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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    The Notting Hill riots

    Inter-racial violence broke out in west London in the summer of 1958

  2. The first black woman MP in Britain

    In 1987 Diane Abbott became the first black woman to be elected to the British Parliament

  3. Learie Constantine - fighting racism in the UK

    The great West Indian cricketer who fought against racism in the UK

  4. China opens up to capitalism

    How China's Communist rulers established the country's first Special Economic Zones

  5. The 1967 Hong Kong riots

    How workers and students filled the colony's streets, pressing for an end to British rule

  6. Mao's Cultural Revolution

    We hear from one man who took part in China's brutal Cultural Revolution.

  7. My memories of Chairman Mao

    China's legendary Communist leader in the words of an American who knew him well

  8. The birth of the People's Republic of China

    On 1 October 1949 Chairman Mao declared China a communist state

  9. The death of a matador

    The fatal goring of the legendary bullfighter Francisco Rivera Pérez - "Paquirri".

  10. The Large Hadron Collider

    In September 2008, the world's biggest science experiment was switched on.

  11. Fighting the Islamic State group online

    How one historian living in Mosul took aim at the Islamic State group on the internet.

  12. Being black in Nazi Germany

    Theodor Wonja Michael was a child when Hitler came to power in Germany.

  13. The Sound of Music on Broadway

    The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was performed on stage before it became a movie.

  14. Sir Anthony Blunt - Soviet spy

    The distinguished art historian was exposed as a former Soviet spy in the autumn of 1979.

  15. CS Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia

    The first book in CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series was published in autumn 1950

  16. Free breakfast with the Black Panthers

    The revolutionary Black Panther Party provided free breakfasts for local schoolchildren.

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

    Until 2011 LGBT service people in the US armed forces had to keep their sexuality secret

  18. An Ethiopian war hero

    Ethiopia sent soldiers to fight alongside the United Nations during the Korean War

  19. Magellan and the first voyage around the world

    In 1519, the Portuguese explorer set off on the first circumnavigation of the globe.

  20. Conflict timber in Liberia's civil war

    How the timber industry fuelled a brutal civil war in West Africa.

  21. India's affirmative action controversy

    Why guaranteeing government jobs to lower caste Hindus led to weeks of student protests.

  22. The TV series Friends

    One of the most successful TV comedy shows of all time hit US screens in September 1994

  23. The coup, the president and the embassy

    How the deposed Honduran president spent months holed up in the Brazilian embassy

  24. The businessman who defied the Italian Mafia

    In 1991 Libero Grassi was killed in Sicily for publicly refusing to pay protection money.

  25. The Holocaust denial trial

    The libel case that put history itself in the dock in 2000

  26. Inside lunar astronaut quarantine

    Apollo 11's doctor tells how NASA tried to protect Earth from possible lunar alien life

  27. The first all-women peacekeeping unit

    The UN deployed its first all-female peacekeepers in Liberia in 2007.

  28. The outbreak of World War Two

    On September 1st 1939 German troops invaded Poland. Cameraman Douglas Slocombe was there.

  29. The paedophile identified by his hands

    The first conviction of a paedophile using hand analysis.

  30. Nina Simone moves to Liberia

    The great African-American jazz singer moved to West Africa in 1974.

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