought to ...
Feb 25, 2025•10 min
What was it in September of 1959 that caused an Austrian scientist to rush out from his lab and buy children's modelling clay? Austrian born Dr Max Perutz had made one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century. For the first time, he could see what a molecule of haemoglobin looked like in 3D. Using lectures and programmes from the BBC archive, Josephine McDermott tells the story of how his fellow Cambridge University students in the UK thought he was “mad” to try and map a molec...
Feb 24, 2025•10 min
Sixty years ago, on 21st February 1965, the controversial black leader, Malcolm X, was assassinated in Harlem, New York as he was preparing to speak there. In 2011, Simon Watts spoke to Herman Ferguson who was one of the people who was in the audience that day. This programme contains outdated racial language that may offend. 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 world through the eyes ...
Feb 21, 2025•10 min
On 29 March 1974, Czesław Kukuczka stormed into the Polish embassy in East Berlin, threatening to detonate a bomb unless he was allowed to escape to the West. Shot at point-blank range while trying to cross the Berlin Wall, the identity of Kukuczka's killer remained a mystery for decades - until archive documents led investigators to former Stasi officer Martin Naumann. Naumann's historic trial made him one of the first former Stasi officers to be convicted of murder. Dan Hardoon speaks to Dr Fi...
Feb 20, 2025•10 min
In December 2005, Evo Morales made history in Bolivia when he became the country’s first indigenous president. The country is one of the poorest in South America and has the highest proportion of indigenous people on the continent – they had been marginalised for centuries. His election came after years of protests over the destruction of coca leaf crops and the privatisation of the country's oil and gas reserves. Tim O’Callaghan speaks to Bolivia’s former Vice President Álvaro García Linera. Ey...
Feb 19, 2025•10 min
In 2010, one of the oldest languages in the world died after the death of its last remaining speaker. For 40 years, Boa Senior from the Indian Andaman Islands was the only person who spoke the Bo language. She died, aged 85. Leading up to her death, linguist Professor Anvita Abbi spent years attempting to learn the dying language. Without family or friends who understood her, Boa took to speaking to birds – she said they were her ancestors. Eventually she opened up to Anvita, singing songs and s...
Feb 18, 2025•10 min
In 2013, Guinness World Records deactivated the record for the longest kiss after 15 years, saying it had become too dangerous and some of the rules conflicted with their current updated policies. It means Thai couple Ekkachai, and his wife Laksana, still hold the title, after first breaking it in 2011, with a time of 46 hours and 24 minutes, then again in 2013 with 58 hours and 35 minutes. The couple are no longer together but Ekkachai looks back at breaking the records with Megan Jones. Eye-wi...
Feb 17, 2025•10 min
