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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    Legalising contraception in Ireland

    Contraception wasn't easily accessible in traditionally Roman Catholic Ireland until 1985

  2. Why a British MP was filmed taking mescaline

    In 1955 Christopher Mayhew MP took the hallucinogenic drug mescaline for a TV experiment

  3. Surviving Guantanamo

    Mohamedou Ould Slahi was detained by the USA without charge for 15 years

  4. The Great Wine Fraud

    The story of wine fraudster Rudy Kurniawan and the French winemaker who exposed him

  5. Ursula Le Guin

    The pioneer of feminist science fiction and creator of the Earthsea fantasy series

  6. The IRA hunger strikes

    Republican prisoner Bobby Sands died in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland on May 5 1981

  7. How Amsterdam became the cannabis smoking capital of Europe

    How Amsterdam became the home of cannabis coffee shops.

  8. The killing of Osama Bin Laden

    The man behind the 9/11 attacks was killed by US special forces on 2 May 2011

  9. The battle of Tora Bora

    How US special forces lost bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan in December 2001

  10. The Nairobi US Embassy bombing

    A survivor's account of the al-Qaeda attacks in East Africa in 1998 which killed hundreds

  11. Meeting Osama bin Laden

    One man's story of his journey to talk to the Al-Qaeda leader in 1996

  12. The siege of Mecca

    In 1979 Islamist militants took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam

  13. The first space shuttle mission

    How the space shuttle Columbia revolutionised manned space exploration

  14. How the NRA became a US political lobbying giant

    How the National Rifle Association turned into a US political lobbying colossus.

  15. The Raymond Davis Incident

    How a shooting in the streets of Lahore brought US-Pakistani relations to the brink

  16. The return of Blue Lake

    How an ancient Native American sacred lake was finally returned to the Taos Pueblo people

  17. The Eichmann trial

    In April 1961 the Nazi official who ran holocaust death camps was put on trial in Israel

  18. China's 'Kingdom of women'

    An ancient matrilineal society which doesn't believe in marriage and where the women rule

  19. The vultures saved from extinction

    South Asian vultures started dying in huge numbers in the 1990s but no one knew why.

  20. Fighting for Castro at the Bay of Pigs

    Hear from a Cuban who fought against the US-backed exiles that invaded Cuba in April 1961

  21. How a worm helped explain human development

    The nematode worm c. elegans has enabled all sorts of discoveries about human biology

  22. The US Supreme Court's first woman justice

    In 1981 Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman judge at America's top court

  23. Discovering the Jet Stream

    Air raids and balloon bombs - the strange story behind the discovery of the Jet Stream

  24. From Leningrad to St Petersburg

    How the people of Russia's second city dropped the great communist leader's name

  25. David Attenborough's First Expedition

    The story of David Attenborough's first expedition.

  26. Mexico's female serial killer

    Juana Barraza was found guilty of murdering at least eleven elderly women in Mexico city

  27. The women who reclaimed the night

    How women in England took to the streets to protest against a serial killer

  28. Black Jesus

    In 1967 an African American church minister began preaching that Jesus was black.

  29. Kidnapped on an orchid hunt

    How two Englishmen were seized by Colombian rebels while crossing the lawless Darien Gap

  30. Mrs Thatcher’s ground-breaking Soviet TV interview

    How Mrs Thatcher shook up the Soviet media with a landmark interview in Moscow.

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