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History told by the people who were there. For nine minutes every weekday, Witness History takes you back to moments which have shaped our world.

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 take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.

We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron 鈥� Argentina鈥檚 Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous 鈥榯ear down this wall鈥� speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler鈥檚 List; and Jacques Derrida, France鈥檚 鈥榬ock star鈥� philosopher.

You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal ; and the death of one of the world鈥檚 oldest languages.

Updated: daily
Episodes available: indefinitely

Episodes to download

  •

    Marburg virus

    Fri 13 Mar 2020

    A deadly new disease infected laboratory workers in a small town in West Germany in 1967.

  • The SARS epidemic

    Thu 12 Mar 2020

    How the world battled a deadly respiratory disease in 2003.

  • The polio vaccine

    Wed 11 Mar 2020

    Scientists in the US led by Dr Jonas Salk develop an effective vaccine against polio

  • The Ebola virus

    Tue 10 Mar 2020

    The first documented outbreak of the deadly disease occurred in the 1970s in Zaire

  • The 'Spanish' flu

    Mon 9 Mar 2020

    In 1918 an extremely deadly form of influenza killed millions around the world

  • The Major and the VW Beetle

    Fri 6 Mar 2020

    How a British army officer saved Hitler's Volkswagen Beetle at the end of World War Two

  • Battling Soviet psychiatric punishment

    Thu 5 Mar 2020

    One man's stand against the psychiatric abuse of political dissidents in the Soviet Union

  • Strikers in saris

    Wed 4 Mar 2020

    How South Asian women workers won the support of the British trade unionist movement

  • The petrol that was poisoning children

    Tue 3 Mar 2020

    The EU finally banned lead in petrol in 2000 - decades after the US, Canada and Japan.

  • Womenomics in Japan

    Mon 2 Mar 2020

    Japan faces a demographic time-bomb. Could the answer be Womenomics?

  • Freeing American prisoners from Iran

    Fri 28 Feb 2020

    The diplomacy behind the release of three US citizens who unknowingly hiked into Iran.

  • The last smallpox outbreak

    Thu 27 Feb 2020

    Thousands of people died in the world's last major smallpox epidemic in India in 1974.

  • The rebel nuns who left their convent behind

    Wed 26 Feb 2020

    A group of Californian nuns left their convent and set up their own community in 1970

  • The first mobile phone call

    Tue 25 Feb 2020

    The American inventor who made the first mobile phone and the first mobile phone call

  • An Antarctic mystery

    Mon 24 Feb 2020

    Human remains were found on a remote island in Antarctica in 1985 but whose were they?

  • Saving Antarctica

    Fri 21 Feb 2020

    A 1980s campaign to preserve Antarctica for science.

  • Saddam Hussein's 'Supergun'

    Thu 20 Feb 2020

    Building the largest gun in the world for Saddam Hussein's Iraq

  • Fighting oil pollution with art in Nigeria

    Wed 19 Feb 2020

    "Battle Bus" was a sculpture in memory of Nigerian environmentalist Ken Saro Wiwa

  • How meditation changes your brain

    Tue 18 Feb 2020

    In 2002, a landmark study on Buddhist monks showed that meditation can alter the brain.

  • The Pale Blue Dot

    Mon 17 Feb 2020

    How the Voyager space probe captured a famous image of Earth as it left the Solar System.

  • The Rules: A dating handbook

    Fri 14 Feb 2020

    The best-selling dating handbook was published on Valentine's Day 1995

  • The best-seller Fear of Flying

    Thu 13 Feb 2020

    Erica Jong's best-selling book about sex, creativity and love, published in 1973

  • Diary of life in a favela

    Wed 12 Feb 2020

    A shocking account of the realities of the slums of S茫o Paulo

  • The man who first published Harry Potter

    Tue 11 Feb 2020

    The man who spotted the potential of the boy wizard books in 1996

  • The release of Nelson Mandela

    Fri 7 Feb 2020

    The day that South Africa's anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was freed

  • The Native American casino boom in the US

    Thu 6 Feb 2020

    How a small Californian tribe won the right for Indian communities to host gambling.

  • Witnessing the birth of a new language

    Wed 5 Feb 2020

    In the 1980s deaf children in Nicaragua invented a completely new sign language

  • Cixi: China's most powerful woman

    Tue 4 Feb 2020

    The Empress Dowager Cixi ruled for 47 years until her death in 1908.

  • London's first black policeman

    Mon 3 Feb 2020

    Norwell Roberts endured years of racist abuse within the Metropolitan police

  • The Treaty of Rome

    Fri 31 Jan 2020

    The document which formed the basis for what is now the European Union was signed in 1957

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