Witness History

On 5 June 1982, a teenage refugee from Vietnam became the first Rubik's Cube world champion. Representing the United States, 16-year-old Minh Thai took on contestants from 18 other countries at the championship in Hungary.

He made history by solving the cube in 22.95 seconds.

He tells Helen Ledwick about his first encounter with the iconic puzzle, his journey from Los Angeles to Budapest, and a last-minute obstacle that nearly stopped him from taking part.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive and testimony. Sporting Witness is for those fascinated by sporting history. We take you to...

The siege of Ladysmith was a key moment in the Boer War, also known as the South African War.

In 1899, British troops and civilians were trapped in the besieged South African town for 118 days. Using a BBC archive recording, James Dalton, a British Army bandsman with the Gordon Highlanders, recalls shelling, hunger, disease and the dramatic relief of Ladysmith.

Produced by Helen Ledwick in collaboration with BBC Archives.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive...

In 1947, a missing goat led to the chance discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls. These ancient Jewish manuscripts became one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century.

British archaeologist Gerald Lankester Harding was one of the key figures in the early investigation of the scrolls. In a BBC recording made in 1949, he describes how they were found, the painstaking excavation that followed and the search to uncover their origins and significance.

This episode was produced by Helen Ledwick in collaboration with the BBC Archives.

Witness History is a short...

After decades of campaigning in Japan, the pill was finally legalised in 1999.

In contrast, the male impotency drug Viagra was approved for use in just six months, and legalised before the contraceptive pill for women.

Politician Yoriko Madoka pushed hard for the right to take the pill and told Rebecca Kesby that sexism and male dominance in parliament is why it took so long.

This programme was first broadcast in 2020.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through...

In 2012, the discovery of rock art in caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi changed our understanding of early human history.

Archaeologist Maxime Aubert tells Leo Dunlop how his team used a new dating technique to reveal that some of the cave paintings were tens of thousands of years older than previously thought.

This challenged long-held ideas that art and storytelling originated in Western Europe.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in...

On an English field in 1957, the final touches were made to what was then the largest radio telescope in the world.

But designing and building the Jodrell Bank Observatory hadn’t been easy.

Sir Bernard Lovell, the mastermind behind the 76m wide dish, had to overcome money shortages, engineering difficulties and media scepticism.

But as the space race took off in the 1960s, Jodrell Bank proved its worth, tracking American and Soviet missions.

Jane Wilkinson has been through the BBC archives to find out more.

Witness History is a sh...

Harold Riley was the only artist in the world given the opportunity to paint Nelson Mandela from life.

When Mandela agreed to pose for the English artist, it marked the beginning of a remarkable relationship. Over 18 months, the pair met on six occasions in South Africa, resulting in a portrait unveiled in 2005 that later raised more than $1m for children's charities when it was sold at auction in New York.

In 2025, Reena Stanton-Sharma used archive recordings of Harold Riley to tell the story behind the artist's unique access to Nelson Mandela.

Witness History...

In 1932, hundreds of walkers organised a mass trespass on Kinder Scout, the highest point in England's Peak District.

It was a major step in the campaign by workers from the industrial city of Manchester for access to the surrounding countryside, much of which was privately owned.

In 2012, Simon Watts used interviews from the BBC archives to tell the story through the memories of those who took part in the trespass.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony...

The Fifth Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester, England, in 1945, helping to shape the post-war struggle against colonialism and racial discrimination. Prominent black activists, intellectuals and trade union leaders from around the world attended, including Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, who would later become the leaders of independent Ghana and Kenya.

In 2020, Alex Last explored the story through archive recordings of one of the delegates, the late African National Congress activist and writer Peter Abrahams, and spoke to Professor Hakim Adi of the University of Chichester about the significance of the meeting.

Witness History is...

In June 1948, the ‘Baby’ was invented. It was the first stored-program computer, meaning it was the first machine to work like the ones we have today. It was developed in England at the University of Manchester.

The computer was huge; it filled a room that was nearly six metres square. The team who made it are now recognised as the pioneers of modern computing.

Gill Kearsley has been looking through the archives to find out more about the 'Baby'.

This programme was first broadcast in 2024.

Witness History is a short BBC Worl...

In 1962, Nigerian-born Phil Magbotiwan opened a brand-new nightclub in Manchester, England. In part because of his own personal experiences of racism, Phil wanted to create somewhere where everyone would be welcome – Manchester’s first racially inclusive nightclub The Reno was born.

The nightclub became a particularly important space for Manchester's mixed heritage community, who felt unwelcome in city centre venues.

Phil’s youngest daughter, Lisa Ayegun shared her memories of the Reno and her dad, with Matt Pintus in 2022.

This programme contains descriptions of racial discrimination.

Witness History is a short BBC Wo...

In November 2015, the 'holy grail' of shipwrecks, laden with treasure worth an estimated $18 billion, was found off the coast of Colombia.

The San José, a Spanish galleon, sank in 1708, when a British warship intercepted it.

Rachel Naylor speaks to former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos about how it was located and the ongoing international dispute over who owns it.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one m...

In 1997, after years working abroad, Pramod Bhasin returned to India and spotted an opportunity that would help transform his country's economy.

Despite major telecommunications challenges, he went on to set up India's first call centre, laying the foundations for a new outsourcing industry.

In 2019, he told Rebecca Kesby how he overcame unreliable phone lines, scepticism and technical hurdles to turn an ambitious idea into reality.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in...

In the early hours of 14 February 1981, a fire broke out at the Stardust nightclub in Artane, Dublin which was filled with more than 800 people.

The blaze killed 48 people and injured 200. A tribunal in 1983 found the cause to be probable arson.

This was rejected by many victims' families and survivors and the ruling was dismissed in 2009. Fresh inquests were granted in 2019. In April 2024, the jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing. The Irish prime minister made a state apology.

Antoinette Keegan survived the fire but lost two sisters. She tells Jen Dale her memories...

In 1991, a small company led by an Iranian-born engineer, Rouzbeh Yassini, created a technology which enabled millions of homes across America to access the internet for the first time.

Rouzbeh and his team found a way to use the existing cable TV infrastructure that was already installed all over the country to allow data to go both to and from the home, making it possible for everyone to use the World Wide Web.

He tells Guy Kilty about the challenges when they first tested the technology in a small town in Massachusetts.

Witness...

When Norway was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, a collaborative government led by Norwegian Vidkun Quisling was put in place.

Quisling believed that Norwegians would become more receptive to Nazi ideology if the education system was controlled.

However, thousands of the country’s teachers resisted joining a new union. More than 1,000 of them were sent to concentration camps for their refusal.

Mr Roll Hansen taught in Norway during the occupation. He told the BBC in 1944 about what it was like working in those conditions.

This edition of Witness History is produced an...

On 11 September 2001, firefighter Jay Jonas and his crew were sent into New York's North Tower after a hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center.

As they climbed the stairs searching for people who needed help, the South Tower collapsed.

Realising their rescue mission could no longer continue, the firefighters turned around and began making their way down.

On their descent they came across a woman, Josephine Harris.

"She was crying. She was in distress. And I said, 'Alright, bring her with us.'"

The firefighters took her with...

In 1944, a young Irishwoman called Maureen Flavin drew up a weather report that helped change the course of World War Two.

Maureen was working at a post office on the far west coast of Ireland. Her duties included recording rainfall, wind speeds, temperature and air pressure.

On 3 June, she sent one of her hourly reports to Dublin, unaware that the figures were being passed on to the Allied headquarters in England.

It was the first indication of bad weather heading towards the coast of France, where hundreds of thousands of servicemen had gathered...

In 1994, documents from a Nazi study of the Bayeux Tapestry were rediscovered after more than 50 years.

Former curator of the tapestry, Sylvette Lemagnen, tells Helen Ledwick how the missing archive was found and returned to Bayeux, revealing new details about a wartime investigation into one of the world's most famous medieval artworks.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it...

In 1985, reports of a moving statue of the Virgin Mary drew thousands of people to the village of Ballinspittle in County Cork, Ireland.

Helen Ledwick speaks to Ita Dungan, who travelled there as a teenager and remembers the crowds gathering at the shrine.

Similar reports soon spread across Ireland, and that summer became known as the 'summer of the moving statues'.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we...

In 1935, tens of thousands who had followed Mao Zedong on the Long March across China struggled to survive. They were fleeing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces during the country's civil war.

Zhong Ming was one of them. In 2014, a year before his death, he spoke to the late Edward Stourton about his experience.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it...

In 1968, American television boldly went where it had never gone before, broadcasting what's claimed to be the country's first interracial kiss in a TV programme.

The moment of passion was between Captain Kirk of the starship USS Enterprise and communications officer Lieutenant Uhura, in Star Trek.

Nichelle Nichols played Uhura in the cult series, and she was one of the first black women to be featured on American TV in a non-subservient role.

Through archive BBC interviews, Nichelle explains the story behind that famous scene. Produced and presented by Reena Stanton-Sharma.

...

In 1982, audiences around the world fell in love with a gentle alien stranded on Earth and the young boy determined to help him get home. Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became a global phenomenon and gave us one of cinema's most memorable lines, ‘E.T. phone home.’

Peter Coyote played Keys, the mysterious government agent on the trail of E.T., a role that became one of the film's most memorable characters.

More than four decades later, Peter tells Gill Kearsley about the making of the film, reliving his favourite memories from the set and...

In 1995, Octavia E Butler became the first author to receive a MacArthur “genius” award for science fiction writing.

From a young age she dreamed of writing books, but faced many challenges, including poverty, sexism and racism in the publishing industry.

Her sci-fi books are now taught in schools and universities across the United States.

She died aged 58 in 2006. Her friend Nisi Shawl spoke to Alex Collins in 2023.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and arch...

When the set fell apart for an ambitious cinematic space opera that was produced on a characteristically small Turkish budget, nationally famed director Çetin İnanç had to think fast to save his film.

What resulted was a domestic hit in 1982, originally called The Man Who Saves the World. Now known as Turkish Star Wars, it's a production regularly referenced as the worst movie ever made.

Louis Harnett O'Meara uses an archival interview with İnanç, originally recorded by Turkish movie historian Ali Murat Güven in 2018, to tell the story of a classic in Turkish Copy Cinema...

In 1976, American toy designer Jim Swearingen was working at Kenner, a mid-sized company in the American Midwest.

When a script for a new film called Star Wars landed on his desk, Jim was intrigued. Larger toy companies had already passed on the chance to make the figures.

"It was difficult from the point of view that it was a movie, could be in and out of theater in weeks, maybe months," he said.

"It was science fiction, and toy buyers at that time had been turned off to science fiction because they still...

On the 5 September 1986, hijackers took over a Pan-American Airways flight during a stop-over at Karachi Airport in Pakistan.

The armed Palestinian terrorists wanted to fly the plane to Cyprus and Israel, to free members of their organisation who were jailed there.

But, after the pilots escaped the cockpit, the plane stayed on the ground for 16 hours with almost 400 passengers on board.

When the power on the plane ran out – the hijackers began to shoot indiscriminately. 22 people were killed and more than 150 injured.

Madhvi Bahunga was a Pan-American Airways flight attendant, who wa...

On 4 September 1995, Hurricane Luis hit the Caribbean island of Antigua.

Two people were killed and three-quarters of homes were destroyed.

Authorities said it set the island back by a decade.

Resident Eli Fuller tells Jen Dale about the havoc caused by the hurricane.

Witness History is a short BBC World Service podcast about history that takes you inside big moments from the past through first-hand testimony and archive. Each weekday, in around nine minutes, we revisit one moment that helped shape the world and hear it through the voice of someone...

It is 50 years since a peace movement began in Northern Ireland spawned by the killing of three children. There had been seven years of sectarian violence.

On 10 August 1976, Anne Maguire was walking along Finaghy Road North in West Belfast with her children when an out-of-control car plunged into them. It was driven by a member of the Irish Republican Army paramilitary group who had been fatally wounded at the wheel by British Army soldiers chasing him.

Six-week-old baby, Andrew, who was in his pram and eight-year-old Joanne, who was on her bicycle, were instantly killed...

In 2007, an abandoned photo album revealed the chilling normality of life at the Nazis’ most notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz.

The 116 black-and-white images had been sent to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington DC, to be considered for their archives.

In the photographs, SS officers are seen laughing, singing and celebrating, while a short distance away hundreds of thousands of people, mainly Jews, are being murdered.

Among those pictured are Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant, and German doctor, Josef Mengele, known as the Angel of Death.

Archivist Rebecca Erbelding tel...

On 31st October 2004, Uruguayans voted to enshrine water as a human right in their constitution, the first country in the world to do so.

The so-called water referendum was organised by an alliance of residents' associations, trade unions, scientists, and environmentalists.

Campaigners on horseback criss-crossed the country, they held community meetings in towns and villages across Uruguay and collected 283,000 signatures, the number required to make the government hold a plebiscite, which they overwhelmingly won.

The campaign began when two local water companies were privatised and residents complained that those who could not afford...

In the 1950s, scientist Edward Knipling began what would become one of the most successful eradication campaigns in history: the fight against the New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite that caused devastating injuries to livestock and wildlife across the Americas.

Edward Knipling proposed breeding and releasing millions of sterile male screwworm flies to prevent the insects from reproducing, an approach that became known as the sterile insect technique.

Using archive recordings from the Special Collections of the United States Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library, Gill Kearsley tells the story of how Edward's bold idea...

First published in 1980, the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book brought novelty cakes to the masses.

From the swimming pool filled with jelly, to the ghost and the 'choo choo train', its recipes became core memories for generations of children.

Agnes Lee was part of the team behind the book, designing more than 20 of its quirky cakes, including the famous Rubber Ducky, which was later featured in the children's TV programme Bluey.

She tells Helen Ledwick how a spur-of-the-moment idea became a birthday party classic.

Witness History is a short...

In 1954, a massive government-run resettlement programme began in Canada.

This saw the relocation of nearly 30,000 people from isolated ‘outport’ fishing communities in Newfoundland and Labrador to designated ‘growth centres', intended to provide better education and facilities.

In some cases this involved physically moving houses with ropes and pullies, then floating them to new locations.

Catherine Harvey speaks to Don White, who recalls being resettled from Port Nelson where he grew up, and how this affected him and his family. A Roguegunners production.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for...

In March 1945, the British Fourteenth Army were advancing on the city of Mandalay in central Burma, now known as Myanmar, which was held by the Japanese Army.

The army was made up of soldiers from across the British Empire, with units from the United Kingdom, India, East and West Africa all fighting side by side.

The BBC’s Douglas Cleverdon accompanied those troops into battle, making what is thought to be one of the first ever radio programmes recorded from the front line of a war.

Witness History is produced and presented by Ti...

In 2011 Asha Bhosle, India’s queen of melody, was officially named the most recorded artist in music history. The Guinness World Record recognised the astonishing scale of her career, having performed up to 11,000 songs in more than 20 Indian languages since 1947.

The title previously belonged to her sister Lata Mangeshkar, and together the siblings dominated India’s playback singing world for decades, lending their voices to film soundtracks that actors later lip‑synced onscreen.

Reena Stanton-Sharma uses BBC archive interviews to tell the story.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for th...

When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck the coast of Kenya, a baby hippo named Owen was swept out to sea and separated from his family.

After being rescued, he was taken to Haller Park in Mombasa, where he formed an extraordinary bond with Mzee, a 130-year-old giant tortoise. Their unlikely friendship captured the world's imagination and became an international sensation.

In 2023, conservationist Dr Paula Kahumbu told Gill Kearsley the remarkable story of Owen and Mzee.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the...

In 2008, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga signed an unprecedented power-sharing deal to end a wave of violence that had left more than 1,200 people dead.

Kibaki would remain president, while Odinga would become prime minister, a role created as part of the settlement. They hoped the accord would end the bloodshed that had engulfed Kenya after the disputed election two months earlier.

Maina Kiai was Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights at the time. He spoke to Stefania Gozzer about the uncertainty of those weeks and the push for...

In 1963, as Kenya celebrated independence from British rule, one of the last Mau Mau fighters came out of hiding and laid down her arms.

Muthoni Kirima was the first and only woman to be appointed field marshall in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army - better known as the Mau Mau.

She had been living in the Kenyan forest for 11 years, fighting with other armed rebels to reclaim land taken by European settlers.

Thousands died or were imprisoned as Britain tried to crush the uprising. But the rebellion was later seen as paving...

In 1952, Princess Elizabeth became queen while staying at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya. But she wouldn't make the discovery until hours later.

The 25-year-old Princess Elizabeth and her husband were on five-month royal tour of the Commonwealth, and their first stop was Kenya.

The overnight trip to Treetops, a lodge in the Aberdare National Park, was supposed to be a relaxing break. But the princess didn’t yet know that, back in Britain, her father King George VI, had died in his sleep.

BBC correspondent Frank Gillard was following the trip and sent ba...