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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    The Heimlich Manoeuvre

    How the life-saving method to stop choking was developed

  2. Britain's Mirpuri migration

    In 1967, the Mangla Dam was built in Mirpur spurring a huge global migration

  3. Wham! in China

    How Wham! became the first Western pop act to perform in communist China

  4. Discovering the Terracotta Army

    In 1974, Chinese farmers stumbled upon an astonishing archaeological site

  5. The 'comfort women' of World War Two

    Hundreds of thousands of Asian women were forced into sex slavery in the 1930s and 1940s

  6. Surviving re-education in China’s Cultural Revolution

    Thousands of people were sent to re-education camps during China’s cultural revolution

  7. Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write

    In 1958, Zhou Youguang introduced a new writing system in China

  8. The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

    Vesuvius is famous for burying Pompeii but it last erupted in 1944, during World War II.

  9. Winifred Atwell: The honky-tonk star who was Sir Elton John’s hero

    The forgotten story of Winifred Atwell, the pianist from Trinidad who broke sales records

  10. Paraguay adopts its second language

    How Guarani was officially recognised in Paraguay’s new constitution

  11. Finding the longest set of footprints left by the first vertebrate

    In 1992 a student found a set of fossilised footprints from the earliest vertebrate

  12. 11M: The day Madrid was bombed

    Nearly 200 died when Spanish commuter trains were bombed in 2004

  13. MH370: The plane that vanished

    Ghyslain Wattrelos' wife and two children were on MH370, the plane that disappeared.

  14. Rehabilitating Kony's child soldiers in Uganda

    In 2002, a nun was sent to northern Uganda to help those suffering from a bloody conflict

  15. The Carnation Revolution in Portugal

    In 1974, a 41-year regime was overthrown in a day

  16. French child evacuees of World War Two

    In World War Two, tens of thousands of children left Paris to escape the threat of bombs

  17. Uruguay v the tobacco giant

    In 2010, Uruguay was taken to court by a tobacco company for its trailblazing smoking ban

  18. The Whisky War: Denmark v Canada

    Beginning in 1984, a dispute over an island was marked by geniality, and bottles of booze

  19. The discovery of the Lord of Sipan in Peru

    In 1987, the looting of an ancient pyramid led to an extraordinary golden discovery

  20. The lost Czech scrolls

    The Torah scrolls stolen by the Nazis, rescued by an London Jewish community.

  21. Crimea's Soviet holiday camp

    The hugely popular Soviet holiday camp, Artek

  22. Russia annexes Crimea

    In 2014, Russia took over the Crimean peninsula

  23. Whistler: Creating one of the world’s biggest ski resorts

    In 2003, Whistler Blackcomb won its bid to host the Winter Olympics

  24. Columbus Lighthouse

    A memorial for the ashes of Christopher Columbus opened in the Dominican Republic in 1992

  25. Trans murder in Honduras

    The 2009 murder of Vicky Hernandez forced recognition of transgender rights in Honduras

  26. Icelandic women's strike

    In 1975, 90% of all women in Iceland took part in a massive nationwide protest

  27. The Soviet scientist who made two-headed dogs

    Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov shocked the world with his two-headed dog experiments

  28. Supermalt: The malt drink created after the Nigerian civil war

    In 1972, a Danish brewery created Supermalt

  29. The small Irish town known as ‘Little Brazil’

    How Gort in the west of Ireland became home to so many Brazilians

  30. The Juliet letters

    Since the 1990s the Juliet Club has answered letters to the Shakespearian heroine

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