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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

  •

    Fighting Uganda's anti-gay laws

    Wed 22 May 2019

    When MPs tried to toughen the laws against homosexuality, LGBT activists took a stand.

  • The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs

    Tue 21 May 2019

    The Chicxulub impact crater was discovered in 1978.

  • Walking the Great Wall of China

    Mon 20 May 2019

    Three friends set off on an epic trek along the Great Wall of China in May 1984

  • Hitler's stolen children

    Fri 17 May 2019

    During WW2 the Nazis abducted blonde blue-eyed children to build an Aryan master race

  • China's One Child policy

    Thu 16 May 2019

    The Chinese Communist Party started ruthlessly enforcing birth control in the early 1980s

  • The final days of Sri Lanka's civil war

    Wed 15 May 2019

    How the army finally crushed Tamil Tiger rebels after 25 years of bloody civil war

  • Predicting the financial crash

    Tue 14 May 2019

    The economists who predicted the 2008 financial crash but whose warnings were ignored

  • The Karakoram highway

    Mon 13 May 2019

    The road between Pakistan and China took 20 years to complete

  • Strictly Come Dancing

    Fri 10 May 2019

    One of the most successful TV formats in the world started back in May 2004

  • The war on drugs

    Thu 9 May 2019

    The first 'war on drugs' was launched by US President Richard Nixon in 1971.

  • The Bauhaus

    Wed 8 May 2019

    The groundbreaking school of art and design was founded in 1919

  • The siege of Dien Bien Phu

    Tue 7 May 2019

    The French surrender at the siege of Dien Bien Phu ended their colonial rule of Vietnam

  • Jack Ma: The founder of Alibaba

    Mon 6 May 2019

    The Chinese billionaire set up his online shopping site in 1999

  • The Malayan Emergency

    Fri 3 May 2019

    The struggle against a Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s

  • The sinking of the Belgrano

    Thu 2 May 2019

    The Argentine ship was sunk by a British submarine during the Falklands war

  • The Arctic African

    Wed 1 May 2019

    Why a boy ran away from West Africa to live in the Arctic in the 1960s.

  • Rupert Brooke

    Tue 30 Apr 2019

    The English poet whose death at the start of World War One was mourned by millions

  • Ellen comes out

    Mon 29 Apr 2019

    Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian on primetime American television in April 1997.

  • The al-Yamamah arms deals

    Fri 26 Apr 2019

    A record series of arms sales by the UK to Saudi Arabia began in the 1980s

  • Sri Lanka: A journalist's editorial from the grave

    Thu 25 Apr 2019

    The assassination of newspaper editor, Lasantha Wickramatunga, in 2009 shocked the world

  • South Africa's first free elections

    Wed 24 Apr 2019

    After Apartheid all South Africans regardless of race finally won the right to vote.

  • Britain's first vegans

    Tue 23 Apr 2019

    The Vegan Society was established in 1944 by British 'non-dairy vegetarians'

  • Nato bombs Serbian TV

    Mon 22 Apr 2019

    A survivor from the April 1999 bombing in Belgrade that killed 16 people.

  • The Columbine massacre

    Fri 19 Apr 2019

    13 people were killed and more than 20 injured in the school shooting on April 20th 1999

  • How organic farming started

    Thu 18 Apr 2019

    Worries about the industrialisation of farming post-WW2 led some farmers to go organic.

  • Auto-destructive art

    Wed 17 Apr 2019

    Gustav Metzger and the birth of the radical new art form in the 1960s

  • The first play on Broadway written by a black woman

    Tue 16 Apr 2019

    'A Raisin in the Sun' by Lorraine Hansberry had an almost exclusively black cast too.

  • Dennis Tito - the first space tourist

    Mon 15 Apr 2019

    In April 2001 an American multi-millionaire paid Russia to send him into space

  • Chinese restaurant syndrome

    Fri 12 Apr 2019

    In the 1960's American diners began to worry that Chinese food was making them ill.

  • The rise of Hindu nationalism

    Thu 11 Apr 2019

    The consolidation of the BJP as one of the major powers in Indian politics.

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