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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    Palestine Post bombing

    Mordechai Chertoff was the editor on the Palestine Post when it was bombed in 1948

  2. Invention of the MP3

    It took Karlheinz Brandenburg and his team more than a decade to perfect MP3 technology

  3. Albert Pierrepoint: Britain's executioner

    Using archive recordings, Alex Last tells the story of Britain's most famous hangman

  4. Smolensk air disaster

    In 2010, a plane carrying the Polish president, crashed and killed everyone on board

  5. Japanese death row guard

    Yoshikuni Noguchi was a prison guard in Japan and witnessed the hanging of a prisoner

  6. When Britain tried to censor the Troubles in Northern Ireland

    Paul McLoone recalls the time he was the voice of Martin McGuinness

  7. Swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy

    In 2009 a vaccine designed to stop swine flu appeared to trigger a sleep disorder

  8. France's nuclear tests in Algeria

    Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara

  9. Kosovo’s house schools

    In the 1990s a generation of Albanians got their education crammed into private homes

  10. Europe's horse meat scandal

    In 2013, horse meat was discovered in beef products across Europe

  11. Miracle on the Hudson

    On 15 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River in New York

  12. World’s first tidal power station

    French President Charles De Gaulle opened the power station in 1966.

  13. Galápagos Islands’ sea cucumber dispute

    A demand for sea cucumbers set off a confrontation between fishermen and conservationists

  14. Paul Robeson and the transatlantic phone line

    In 1957, Paul Robeson used a new undersea phone line to perform a transatlantic concert.

  15. Dutch North Sea flood

    In 1953, a storm combined with high tides breached sea defences in the Netherlands

  16. Plastics in oceans

    In 1971 Edward Carpenter discovered plastic floating about in the Atlantic Ocean

  17. Pussy Riot’s cathedral protest

    In 2012, a punk protest took place in one of Moscow's main cathedrals

  18. The man Pinochet wanted dead

    In 1973, Miguel Enriquez led resistance against the dictatorship in Chile

  19. When America banned silicone breast implants

    In 1992, the US Government suspended all procedures involving silicone breast implants

  20. Arctic African

    Tété-Michel Kpomassie, ran away from his village in Togo and went to live in Greenland.

  21. One team in Tallinn

    In 1996, Scotland played in a football match where the opposition hadn't turned up

  22. The birth of the Slow Food Movement

    In 1986, protests against McDonalds in Rome led to an anti-fast food revolution.

  23. Inventing instant noodles

    In 1958 Japanese entrepreneur, Momofuku Ando, invented instant noodles

  24. Malta's bread strike

    In February 1977 the bakers of Malta went on an unprecedented strike

  25. Inventing Chicken Manchurian

    Chef Nelson Wang created Chicken Manchurian in 1975

  26. Creating ciabatta bread

    In 1982, rally driver Arnaldo Cavallari created ciabatta bread in Adria, in Italy

  27. Chile mine rescue

    In 2010, 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days in the San José mine in Chile

  28. Grozny siege

    In December 1994, Russian forces began the siege of Chechnya’s capital Grozny

  29. Colombia's 'false positives' killings

    When Colombia's military murdered thousands of innocent civilians

  30. The BBC broadcasting through the Iron Curtain

    Transmitting independent broadcasts through the Iron Curtain between 1947 and 1991

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