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History told by the people who were there. For nine minutes every weekday, Witness History takes you back to moments which have shaped our world.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.

For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken.

We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: the moment Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva, Haitian singer Emerante de Pradines鈥� life and Omar Sharif鈥檚 legendary movie entrance in Lawrence of Arabia.

You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, like the invention of a stent which has saved lives around the world; the birth of the G7; and the meeting of Maldives鈥� ministers underwater. We cover everything from World War Two and Cold War stories to Black History Month and our journeys into space.

Updated: daily
Episodes available: indefinitely

Episodes to download

  •

    The Trojan Room coffee pot

    Tue 7 Apr 2020

    The world's first webcam went online in 1993. Its camera was focused on a coffee pot.

  • The Homebrew computer club

    Mon 6 Apr 2020

    A group of Californian computer enthusiasts first began meeting to share ideas in 1975.

  • Being a Chinese Muslim

    Fri 3 Apr 2020

    It has never been easy to practice a religious faith in communist China

  • The Swedish warship restored after 300 years

    Thu 2 Apr 2020

    A Swedish warship, Vasa, sank in the 17th century but was raised from the seabed in 1961

  • Avenging the Amritsar Massacre

    Wed 1 Apr 2020

    A former British governor of Punjab was shot in 1940 as revenge for killings in Amritsar

  • The trembling giant

    Tue 31 Mar 2020

    Could the biggest living organism on earth be a colony of quaking aspen trees?

  • Britain's first woman judge

    Mon 30 Mar 2020

    Rose Heilbron was a trailblazer for women in the legal profession in Britain.

  • The AIDS Memorial Quilt

    Fri 27 Mar 2020

    In 1985 activists made a giant quilt to commemorate those killed by AIDS in the USA.

  • The Cheonan sinking

    Thu 26 Mar 2020

    On March 26th 2010 a South Korean naval ship sank after an explosion - 48 sailors died

  • The Saudi bombardment of Yemen

    Wed 25 Mar 2020

    In March 2015 Saudi Arabia and its allies began an intense aerial bombardment of Yemen

  • Sequencing the 1918 influenza virus

    Tue 24 Mar 2020

    Over 50 million people are thought to have died from influenza around the world in 1918

  • The Chinese cure for malaria

    Fri 20 Mar 2020

    How scientists in the 1970s discovered an anti-malarial drug using a traditional remedy.

  • The launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

    Thu 19 Mar 2020

    How NASA put an orbiting observatory into space in 1990.

  • Red Hollywood

    Wed 18 Mar 2020

    Former actress Marsha Hunt remembers the anti-Communist witch-hunt of the late 1940s.

  • The fight to make sexual harassment a crime

    Tue 17 Mar 2020

    The story of a landmark ruling for women's rights in the United States.

  • The 'I Love You' computer virus

    Mon 16 Mar 2020

    How a virus created by a Filipino college dropout sparked global panic in May 2000

  • Marburg virus

    Fri 13 Mar 2020

    A deadly new disease infected laboratory workers in a small town in West Germany in 1967.

  • The SARS epidemic

    Thu 12 Mar 2020

    How the world battled a deadly respiratory disease in 2003.

  • The polio vaccine

    Wed 11 Mar 2020

    Scientists in the US led by Dr Jonas Salk develop an effective vaccine against polio

  • The Ebola virus

    Tue 10 Mar 2020

    The first documented outbreak of the deadly disease occurred in the 1970s in Zaire

  • The 'Spanish' flu

    Mon 9 Mar 2020

    In 1918 an extremely deadly form of influenza killed millions around the world

  • The Major and the VW Beetle

    Fri 6 Mar 2020

    How a British army officer saved Hitler's Volkswagen Beetle at the end of World War Two

  • Battling Soviet psychiatric punishment

    Thu 5 Mar 2020

    One man's stand against the psychiatric abuse of political dissidents in the Soviet Union

  • Strikers in saris

    Wed 4 Mar 2020

    How South Asian women workers won the support of the British trade unionist movement

  • The petrol that was poisoning children

    Tue 3 Mar 2020

    The EU finally banned lead in petrol in 2000 - decades after the US, Canada and Japan.

  • Womenomics in Japan

    Mon 2 Mar 2020

    Japan faces a demographic time-bomb. Could the answer be Womenomics?

  • Freeing American prisoners from Iran

    Fri 28 Feb 2020

    The diplomacy behind the release of three US citizens who unknowingly hiked into Iran.

  • The last smallpox outbreak

    Thu 27 Feb 2020

    Thousands of people died in the world's last major smallpox epidemic in India in 1974.

  • The rebel nuns who left their convent behind

    Wed 26 Feb 2020

    A group of Californian nuns left their convent and set up their own community in 1970

  • The first mobile phone call

    Tue 25 Feb 2020

    The American inventor who made the first mobile phone and the first mobile phone call

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