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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    When the prisoners ran the prison

    Prisoners at Walpole maximum security prison were in charge for three months in 1973

  2. Anorexia nervosa

    The death of the singer, Karen Carpenter, showed how devastating the illness could be.

  3. The fight against slavery in Mauritania

    Brahim Bilal Ramdhane was born into slavery in the 1960s, now he fights against it.

  4. South Africa takes on big pharma

    The fight between Big Pharma and South Africa over the right to import cheap drugs.

  5. The woman who got America talking about sex

    Dr Ruth Westheimer first became popular on a radio show in New York in the early 1980s

  6. Banksy’s first street art mural

    It’s difficult to pinpoint the first major piece of Banksy street art, could this be it?

  7. The Ulster Workers' Strike

    Protestant workers went on strike in Northern Ireland in 1974

  8. The dirtiest chess match in history

    How the 1978 World Chess Championship was overshadowed by allegations of dirty tricks

  9. Mars-500 isolation experiment

    Why six men were locked inside a spacecraft on earth for 520 days

  10. Alva Myrdal - the woman who made modern Sweden

    The story of Swedish social reformer, Alva Myrdal, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1982

  11. Jamaica’s ‘drug lord’

    The hunt for the Jamaican drug lord which left dozens of civilians dead

  12. Paris is Burning

    The groundbreaking film about drag queens and LGBTQ+ people in New York

  13. The first Indian to win Miss World

    Reita Faria was the first Indian to win the Miss World beauty competition in 1966

  14. The woman who asked Britain to return the Parthenon marbles

    Melina Mercouri, actress turned politician, requested the marbles be returned to Greece

  15. Jane: The underground abortion network

    How feminists ended up performing abortions for women in 1960s America

  16. Cixi: China's most powerful woman

    She was the power behind the Chinese throne for decades

  17. The women of Egypt's Arab Spring

    In 2011 women were at the forefront of protests calling for a change in power in Egypt

  18. Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech

    How the historic speech in March 1946 came to symbolise the beginnings of the Cold War

  19. The Sharpeville massacre

    In 1960, South African police shot dead 69 black protestors, sparking worldwide outrage

  20. When US police dropped explosives on a Philadelphia home

    How 11 people died when explosives were dropped on a house by a police helicopter

  21. Refugee Island

    How a tiny Pacific Island became a limbo for asylum seekers

  22. The world's deepest dive 11km down

    Don Walsh was the first to go to the very bottom of the deepest part of the ocean in 1960

  23. Banning landmines

    A landmark treaty banning anti-personnel landmines was agreed in 1997

  24. The WW2 airman from Sierra Leone

    Johnny Smythe was one of very few West Africans to fly with Britain's airforce during WW2

  25. The fall of Kwame Nkrumah

    How one of Africa's most famous independence leaders was overthrown in 1966

  26. Ireland's bank bailout

    In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis Ireland had to borrow billions

  27. Acid rain

    How the world woke up to the threat from acid rain

  28. Mary Wilson

    The American singer died on 8th February 2021

  29. Free breakfasts with the Black Panthers

    How the revolutionary black rights organisation started serving breakfast to children

  30. The Immortal Cells of Henrietta Lacks

    The story of a woman who played a largely unsung role in countless medical breakthroughs

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