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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    China's trailblazing foreign students

    We hear from one of the first students to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution

  2. The Chinese Communist Party

    A small group of revolutionaries founded the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921

  3. The world's first offshore wind farm

    The world's first offshore wind farm was built off the coast of Denmark in 1991

  4. The Syrian playwright who challenged the regime

    A play staged in Damascus undermined official propaganda after the 1967 Six Day War

  5. Zimbabwe's mass UFO sightings

    Around 60 children said they saw 'aliens' near their school playground in September 1994

  6. The repeal of 'Don't ask, don't tell'

    For decades LGBT people in the US military had to keep their sexuality secret

  7. China's LGBT 'cooperative marriages'

    Thousands of gay men and lesbians in China hold fake marriages to avoid family pressure

  8. The secret diaries of 'Gentleman Jack'

    How the sexually explicit journals of a 19th-century English lesbian came to light

  9. Woubis, yossis and travestis: LGBT activism in Côte d’Ivoire

    In 1992, a group of LGBT Ivoirians stormed the office of a national newspaper

  10. The Stonewall Inn

    How a protest outside New York's Stonewall Inn inspired the modern gay rights movement.

  11. China's 'Economic Miracle'

    Massive economic growth has been possible because of migrant labour, but at what cost?

  12. The Trabant

    The iconic East German car that dominated the roads of communist Central Europe

  13. The police rape interview that shocked Britain

    The documentary that changed the way British police treated women reporting rape.

  14. Mindfulness for the masses

    Scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn pioneered a meditative approach to treat pain and depression.

  15. The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race

    Why an activist removed the Confederate flag from South Carolina's state house grounds

  16. The Fall of Madrid

    How the Spanish capital fell to General Franco's forces in 1939, ending a civil war

  17. The elections that Hamas won

    Palestinians voted to elect a new government in 2006. The outcome surprised everyone.

  18. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem

    The emotional first performance at the newly-built Coventry Cathedral in 1962

  19. Tunisia’s legal brothels

    For decades, Tunisia has had a system of legal brothels.

  20. When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor

    Israeli warplanes launched a surprise attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981

  21. How Switzerland defeated its heroin epidemic

    In the 1990s, the Swiss tried radical new policy ideas, including heroin on prescription

  22. Afghanistan's poppy problem

    Laila Haidari set up Kabul's first independent drug rehab centre in 2010

  23. When Peru mistook missionaries for drug traffickers

    The Peruvian Air Force shot down a light plane carrying American missionaries in 2001

  24. The killing of Pablo Escobar

    The Colombian drug lord was shot dead by police in December 1993

  25. The war on drugs

    President Richard Nixon was the first US President to try to wipe out illegal drug use

  26. The Tulsa Race Massacre

    In 1921, a white mob destroyed an affluent African-American neighbourhood.

  27. Rock concert for Chernobyl

    The first charity rock concert ever held in the USSR raised money for Chernobyl survivors

  28. Amilcar Cabral: An African liberation legend

    Amilcar Cabral led the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in West Africa

  29. The first Arab woman pilot

    Egyptian Lotfia Elnadi made history when she gained her pilot licence in 1933

  30. The strike that shocked India

    The Indian railway workers’ strike of 1974 prompted mass arrests and a state of emergency

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