WW1: The Battle of the Somme
In July 1916, Britain led an Allied offensive against German positions on the Western Front near the Somme river in France. The British army...
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Witness
History as told by the people who were there.
Witness Podcast Guide
Listen to Witness, a Society & Culture podcast by BBC. Stream 2,043 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
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Episodes
20 of 2,043 episodesSid the seagull and the Slip Slop Slap campaign
In 1981, Australia launched a fight against skin cancer with help from a yellow cartoon seagull and a catchy jingle. The Slip Slop Slap camp...
Brexit: Ireland watches the vote unfold
In June 2016, voters in the UK were asked whether they wanted to remain in the European Union or leave. It was a decision that would divide...
China detains Hong Kong booksellers
It's 10 years since a Hong Kong bookseller who was detained for selling material critical of China’s leaders, was released and went public....
The discovery of Lyme disease
In 1975, a mysterious outbreak of illness struck children in the United States, triggering a medical breakthrough. Prof Allen Steere uncover...
The discovery of Mungo Man
On 26 February 1974, geologist Dr Jim Bowler discovered a 42,000-year-old skeleton in New South Wales, Australia. The remains were nicknamed...
Women Walk Home: Cyprus' forgotten peace march
In June 1987, hundreds of women walked towards a ceasefire line that had divided Cyprus since 1974. The island was split after a coup backed...
50 years since the Soweto Uprising
Half a century ago, an event took place that shook the apartheid regime in South Africa to its foundations - the Soweto Uprising. It began w...
The Georgian exodus from Abkhazia
In 1993, separatist forces took Sukhumi, the capital of the former Soviet territory of Abkhazia. As Georgian authorities lost control of the...
Hussein of Jordan: The survivor king
In 1970, King Hussein of Jordan survived after gunmen opened fire on his motorcade close to his summer palace. The king remained unharmed, b...
The inspiration for Chekhov's Three Sisters
In 1897, Paul Shishkoff was 10 years old and living with his family in rural Russia. It was there he met the great Russian playwright, Anton...
Picasso and the Surrealist summer
In the summer of 1937, some of the 20th Century's most famous artists, writers and photographers were holidaying in the south of France. The...
Mstislav Rostropovich: Virtuoso cellist
In 1978, Mstislav Rostropovich, one of the greatest cellists in history, was stripped of his Soviet citizenship for engaging in 'unpatriotic...
Nelson Mandela's incarceration at Robben Island
On 13 June 1964, Nelson Mandela, who later became South Africa's president, was taken to the maximum security prison on Robben Island off th...
The creation of Inspector Montalbano
On 10 March 1994, Italian author Andrea Camilleri's The Shape of Water was published. It features Inspector Montalbano in the fictional Sici...
The protests that sparked the Tiananmen Square massacre
One month before the bloodshed in Beijing, a 10km line of protestors snaked through the city. For over a decade China had been opening up to...
Australia's first Big Thing
In 1963, a giant Scotsman sculpture appeared outside the Scotty Motel in Adelaide, in South Australia. A banana, a koala, and even a potato...
The first Irish language television channel
In 1996, Ireland launched its first television channel broadcasting exclusively in the Irish language. Teilifís na Gaeilge, later renamed TG...
Recording the Eichmann interviews
In the 1950s, Dutch journalist Willem Sassen recorded hours of interview with the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann about his involvement in...
Filming Titanic in Mexico
In 1997, Titanic, one of the most successful films in movie history, and one of the most expensive, was made in Mexico. The director James C...