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Witness History Episodes

  1.

    Emerante de Pradines: Haiti’s musical trailblazer

    The singer, dancer and folklorist who became the first Haitian to sign a record deal

  2. Orson Welles broadcasts The War of the Worlds

    In 1938, Orson Welles terrified radio listeners with The War of the Worlds.

  3. Srebrenica massacre

    The worst atrocity Europe had seen since World War Two

  4. The invention of the balloon-expandable stent

    The story of how an Argentinian doctor created a new treatment for heart disease

  5. Death of a priest

    The 1977 murder of a leading champion for the poor in El Salvador

  6. The man who invented the scratch card

    In 1974 the chance to win instant cash went on sale for the first time

  7. GLP-1: A breakthrough for diabetes and obesity

    In the 1980s, a scientific breakthrough paved the way for new treatments

  8. The UK’s first black-owned music studio

    In 1961, record producer Sonny Roberts changed the history of British music

  9. Wangari Maathai: The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize

    In 2004, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize

  10. The British oil tanker sunk in Indonesia

    In 1958, the British oil tanker, SS San Flaviano was sunk, reportedly by a CIA pilot

  11. My aunt created The Moomins

    Tove Jansson's book The Moomins and the Great Flood was published in 1945

  12. Helen Fielding: The creator of Bridget Jones

    In 1995, a single 30-something woman first appeared in a weekly newspaper column

  13. The trial of Soviet writers Daniel and Sinyavsky

    How the arrest of two writers sparked the Soviet dissident movement

  14. Jorge Luis Borges: 'Father' of Latin American fiction

    In 1961, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges came to the world's attention

  15. Wallander and the rise of Nordic Noir

    First published in 1991, Henning Mankell's novels changed the world of crime fiction

  16. How BRICS got its name

    In 2001, economist Jim O’Neill wrote a report on countries set to shape the world economy

  17. Japan surrenders in Beijing

    A rare eyewitness account of Japan's surrender in Beijing in 1945

  18. The remote island that was evacuated to 10,000km away

    On 10 October 1961, the population of Tristan da Cunha was evacuated to the UK

  19. 'I designed the Indian rupee symbol'

    On 15 July 2010, India announced its official currency symbol

  20. The home video war

    In the 1970s and 80s VHS and Betamax went head-to-head over the home entertainment market

  21. The acquittal of OJ Simpson

    The American football star was found not guilty of double murder in 1995

  22. 'I took the famous photo of JFK and his son'

    On 2 October 1963, Stanley Tretick took a well-known picture of President John F Kennedy

  23. The strike that shook up India's tea industry

    In 2015, thousands of women tea pickers spent nine days protesting about low wages

  24. The birth of the Excel spreadsheet

    In September 1985, Excel, an electronic spreadsheet document was created

  25. The Cradock Four killings

    In June 1985, four anti-apartheid activists from Cradock in South Africa were murdered

  26. Guinea stadium massacre

    On 28 September 2009, troops opened fire on around 50,000 protesters

  27. The secretary who made millions from her typos

    In the 1950s, secretary Bette Graham invented correction fluid to cover up her errors.

  28. DDLJ: India’s longest-running film

    Bollywood romance Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was released to critical acclaim in 1995

  29. The birth of Médecins Sans Frontières

    In 1971, the humanitarian group known as Doctors without Borders was founded in Paris

  30. The start of Scouting

    Scouting, now one of the largest international youth movements, began in the early 1900s

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