Witness History
Detajet e Kanalit
Witness History
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by 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, co...
Episode të Fundit
2044 episode
The trial of Soviet writers Daniel and Sinyavsky
In 1965, two writers were accused of publishing anti-Soviet material abroad.
The arrest of Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky was seen as symbolic...
Jorge Luis Borges: 'Father' of Latin American fiction
In 1961, the Argentine poet and short story writer Jorge Luis Borges won the Formentor Prize for literature.
Borges’ stories were characterised...
Wallander and the rise of Nordic Noir
Published in 1991, Faceless Killers was the first of Henning Mankell’s crime novels featuring police inspector Kurt Wallander. The series changed the...
How BRICS got its name
In 2001, a few months after 9/11, economist Jim O’Neill was working at Goldman Sachs when he wrote a report about which countries might become big pla...
Japan surrenders in Beijing
Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1945, World War II surrender ceremonies took place across the Japanese Empire.
The one in China was held at t...
The remote island that was evacuated to 10,000km away
On 10 October 1961, a volcanic eruption threatened the population of Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, and all 264...
'I designed the Indian rupee symbol'
In 2009, the Indian government launched a national competition to find a design for the Indian rupee.
With more than 3,000 entries and five fina...
The home video war
Before streaming and catch-up TV, owning a video recorder was one of the only ways to watch on-demand entertainment.
In 1975 Sony launched Beta...
The acquittal of OJ Simpson
It’s 30 years since American football star OJ Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
'I took the famous photo of JFK and his son'
On 2 October 1963, American photographer Stanley Tretick took the best picture of his life – a photo of President John F Kennedy working at the Resolu...
The Cradock Four killings
On 27 June 1985, four anti-apartheid activists from the rural town of Cradock in South Africa’s Eastern Cape were abducted at a roadblock. Their bodie...
Guinea stadium massacre
On 28 September 2009, around 50,000 people took part in a rally to protest reported plans by military leader Moussa Dadis Camara to stand in the presi...
The secretary who made millions from her typos
In the 1950s, secretary Bette Graham from Texas was struggling to cope with her new electric typewriter.
“My fingers would hang heavy on the sen...
DDLJ: India’s longest-running film
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, the ultimate Bollywood romance was released to critical acclaim in October 1995, becoming the longest-running movie in In...
The birth of Médecins Sans Frontières
In 1971, 13 men sat down in a Paris office to launch what would become one of the world’s best known humanitarian organisations: Médecins Sans Frontiè...
The start of Scouting
In the early 1900s, while serving in the British Army, Lord Robert Baden-Powell laid the foundations for what would become one of the largest internat...
Omar Sharif stars in Lawrence of Arabia
In 1962, Egyptian actor Omar Sharif made his Hollywood debut in Lawrence of Arabia, a sweeping epic that would become one of cinema’s most popular fil...
The Aswan High Dam
In the early 1960s, Unesco appealed for scientists to go to Egypt to save antiquities that were threatened by the construction of one of the largest d...
Egypt criminalises sexual harassment
In 2014, Egypt’s outgoing president, Adly Mansour, issued a decree which categorised sexual harassment as a crime punishable by a minimum six-month ja...
Reforming Egypt’s divorce laws
In 1979, Egypt’s former first lady Jehan Sadat helped lead a campaign to grant women new rights to divorce their husbands and retain custody of their...
Mohamed Morsi: Egypt's first democratically elected president
In June 2012, Mohamed Morsi, representing the Muslim Brotherhood, became Egypt's first democratically elected president.
In 2022, Ben Henderson...
How the Philippines saved Jews during World War Two
In September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were introduced in Nazi Germany.
In 1938, seven-year-old Lotte Hershfield and her family left their home i...
9/11: The generosity of Gander
On 11 September, 2001, a small Canadian town called Gander became a haven for thousands of airline passengers and crew stranded after the 9/11 terror...
The story behind The Peter Principle book
In 1969, a satirical book, The Peter Principle, suggested promotion led to incompetence.
It was written by a Canadian Professor of Education, Dr...
The Enabling Act
On 23 March 1933, the Enabling Act was passed in Germany, handing Adolf Hitler unchecked power. It became the legal foundation of his dictatorship.
Festac ’77: Nigeria’s largest festival of African arts and culture
In 1977, Nigeria hosted the largest festival of African arts and culture there had ever been. About half a million visitors attended, as well as 16,00...
‘How I sold my clothes and created $5 billion Vinted empire'
In 2008, Lithuanian student Milda Mitkutė realised she had too many clothes when she was moving out.
She told her friend Justas Janauskas and to...
World's first womb transplant baby
In September 2014, the world's first baby was born to a mother with a transplanted womb, making headlines around the globe.
Malin Stenberg had t...
The Chindits
During World War Two, an unconventional special force was formed. Known as the Chindits, they fought behind enemy lines in Burma, now Myanmar during 1...
The founding of USAID
On 3 November 1961, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was founded, bringing all existing aid work under one single agency...
Discovering the Titanic
In September 1985, the wreck of the Titanic was discovered around 400 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, during a joint American-Fr...
John Lennon's final headline concerts
In 1972, after leaving The Beatles, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed in the United States at the One to One benefit concerts at Madison Square Garde...
The making of the Third Man: A film noir classic
In 1948, filming began on a post-war thriller that would become one of the greatest British movies of all time.
Directed by Sir Carol Reed, the...
Washington DC’s Mount Pleasant riot
In May 1991, a female police officer shot and wounded a young immigrant from El Salvador in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood in Washington DC in the U...
Creating CAPTCHA
In 2000, as the internet expanded, websites faced a growing challenge to stop spam bots from flooding their systems.
To separate humans from mac...
The creation of the International Criminal Court
In 1998, at a conference organised by the United Nations, a blueprint was devised for what would be the world's first permanent International Criminal...
Geneva Conventions
In 1859, Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino, in Italy.
He couldn’t believe the lack of aid for the wounded soldie...
The rise and fall of BlackBerry
In the early 2000s, BlackBerry was the phone that ruled the world. But within a decade, it collapsed, overtaken by the touch screen revolution.
...
The book that changed Norway’s view of immigrants
In 2010, a book came out in Norway that transformed the way people looked at paperless immigrants. The author, a 25-year-old Russian woman, fled North...
One man’s escape from McCarthyism
In 1951, at the height of the McCarthy era, a time when the US government pursued suspected communists, Victor Grossman was drafted into the army. A c...