Witness History: Witness Archive 2017

Thousands of scientists moved to deepest Siberia to dedicate their lives to research. The Soviet authorities began building the city in 1957. Academics were enticed there by the promise of housing and interesting work. Olga Smirnova spoke to Dr Victor Varand who made his life in Akademgorodok, or Academic City.

Photo: Scientists at work in Academic City. Credit: Victor Varand.

Alexander Litvinenko was a former colonel in the Russian secret service, but fled to London seeking political asylum when he became critical of the Putin government in 2000. In November 2006 he was poisoned with the highly radioactive substance Polonium 210. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to his wife, Marina, about his life and excruciating death.

(PHOTO: Alexander Litvinenko in a London hospital a couple of days before his death in November 2006. Credit Getty Images.)

In November 2002, an oil tanker, the Prestige, sank off the coast of Galicia in north-west Spain, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history. In the following months, thousands of people from all over Spain travelled to Galicia to help clean up the spill. Simon Watts talks to Xavier Mulet, one of the volunteers.

(Photo: Volunteers cleaning up after the Prestige. Credit: Xavier Mulet)

Colonel Domingo Monterrosa was one of El Salvador's most successful and ruthless military commanders in the fight against leftist rebels. But in October 1984 the rebels carried out an audacious plan to kill him. Mike Lanchin has spoken to one former rebel and a war correspondent about the man and the plot.

(Photo: Colonel Domingo Monterrosa (R), speaking with one of his company commanders, 1983. Credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

It was one of the most notorious spy cases in US history. On 27th November 1954, former US diplomat Alger Hiss was released after spending four years in jail for allegedly lying about being a Soviet agent. Alger Hiss had been seen as a potential secretary of state, but was unable to shake off allegations that he'd passed official documents to Moscow. His conviction was the prelude to a Communist witch-hunt in America that became known as the McCarthy era. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Alger Hiss's son Tony Hiss about growing up in the shadow of the scandal, and his belief that his father was innocent.

Picture: US state department official, Alger Hiss, denying he was a member of a Communist cell before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Washington on 28th August 1948. (Credit: William Bond/Keystone/Getty Images)

East Germany's most famous singer-songwriter was exiled to the West in November 1976, causing an international outcry. Wolf Biermann was stripped of his GDR citizenship while on tour in West Germany.

Wolf Biermann speaks to Lucy Burns about his political songs and his fame on both sides of the Berlin Wall.

Picture: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The buddy movie about a cowboy doll and a toy astronaut used computer-generated images to tell a story that appealed to audiences around the world. Animator Doug Sweetland has been speaking to Ashley Byrne about his work on the Pixar film.

Photo: Woody (R) and Buzz Lightyear (L) in a Japanese cinema. (Credit:Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images)

The president of South Vietnam was overthrown and murdered in a coup in November 1963 - with the support of the American government.

Lucy Burns speaks to Ngo Dinh Diem's niece Elisabeth Nguyen Thi Thu Hong, and American official Rufus Phillips.

Picture: Keystone/Getty Images

Charles Manson's followers murdered nine people on his orders. But how to prove his guilt when he wasn't on the scene at the time of the killings? Vincent Bugliosi was the young prosecutor who succeeded in bringing him to trial. Mr Bugliosi spoke to Chloe Hadjimatheou for Witness - the former prosecutor died in 2015.

Photo: Charles Manson in 2009. Credit: Getty Images.

In 1979 Islamic militants seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. Hundreds were killed as Saudi security forces battled for two weeks to retake the shrine. The militants were ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims who believed that the Mahdi, the prophesied Redeemer, had emerged and was a member of their group. The BBC's Eli Melki spoke to eyewitnesses who were inside the Grand Mosque during the siege. Photo: Fighting at the Grand Mosque in Mecca after militants seized control of the shrine, November 1979 (AFP/Getty Images)

Manfred Marx was the man who discovered the diamonds which transformed Botswana's economy. As a young geologist in 1967 his find in the Kalahari desert completely changed the country's fortunes after independence.

(Photo: Uncut diamonds. Credit: Getty Images)

Thousands of people went missing during Lebanon's long and brutal civil war. But in 1982 a group of women started an organisation to try to track down their family members. Nidale Abou Mrad has been speaking to Wadad Halawani whose husband was taken from their home by two gunmen and never came back.

Photo: West Beirut under shellfire in 1982.(Credit:Domnique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)

A British national institution closed in October 1964. The Windmill Theatre had been one of the few places where it was possible to see naked women on stage, due to a loophole in the censorship laws. Lucy Burns speaks to former Windmill Girl Jill Millard Shapiro about her memories of performing at the theatre.

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Curry first became popular in the UK in the 1950s with the arrival of immigrants from South Asia. They introduced spicy food to the British diet. Nina Robinson has been speaking to Nurjuman Khan, an early pioneer of the Indian restaurant business in the English Midlands. His story also forms part of the 'Knights of the Raj' exhibition in Birmingham by Soul City Arts.

Photo: A youthful Nurjuman Khan (Credit: Nurjuman Khan)

A dead sperm whale washed up on a beach in Florence, Oregon in November 1970. It was so big that the authorities decided to blow it up - with disastrous consequences. Years later, a local news report about the story resurfaced in the early days of the internet, and became one of the most famous viral videos ever. Lucy Burns speaks to Paul Linnman, the reporter behind the story.

Picture: a sperm whale washed ashore in Skegness, England in January 2016 (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Remarkable recordings from the BBC archive of two people who felt the cost of war first-hand. Their experiences were tragically common, but for many years, were rarely recorded or voiced in public You'll hear from a German soldier, Stefan Westmann, who tried to come to terms with the act of killing. And the story of Katie Morter, a British civilian from Manchester, and the man she loved, Percy. Photo: Katie Morter (BBC)

The Russian street dog was the first living creature to orbit the Earth. She was sent into space in November 1957. She died after orbiting the Earth four times. Professor Victor Yazdovsky was nine years old when his father brought Laika back from the laboratory to play with him. He has been speaking to Olga Smirnova for Witness.

Photo: Laika the dog. Credit: Keystone/Hulton/Getty Images.

On 7 November 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries overthrew the provisional government set up in Russia after the fall of the Tsar earlier that year, and created the world's first communist state - a state that would become the Soviet Union. Louise Hidalgo has been listening back to eye-witness accounts of that tumultuous time.

(Photo: Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin addressing crowds in the capital Petrograd during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Days before Kabul fell to anti-Taliban forces in November 2001, Osama bin Laden met Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir in a secret location before going into hiding. It would be 10 years before he was discovered and killed in Pakistan. Hamid Mir tells Rebecca Kesby about their last conversation and how they were both nearly killed in an airstrike.

(PHOTO: Osama bin Laden (left) with Pakistani Journalist Hamid Mir (right) at an undisclosed location. Credit Getty Images)

In 1967 the zoologist and broadcaster, Desmond Morris, wrote about humans in the same way that animals were described. The Naked Ape provoked criticism from religious thinkers and feminists alike, but it was an instant bestseller. His idea that we're not so different from our animal cousins was revolutionary at the time. Farhana Haider speaks to Desmond Morris about his provocative book.

Photo: Desmond Morris author of the Naked Ape. Credit: BBC

In 1997 the US Supreme Court ruled against censoring sex on the internet. It overturned a law, signed the previous year which had been designed to protect children from sexual content on the internet. Claire Bowes has been speaking to an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who fought the case for freedom of speech.

Photo: A computer. Credit: Anilakkus/iStock

In the Lebanese city of Tripoli there is an exceptional architectural site which has never been used. The great modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer designed all the buildings for an international fair which was about to open when civil war broke out in the 1970s. Architect Wassim Naghi has been speaking to Nidale Abou Mrad about the fair.

Photo: The Tripoli international fair from above. Credit: BBC.

When German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saint's Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517, he started a religious revolution. The document was about the church's practice of selling indulgences - but Luther's protest would grow into the Protestant Reformation. Witness hears primary sources from the time, and speaks to historian Lyndal Roper.

(Photo: A portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder on display at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, Germany (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

In October 1975 the prominent Brazilian journalist Vladimir Herzog was killed by the secret police. His murder became a symbol of the brutality of the military regime. Mike Lanchin speaks to his son, Ivo, who was just nine years old at the time.

Photo: Vladimir Herzog with Ivo as a baby (courtesy of the Herzog family).

In October 1929 Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir began their fifty-year love affair after meeting in Paris. Louise Hidalgo speaks to the writer and leading French feminist, Claudine Monteil, who knew Sartre and de Beauvoir, about their legendary status and their famously open relationship.

Photo: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre sitting in a cafe in Paris, 1970. (STF/AFP/Getty Images)

An eyewitness to the assassination of the campaigning Nigerian journalist Dele Giwa. He was murdered in Lagos in 1986 while the country was under military rule.In October 1986, Dele Giwa was the founder of the investigative magazine Newswatch. In 2014, Alex Last spoke to his friend and colleague, Kayode Soyinka, who was with him when he died. Photo: Dele Giwa

Soon after Hitler ordered the invasion of Hungary in March 1944, the Nazis began rounding up hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews. Most were immediately sent to their deaths in the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. David Gur was a member of the Jewish Hungarian underground, who helped produce tens of thousands of forged identification documents. These allowed Jews to hide their true identities and escape deportation to the death camps. Now 91 years old, David has been telling Mike Lanchin about his part in one of the largest rescue operations organised by Jews during the Holocaust.

Photo: False Hungarian ID document (BBC)

On October 25th 1961 a new satirical magazine called Private Eye was published for the first time in London. It was part of a new era of comedy, poking fun at the powerful and politicians, and helping Britain to laugh at itself after the austerity of the post-war years. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to one of Private Eye's founders, Richard Ingrams.

Picture: the Private Eye office in 1963. From left to right, editor Richard Ingrams, Christopher Booker and actor, cartoonist and broadcaster Willie Rushton. (Photo by John Pratt/Keystone Features/Getty Images)

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu made abortion illegal in October 1966 - but many women still tried to end their pregnancies, by sometimes desperate means.

Sorina Voiculescu was one of the millions of Romanian women who had an illegal abortion under the ban.

(Photo shows: A pregnant woman. Photo credit: PA)

How British Jewish ex-servicemen and volunteers came together to form The 43 Group to fight a resurgent British fascist movement on the streets of post-war Britain. Fascist leaders, like Sir Oswald Mosley, had been released from detention at the end of the World War Two. Soon they were holding meetings in London and around the country, often espousing the same violently anti-Semitic rhetoric used before the war.

In response the 43 Group was formed in the late 1940s to gain intelligence on the fascist movement, expose their activities and physically break up their meetings. Its activities became a model for future militant anti-fascist groups. Alex Last has been speaking to 43 Group veteran, Jules Konopinksi.

(Photo: British Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley speaking at a rally, Hertford Road, Dalston, London, 1 May 1948. Credit: Getty Images)

When the socialist leader of Mozambique and many of his senior advisers were killed in a plane crash on the border with South Africa, many were suspicious. It was October 19th 1986 and the two countries were divided over Apartheid. The plane made a sudden direct turn straight into a range of mountains, and one of the air crash investigators at the scene, Dr Alan Diehl, told Rebecca Kesby there are reasons to suspect the plane was deliberately diverted off course.

(PHOTO: The socialist leader of Mozambique Samora Machel delivers a speech. Credit: Getty Images.)

In October 2002 Chechen rebels seized a packed theatre in central Moscow and took hundreds of people hostage. They demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Olga Smirnova has been hearing the story of Svetlana Gubareva who was in the theatre that night with her fiancé and daughter.

Photo: Images of some of the victims amid candles and floral tributes (Denis Sinyakov/Getty Images)

The two-time Booker prize-winning author drowned off the south-west coast of Ireland in 1979. Vincent Dowd has been speaking to people who knew him, and to Pauline Foley who was the last person to see him alive.

Photo: The road in front of Farrell's home in West Cork, leading down to the sea where he drowned. Credit: BBC.

On October 16th 1962 the American president, John F Kennedy, received news that the Soviets were secretly deploying nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba. In the two weeks that followed, the Cuban Missile crisis took the world to the brink of nuclear war. Louise Hidalgo has been listening back through the BBC's archives to some of those at the centre of the crisis in Washington and Moscow.

Picture: President Kennedy goes on national television to tell the American public about the Soviet nuclear missile deployment and announces a strategic blockade of Cuba, 22nd October 1962 (Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

Ron Shipp was a close friend of OJ Simpson's but was also a police officer and decided to testify against him in a criminal trial for double homicide. In 1995 OJ Simpson was acquitted of killing his ex wife, Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman. Ron Shipp tells Rebecca Kesby why he wanted to testify.

Photo: O.J. Simpson (C) confers with attorneys Johnnie Cochran (L) and Robert Shapiro (R) during Simpson's murder trial in Los Angeles, CA. (Credit: POOL/AFP/Getty Images)

Italy's great works of art were threatened by bombing and looting during World War Two. But a plan known as 'Operation Rescue' was devised to keep the paintings and sculptures safe. Some were hidden in remote spots, others were moved to the Vatican. Pasquale Rotondi was a leading figure in the operation, his daughter Giovanna Rotondi spoke to Alice Gioia about his wartime work.

Photo: St George by Andrea Mantegna, circa 1460.(Credit DeAgostini/Getty Images)

In October 1940, the elected Catalan leader, Lluis Companys, was executed by a Spanish fascist firing squad in Barcelona. His death made Companys a hero to generations of Catalan nationalists, although his legacy is debated to this day. Simon Watts tells his story using accounts from the time.

PHOTO: A Catalan nationalist marking the 50th anniversary of Companys' death in 2010 (Getty Images)

In October 1967 the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara was captured and killed in Bolivia. He had gone there to try to organise a Cuban-style revolution. Mike Lanchin has spoken to Felix Rodriguez, the CIA operative who helped track him down, and was one of the last people to speak to him.

(Photo: Felix Rodriguez (left) with the captured Che Guevara, shortly before his execution on 9 October 1967. Courtesy of Felix Rodriguez)

The murder of gay student Matthew Shepard in October 1998 shocked America. After a decade of campaigning, his mother, Judy Shepard, convinced lawmakers to change hate crime legislation, outlawing attacks based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Claire Bowes has been speaking to Judy Shepard.

Photo: Matthew Shepard (Handout image from the Matthew Shepard Foundation)

There were riots when the first black student was enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the American south in October 1962. Mississippi's white segregationist governor only allowed James Meredith to be admitted after President John F Kennedy himself intervened. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Norma Watkins, the daughter of the governor's lawyer, about that watershed moment and about growing up in one of America's most segregated states.

Picture: James Meredith walks to class at Ole Miss university accompanied by US marshals, October 1st 1962 (Credit: Marion S Trikosko courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington)

For five years Maisoon Bashir and her family lived on the front-line of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. Their house was directly opposite one of the Jewish settlements built by Israel after it captured the tiny heavily-populated territory from Egypt in the Six Day war in October 1967. Israeli troops occupied the top floors of Maisoon’s house, using it as a military look-out post, while Maisoon and her family continued living in the rooms below. They finally re-gained possession of their home when Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005. Maisoon tells Mike Lanchin about living with soldiers in her own home.

Photo: An Israeli armored personnel carrier deploys at sunrise to protect the evacuation of the Gaza Strip Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom (David Silverman/Getty Images).

King Henry VIII's favourite warship sank during a naval battle over 400 years ago. But the wreck and its contents were preserved in silt for centuries and finally raised to the surface in October 1982. Susan Hulme has spoken to Christopher Dobbs, one of the archaeologists who helped excavate the Mary Rose while she lay on the sea bed, and who is still uncovering its secrets today.

Photo: A reconstruction of the Mary Rose, in full sail. Copyright: BBC.

A very modern museum opened in the Iranian capital in October 1977. It contains one of the finest collections of Western art outside Europe and North America. Iran's Islamic revolution just over a year later, led to many of the paintings being hidden from public view. Rozita Riazati spoke to Kamran Diba who was the architect, and first director, of the museum.

Photo: A woman visitor to the Museum. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.

Just 33 days into his reign, Pope John Paul I unexpectedly died in September 1978. He was discovered in the early morning lying on his bed, a collection of sermons in his hand. He was considered an excellent communicator, and his warm personality earned him the nick name of "the smiling Pope". But his death shook the church. Rebecca Kesby spoke to Cardinal Beniamino Stella who knew him well.

(PHOTO: Pope John Paul I. Credit: Getty Images.)

Guinea became the first French West African colony to declare independence in October 1958. In a referendum held throughout French colonies, Guinea had been the only nation to vote for independence. Guinea was led by the charismatic politician Sekou Toure who famously declared "We prefer poverty in freedom, than riches in slavery". The French government under General Charles De Gaulle reacted to the decision by cutting off aid, withdrawing French workers, and stripping Guinea of equipment and resources. Alex Last has been speaking to Professor Lansine Kaba, a Guinean historian who was in Guinea as a student in 1958. Photo of Guinean leader, Sekou Toure, during a visit to London in 1959 (AFP/Getty Images)

It took 508 days for three friends to complete the first trek along the entire length of the ancient structure, well over 8000 kms. They finally reached the Jiayu Pass on September 24th 1985, having documented the condition of the wall every step of the way. The three men became national heroes as the press followed their progress. Their expedition also drew attention to the Great Wall, Chinese culture and history and sparked a new era of Chinese tourism. Yaohui Dong spoke to Rebecca Kesby about what inspired him to make the journey.

(PHOTO: Yaohui Dong, Wu Deyu and Zhang Yuanhua. Courtesy of Yaohui Dong)

Around 80 thousand women and girls volunteered to join the Women's Land Army during the Second World War. They helped provide vital food supplies to a country under siege. Kirsty Reid has spoken to Mona McLeod who was just 17 years old when she started working 6 days a week on a farm in Scotland. Mona has written a book about her experiences: 'A Land Girl's Tale'.

Photo: Land girls carrying bundles of straw in 1941. (Credit: Maeers/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

The anti-apartheid activist was buried on September 25th 1977. He had died in police custody just two weeks earlier. Thousands of people attended the funeral. Alex Last spoke to one of the early members of the Black Consciousness movement, Mamphela Ramphele who had a relationship with Steve Biko.

Photo: Anti-apartheid activist attending the burial ceremony of Steve Biko, October 1977. (Photo credit STF/AFP/GettyImages)

A showdown on the American/Mexican border on September 14th 1958 - in which two horses raced along either side of the border fence. Lucy Burns speaks to Ralph Romero, whose father was the owner of Relampago, the Mexican horse.

Photo: Relampago, courtesy of Ralph Romero

After the 9/11 attacks, a New York guide dog called Roselle was hailed as a hero for helping her owner safely down 78 flights of stairs and away from the Twin Towers before they collapsed. Simon Watts talks to Roselle's owner, Michael Hingson.

PHOTO: Roselle and Michael Hingson, right, meeting a 9/11 rescue team (Getty Images)

For decades, Australia's countryside was ravaged by billions of rabbits. So in the 1950s, the government released the disease myxomatosis to kill off the rabbit plague. We hear from farmer, Bill McDonald, who remembers Australia's battle against the bunnies. (This programme is a re-broadcast).

(Photo: Rabbits around a waterhole at the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island in 1938. Credit: National Archives of Australia)

When Australian spearfishing champion Rodney Fox survived an horrific attack by a Great White Shark in 1963, it inspired him to learn more about the predator that tried to eat him. He invented the Shark Cage to help him do it safely. Rodney's was one of the worst non-fatal shark attacks ever recorded. He's been describing his miraculous escape from the jaws of death to Rebecca Kesby.

(Photo: A Great White Shark - Getty Images)

A plague of African desert locusts flew 5,000 kilometres non-stop to the Caribbean in 1988 in a journey never before recorded. They are thought to have come over with Hurricane Joan and the islanders were horrified at the sight of millions of dead and dying locusts on the beaches. Ministries of Agriculture feared the insects would become an established pest and would ruin crops but the surviving locusts seemed disorientated and soon died out. Claire Bowes has been speaking to an entomologist from St Lucia about the strange visitors who didn't like bananas.

Photo: Getty Creative Images

A doctor working in Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon recalls the massacre there in September 1982. Over the course of three days, Lebanese Christian militiamen killed and raped hundreds of the Palestinian inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut in revenge for the assassination of their leader, Lebanese president elect, Bashir Gemayel. Dr Swee Ang treated the wounded in the basement of the only hospital in the camp; she tells Louise Hidalgo her story.

Photo: A Palestinian woman cries while civil defence workers carry the body of one of her relatives from the rubble of her home in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in West Beirut, 19th September 1982 (Credit: STF/AFP/Getty Images)

Karl-Heinz Borchardt was arrested just after his 18th birthday by communist secret police in East Germany. His crime was writing a letter to the BBC World Service in protest at the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He has been speaking to Abby Darcy about how he was caught out by the Stasi.

Photo: Karl-Heinz Borchardt at the time of his arrest. Copyright: Dr Karl-Heinz Borchardt .

A group of hippies known as the London Street Commune occupied a sixty-room mansion in central London in September 1969. 144 Piccadilly became a flash point for the conflict between alternative culture and the mainstream – and it was later cleared by the police. Lucy Burns speaks to Richie Gardener, who was one of the squatters.

Picture credit: A policeman removes a flag from the balcony of 144 Piccadilly as squatters are evicted from the building, London, 21st September 1969. (Photo by Terry Disney/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Customers queued for hours to take their savings out, fearing the mortgage lender was about to go under. The Bank of England had to step in to support it. It was the first sign in Britain of the coming global financial crisis.

Photo: Northern Rock customers queuing outside the Kingston branch, in order to take their money out on September 17th 2007. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

When West African tin miners unearthed evidence of a lost civilization. In the 1920s, terracotta heads and figurines were unearthed near the village of Nok in central Nigeria. They were ignored until a British colonial officer and archaeologist, Bernard Fagg, realised they were evidence of an unknown African culture dating back over 2,500 years. Alex Last speaks to Bernard's daughter, Angela Rackham. Photo: A Nok terracotta (Marie-Lan Nguyen)

The last man to be executed by guillotine in France was a disabled Tunisian murderer, Hamida Djandoubi. He was beheaded on September 10th 1977 at the Baumettes prison in Marseille. Ashley Byrne has spoken to the daughter of lawyer, Emile Pollak, who defended Hamida Djandoubi and who was present at his execution. The death penalty was outlawed in France in 1981.

Photo: A man looks at a guillotine in an exhibition. Credit: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.

In 1974 during a live broadcast of Carl Orff's, Carmina Burana as part of the BBC classical music season 'The Proms', the principal baritone singer collapsed into the orchestra pit in a dead faint. A member of the audience stepped forward to sing the rest of the piece. Patrick McCarthy had only just graduated from music school, but became something of a national hero when he rescued the show. He describes the night he saved The Proms at The Albert Hall in London to Rebecca Kesby for Witness.

(PHOTO: Patrick McCarthy outside The Albert Hall, London 1974. Getty Images)

An ambitious ecological experiment was launched in Arizona in September 1991. It aimed to see if human beings could produce everything they needed to survive - in a man-made environment. Rachael Gillman has been speaking to Linda Leigh, one of the eight scientists who spent two years sealed inside the giant greenhouse known as 'Biosphere 2'.

Photo credit: TIM ROBERTS/AFP/Getty Images

The photos taken in 1917 by two young girls were heralded by the Sherlock Holmes author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as proof of the existence of fairies. Cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths were 15 and 9 when they took the photos in the village of Cottingley near Leeds in the north of England. In 1920 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published the photos in an issue of the Strand magazine as part of an article on fairy life. He was a leading member of the Theosophical Society, a movement interested in the spirit world which had gained a following in the devastating aftermath of World War One. In 1983 Elsie Wright finally admitted that the photos had been faked.

Photo: Copyright Alamy. Frances Griffiths and the "Cottingley Fairies" in a photograph made in 1917 by her cousin Elsie Wright with paper cutouts and hatpins.

A train carrying day-trippers crashed in September 1957 near the small town of Kendal, Jamaica. More than 200 passengers died and over 700 were injured. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Earl Clarke, who was 14 years old when he survived the accident. Photo: (Alamy)

Diana's brother Earl Spencer made a passionate speech at her funeral, which was interpreted by many as an attack on the Royal Family and the British press. He speaks to Mishal Husain about delivering the eulogy - and about the "bizarre and cruel" decision that her children William and Harry should walk behind her coffin.

Picture: Earl Spencer and Prince William outside the funeral ceremony for the Princess of Wales. Credit: Joel Robine/AFP/Getty Images

The online auction site first went live in September 1995. Initially, it targeted collectors of antiques and memorabilia. Soon, you could sell virtually anything on eBay. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to Jim Griffith one of the company's first employees.

Photo: the eBay logo.

The novel Animal Farm was an allegory about the dangers of Soviet communism and of the communist leader Joseph Stalin. It was first published shortly after the end of World War Two, as the Cold War was just beginning. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to Orwell's adopted son, Richard Blair, about George Orwell's work, and about his memories of his father.

Photo: George Orwell with Richard on his knee in the 1940s. Credit: Vernon Richards

1983 saw a major breakthrough in the treatment of facial deformities. When the first three-dimensional reconstruction of a human head using CT scans was presented to the medical world. The images allowed plastic surgeons a far more precise way of planning surgical procedures. Farhana Haider has been speaking to radiologist Dr Michael Vannier who invented the 3D imaging technique which has revolutionised medicine.

Photo: Three-dimensional CT scan of a male skull and arterial system. Credit SPL

In August 1958, Britain was shocked by nearly a week of race riots in the west London district of Notting Hill. The clashes between West Indian immigrants and aggressive white youths known as Teddy Boys led to the first race relations campaigns and the creation of the famous Notting Hill Carnival. Simon Watts reports.

PHOTO: Police making arrests in Notting Hill in 1958 (Getty Images)

Germany saw its worst racial violence since World War Two in August 1992, when a home for asylum seekers was set on fire in the city of Rostock. Lucy Burns speaks to journalist Jochen Schmidt, who was trapped in the burning building.

In BBC archive recordings, veterans tell the story of how medical care dealt with the horrors of WW1. Photo: Australian wounded on the Menin Road on the Western Front, 1917 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

How an ophthalmologist and a dermatologist in Vancouver, Canada, discovered that small amounts of a deadly toxin could make frown lines disappear. Chloe Hadjimatheou spoke to Drs Jean and Alastair Carruthers about their breakthrough.

Photo: Doctor injecting a woman's face with botulinum toxin. Copyright: Pascal Goetgheluck/Science Photo Library.

Hear from one of the German prosecution lawyers who helped put Nazi war criminals on trial 20 years after World War Two had ended. Gerhard Wiese has been speaking to Lucy Burns about the trial, and about visiting the Auschwitz death camp with other members of the court.

Photo: Members of the Frankfurt court and several journalists pass through the Auschwitz camp gate with the words "Arbeit macht frei" (work brings freedom) above them. December 14,1964. Credit: Press Association.

In August 1941 one of the greatest poets India has ever produced died. Known as the "Bard of Bengal" Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize for Literature and has been called one of the outstanding thinkers of the 20th century. Farhana Haider and has been listening to material from the BBC archives and hearing from Professor Bashabi Fraser, Director of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies.

Photo June 1921, Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore in London. Credit: Getty Images

In August 1974, Turkey ordered its troops into northern Cyprus for the second time in less than a month, leading to the division of the island into a Greek Cypriot part and a Turkish Cypriot part, a division that still exists today. Louise Hidalgo has been listening to a Turkish account of those events from the son of Turkey's foreign minister at the time, Hursit Gunes.

Picture: an armoured vehicle filled with soldiers during fighting between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, August 16th 1974 (Credit: Reg Lancaster/ Express/Getty Images

The English-language newspaper was credited with standing up to Argentina's military dictatorship during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It published reports of people who'd disappeared when other newspapers were effectively silenced by the authorities. The paper's editor at the time, Robert Cox, has been speaking to Simon Watts for Witness.

Photo: Argentinian soldiers frisking a civilian at a checkpoint in Buenos Aires in 1977. Credit: Ali Burafi/AFP/Getty Images.

In the 1990s students began boycotting Nike after it became linked to sweatshops. Many were horrified to find their trainers were being made by poorly paid Indonesian workers.

Photo: Cicih Sukaesih telling her story in America in 1996 (courtesy of Jeff Ballinger)

For years Germans have been bathing nude at the beach. Many are members of a naturist movement called the FKK, which was banned under the Nazis and faced official disapproval during the early years of communist rule in East Germany. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to one East Berliner who recalls the heyday of naked sunbathing beside the Baltic Sea, and who still likes to bare all when he goes on holiday.

Photo: Bathers enjoying the beach at Baerwalder See, Eastern Germany (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

"We have outlawed Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes". It was just an unscripted joke by US President Ronald Reagan but it terrified ordinary Russians. Reagan's advisor Morton Blackwell tells Dina Newman about the president's love of anti-Soviet jokes and his determination to destroy Communism.

Photo: American president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s at his desk in the White House, Washington DC. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale - known to generations as the "lady with the lamp" - died on August 13th 1910. Lucy Burns hears a recording of Florence Nightingale's voice from 1890, along with memories of her life from her great-nephew Harry Verney and her private doctor May Thorne - and Dr Rosemary Wall from the University of Hull explains her legacy in the world of public health.

Recording courtesy of the Library at the Wellcome Collection

Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Exactly a year before Indian independence there were deadly riots in India's second city of Calcutta. They followed mass demonstrations calling for the creation of a Muslim-majority state and persuaded many political leaders that India should be divided on its independence. Thousands of people were killed and thousands more left the city. Justin Rowlatt has been speaking to 2 survivors of the killings.

Photo: Calcutta policemen use tear gas during the communal riots in the city. (Credit: Keystone Features/Getty Images)

The acclaimed Palestinian cartoonist was gunned down in London in 1987. His attackers have never been identified. Naji al-Ali's cartoons were famous across the Middle East. Through his images he criticised Israeli and US policy in the region, but unlike many, he also lambasted Arab despotic regimes and the leadership of the PLO. His signature character was called Handala - a poor Palestinian refugee child with spiky hair, who would always appear, facing away with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the events depicted in the cartoon. Alex Last has been speaking to his son, Khalid, about his father's life and death. Photo: A cartoon by Naji al-Ali published with the permission of Naji Al-Ali family. Copyrights reserved.

In the summer of 1997 Captain Charles Moore was on his way home from a yacht race when he came upon a huge patch of floating rubbish in the Pacific Ocean. In 2013 he spoke to Lucy Burns about the discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and how it opened up a new chapter in research into ocean waste.

Photo: Fishing nets and assorted garbage collected from the North Pacific Gyre (Credit: Environmental Images/Univers/REX/Shutterstock)

In 2000 the US led a major effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Bill Clinton brought the two sides together at the leafy presidential retreat in Maryland. The Israeli leader, Ehud Barak and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, failed to reach any agreement and the summit ended in failure. Farhana Haider has been speaking to the senior American diplomatic interpreter and policy adviser, Gamal Helal who attended the Camp David summit.

White House photo released 16 July 2000 US President Bill Clinton (C) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (L) and Palestinian Chairman Yassar Arafat and Gamal Helal at a working dinner at Camp David, Maryland during the Middle East Peace Summit. Credit: SHARON FARMER/AFP/Getty Images

In July 1999, the spiritual movement Falun Gong was banned in China. Thousands of people were arrested. The Chinese government says Falun Gong is an "evil cult", but followers of the movement say they have been the victims of state persecution.

Witness speaks to Falun Gong practitioner Chao Yu and journalist Ian Johnson.

(Photo: Falun Gong practitioners stage a sit-in protest outside the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong, 2002. Credit: Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1977 a state hospital near Paris began quietly changing the way women gave birth. Obstetrician, Dr Michel Odent, believed that childbirth had become too medicalised and he wanted a more natural approach. He introduced a pool to ease the pain of labour. Eventually some babies were even born in the pool. Claire Bowes speaks to Dr Odent about the innovation that has become a revolution using the power of water.

(Photo: Getty Images)

During World War Two, Croatian fascists tortured and killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma people in several concentration camps. The most notorious was Jasenovac. Dina Newman speaks to Milinko Cekic, a Serb survivor of Jasenovac.

Photo: Milinko Cekic speaking to the BBC in 2017. Credit: BBC.

On July 26 1952 Argentina's controversial First Lady, Eva Peron, died in Buenos Aires. During her short life she had become an icon for women and the poor in the South American nation. In 2012 Krupa Padhy spoke to two very different Argentine women who remember meeting her.

Photo: President Juan Peron and his wife, Eva Peron, at a demonstration in Buenos Aires, August 1951. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

In the 1970s, deep sea divers were at the sharp end of the North Sea oil boom. Alex Last has been speaking to the former diver David Beckett, who wrote The Loonliness of a Deep Sea Diver, about his dangerous life working under the waves. Photo: A saturation diver works to fix an undersea oil pump in the North Sea (BBC)

The battle for China between Communists and Nationalists left Mao the victor in 1949. Defeated Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai Shek, fled with his troops to the island of Taiwan, but he vowed to return. Hau Pei Tsun is a former chief aide to Chiang Kai Shek. Now 99 years old, he speaks to Rebecca Kesby about his memories of the controversial leader, and their fight for the soul of China.

Photo: General Chiang Kai Shek, cerca 1943 (Keystone/Getty Images)

In July 1967, homosexuality was legalised in England and Wales for the first time. Before that gay men lived in fear of arrest, beatings and blackmail. Some even underwent so-called aversion therapy at psychiatric hospitals in an attempt to 'cure' themselves. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Liverpool comedian and radio presenter, Peter Price, who still bears the psychological scars of what he was put through when he was 18.

Picture: Comedian Peter Price (copyright: private collection)

In the 1960s, millions of Soviet families were able for the first time to move to a flat of their own. This was due to a mass construction programme of standardized housing. Dina Newman speaks to a resident of one of the first five storey apartment blocks, and to Clem Cecil, a campaigner for preserving architecture.

Photo: a five-storey building dating from the 1960s in western Moscow on June 11, 2017. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

In July 1967 there was a breakthrough for the Welsh language. The Welsh Language Act allowed people in Wales to use Welsh in a court of law - and it was also the first significant victory for a campaign to preserve the ancient language. Lucy Burns speaks to Dafydd Iwan and Lord Elystan Morgan about the campaign.

PICTURE: Rain clouds gather over the Welsh flag flying beside the beach on June 15, 2012 in Barry, Wales (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

During the Vietnam war, the US army's Psychological Operations, or PSYOP, teams were deployed to battle communist Viet Cong guerillas and the North Vietnamese Army. Their goal was to try to weaken the enemy's willingness to fight. They used a variety of methods including playing spooky "Wandering Soul" tapes which preyed on local beliefs about the afterlife. Alex Last has been speaking to PSYOP veteran Rick Hofmann who was deployed to Vietnam in the late 1960s. Photo:Viet Cong guerrillas on patrol during the Vietnam War, 2nd March 1966: (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

In the summer of 1932, tens of thousands of American First World War veterans marched on Washington DC to demand the bonus they'd been promised by the government for their part in the war. It was the height of the Great Depression and many were unemployed and hungry. They called themselves the Bonus Army. Louise Hidalgo talks to author Paul Dickson about their story.

Photograph: Bonus Army marchers stage a mass vigil on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington while the Senate debates their case (Copyright: Getty Archive)

On July 15th 1997 the Italian fashion designer was shot dead on the steps of his Florida mansion. His murder sparked a huge manhunt and shocked the world of fashion. Mike Lanchin spoke to journalist Cathy Horyn about the man, and his life.

Photo: A police car outside Gianni Versace's Miami home in July 1997. Credit: Robert Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images

The Famicom gaming console was a breakthrough in the world of computer games. Launched in Japan in 1983, it brought games out of arcades and into people's living rooms. When it reached markets in the West it was renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo designer Masayuki Uemura has been speaking to Ashley Byrne about how it was developed.

Photo: Masayuki Uemura, holding Donkey Kong software for the original Famicom console. (Credit: Kyodo News via Getty Images.)

In July 1965 an 11-km tunnel dug deep beneath the Alps was opened to traffic. Linking France and Italy, the Mont Blanc tunnel was a remarkable feat of engineering. Franco Cuaz, a consultant on the project and the tunnel's first operations manager, speaks to Mike Lanchin about the risks and challenges of the ambitious project.

Photo: Final preparations are made for the opening of the Mont Blanc Tunnel on the French-Italian border, July 1965. (Keystone/Getty Images)

Indigenous Canadians objected to plans to develop a golf course on the site of a burial ground in Quebec in 1990. The dispute led to a summer-long siege between Mohawk protestors and Canadian security forces. Ellen Katsi'tsakwas Gabriel is a Mohawk activist who spoke to Rebecca Kesby about the crisis.

Photo: A Mohawk activist confronts a soldier. Credit: IATV NEWS.

In the summer of 1992, thousands of ravers and New Age travellers gathered for an illegal free festival on common land near the Malvern Hills in the English Midlands - to the horror of local residents. It was a high point for British rave culture, but also the beginning of the end. The Castlemorton Common event led to a change in the law giving police increased power to shut down events playing music "characterised by the emission of repetitive beats".

Lucy Burns speaks to Lol Hammond, a former member of music collective Spiral Tribe, who played at the event.

Photo: Murray Sanders/ANL/REX/Shutterstock: New Age travellers camping at Castlemorton Malvern Hills in 1992.

In 1961, one of the world's best ballet dancers, Rudolf Nureyev, defected from the USSR to the West, causing a worldwide sensation. Dina Newman spoke to Victor Hochhauser, the international impresario who organised that historic tour.

Photo: Rudolf Nureyev receives flowers after his performance of 'Swan Lake' in Paris in 1963. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

The dissident poet was sentenced to 7 years in a Soviet Labour camp. She suffered from cold, malnutrition and harsh treatment, but she continued to write poems secretly. She was released on the eve of a nuclear summit between the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Irina Ratushinskaya died on July 5th 2017. She spoke to Louise Hidalgo for Witness in 2016.

(Photo: Irina and her husband Igor, arriving in London in December 1986. Credit: Topfoto)

In 1993, academic Dr Alan Sked formed the UK Independence Party to campaign against Britain's membership of the European Union. The party played a vital part in the debate about Europe before and after the referendum which led to Brexit - Britain's exit from the Union.

Photo: Dr Alan Sked during an early party political broadcast.

In July 1987 separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka attacked an army camp. It was the first of hundreds of suicide attacks carried by the group known as the "Black Tigers" against both military and civilian targets during the country's long running civil war. Farhana Haider hears from a former Tamil resident of Sri Lanka and from one of the only filmmakers to have spent any time with the Black Tigers.

Photo: Captain Miller shrine at Nelliady, Jaffna, Sri Lanka on Black Tigers Day, 2004. Credit: Public Domain

In 2009, a metal detectorist found the largest ever hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver in a field in England. More than 3,000 pieces were recovered. Many appeared to be decorations taken from swords, as well as Christian artefacts. The hoard is believed to date back to the 7th Century when Anglo-Saxon kingdoms battled each other for supremacy in England. Alex Last has been speaking to Terry Herbert who found the treasure and archaeologist Dr Kevin Leahy who examined the hoard. Photo: Just some of the treasures from The Staffordshire Hoard (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

In the summer of 1986 in an effort to promote 'Glasnost' or openness, Soviet women were linked up with American women via satellite for a TV debate. But the dialogue would be remembered above all for the moment when a Russian woman stated "We have no sex in the USSR". Dina Newman has tracked down the woman who blurted that out, and Vladimir Posner the talk show host in the studio at the time.

Photo: Soviet women in the Leningrad TV studio, with Vladimir Posner standing in the background. Courtesy of Ludmilla Ivanova.

In 2002 Steve Fossett succeeded in flying solo around the world in a hot air balloon. He touched down in Australia on the 4th of July. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to his chief engineer and project manager, Tim Cole, about the man and his record-breaking journey.

Photo: Steve Fossett on an earlier balloon trip. Credit: BBC.

In July 1947 members of the US military reported finding unidentifiable debris in the desert of New Mexico. The only explanation seemed to be that it had come from outer space. Major Jesse Marcel was one of the men who came across the material. In 2010, his son, Jesse Marcel Junior talked to Ed Butler for Witness about the so-called 'Roswell Incident'.

Photo: Major Jesse Marcel with some of the debris in July 1947. Credit: Alamy

In 1992 Disney opened its first theme park in Europe. But it had taken years of delicate negotiations and diplomacy get it off the ground. In 2013 Rebecca Kesby spoke to Robert Fitzpatrick who had the job of bringing the magic of Mickey Mouse to France.

Photo: Celebrations during the 25th anniversary of Disneyland Paris at the park in Marne-la-Vallee in April 2017. Credit: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

A dispute between Israel and Egypt over a tiny strip of beach on the Red Sea soured relations between the two countries for years. Israel captured Taba on the Sinai Peninsula during the Six Day War, but refused to return it until 1989 when the Egyptians bought the luxury hotel and beach-hut village that Israeli developers had built on it. Louise Hidalgo talks to former US judge Abraham Sofaer who helped negotiate the deal.

Picture: Egyptian soldiers present arms as Israel returns control of Taba to Egypt after 22 years; in the background is the five-star hotel that an Israeli developer built at the resort (Credit: Maggi Ayalon/GPO via Getty Images)

In July 1972 Tony and Maureen Wheeler set off on the holiday of a lifetime travelling from London to Sydney in Australia . The book they wrote when they returned was the first Lonely Planet travel guide. The series helped thousands of young travellers to make their way around the world on a budget. Farhana Haider has been talking to co-founder Tony Wheeler. (Photo: Maureen and Tony Wheeler. Credit: Lonely Planet)

In the 1960s and 70s, thousands of westerners travelled to India and Nepal by overland bus. They were searching for adventure, enlightenment and cheap hashish. Simon Watts talks to Richard Gregory, who did the Hippie Trail in 1974.

PHOTO: Richard Gregory in Kabul in 1974 (Private Collection)

In 1955 a small Icelandic airline called Loftleioir Icelandic slashed the cost of flying across the Atlantic. For the first time thousands of young Americans were able to afford air travel to Europe on what became known as the 'Hippie Express.' Mike Lanchin speaks to Edda Helgason, whose father Sigurdur Helgason, launched the ambitious scheme, and to Hans Indridason, who ran the company's sales and marketing department at the time.

Photo: An Icelandic Airlines advertisement from May 1973, in New York's Fifth Avenue (US National Archives)

In 1937 Italian forces occupying the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa began a three day campaign of killings which left thousands of Ethiopian civilians dead. Alex Last has been speaking to Ambassador Imru Zelleke, who witnessed the massacre as a child. The violence began after a grenade attack wounded Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, the man appointed by Mussolini to govern Ethiopia. Italian forces had invaded the country in 1935 as Mussolini tried to expand Italian colonial territories in East Africa. Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, then called Abyssinia, was forced into exile. Ethiopia was a member of the League of Nations, but despite appeals, Western powers refused to intervene to stop the Italian invasion. The massacre is known in Ethiopia by it's date in the Ethiopian calender,Yekatit 12. Photo: The arrival of an Italian official in Italian-occupied Addis Ababa. The slogan on the banner reads: 'To whom does the empire belong? Duce! Duce! To ourselves!' (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In June 1982 a young Chinese-American engineer was murdered with a baseball bat by two white men in the US city of Detroit. The lenient sentences the perpetrators received sparked an Asian-American activist movement with protests across the US. At the time America was going through an economic depression and many were blaming Japan which was perceived to be flooding the US with its cars. For Asian-Americans it was a time of fear. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Helen Zia, one of the activists leading the fight for justice.

(Photo: Helen Zia addressing a 10th anniversary commemoration event New York City, 1992. Credit: Helen Zia)

In 1950, tens of thousands of Christians in South Korea were beaten, killed or forcibly taken to the north by the invading North Korean communist army. Dina Newman has been speaking to Peter Chang, who came from a family of Salvation Army officers in Seoul and had to flee the North Korean advance.

Photo: Fifth US air force of the UN forces bomb a train bridge over the river Han south of Seoul during the Korean War on July 11, 1950. AFP/Getty Images

In 1995 Tokyo University staged the first public exhibition to feature human corpses that had been preserved through the process of plastination using silicone. The process was developed by the German anatomist, Gunther Von Hagens - but it was Professor Takeshi Yoro of Japan who first suggested they should be put on public display. He speaks to Rebecca Kesby for Witness.

(Photo: Base-ball player at the Body Worlds exhibition of real human bodies, San Diego, California, 2009. Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP)

On 19th June 1982, the body of Italian banker Roberto Calvi was found hanging beneath a bridge in London. It was the latest twist in a drama that had gripped Italy for more than a year involving a mysterious masonic lodge, whose members included many of the most powerful men in Italy, and which stretched all the way to the mafia and to the Catholic church. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to retired magistrate Giuliano Turone who helped discover this secret state-within-a-state, and to journalist Leo Sisti who reported on it.

Picture: Robert Calvi, head of Banco Ambrosiano, who was convicted of fraud but released on appeal shortly before his death (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

On 17 June 1940, a packed British troopship was sunk off the coast of France by German bombers. The ship had just picked up thousands of British military personnel left behind in France after the evacuation of the army at Dunkirk. It's believed around 5,000 people lost their lives. It was one of the worst maritime disasters in British history and news of the sinking was initially supressed in Britain. Alex Last spoke to 99-year-old Ernest Beesley, a sapper in the Royal Engineers, who is among the last survivors of the Lancastria. Photo: The Lancastria after being hit by German bombers off the coast of France in 1940 (Lancastria Association of Scotland)

Hundreds of thousands of Algeria's indigenous people, the Berbers, marched to the capital Algiers in June 2001 for a massive demonstration demanding more rights. In particular, they wanted official recognition for the Berber language, Tamazight. Zeinab Dabaa has spoken to Berber activist Rasheed Alwash about the demonstration.

Photo: Berber youths, who walked from their village in Kabylia region to take part in the rally in the capital Algiers. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

In June 1982 an attempt to amend the US constitution to guarantee equal rights for men and women was defeated. Despite two decades of women's liberation activism and a huge groundswell of political support, the amendment was prevented from going through. The defeat was in large part down to one woman, staunch Republican and leading conservative, Phyllis Schlafly. Claire Bowes has been listening to archive recordings of Mrs Schlafly, held by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential library.

PHOTO: American political activist Phyllis Schlafly smiles from behind a pair of podium mounted microphones, 1982. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In June 1997 a huge eruption destroyed the airport on the Caribbean island of Montserrat and engulfed its main town, Plymouth, in volcanic ash. 19 people were killed but most of the population had already fled the area. In 2011 Mark Sandell heard from local broadcaster Rose Willock about the devastation.

Photo: Houses covered in ash in June 1997. Credit: Dominique Chomereau-Lamotte/AFP/Getty Images

In 1967 East Jerusalem was under the control of Jordan and Captain Nabih El Suhaimat was stationed there. In early June he and his soldiers fought in vain against Israeli paratroopers. But they lost control of the Old City and he was forced to flee Jerusalem in disguise. He has spoken to Zeinab Dabaa about the Six Day War.

Photo: Nabih El Suhaimat in his Jordanian Army Uniform. Credit: Nabih El Suhaimat.

On 7 June 1967, Israel captured the whole of Jerusalem during the Six Day War, including its most holy site, the Temple Mount that is revered by both Jews and Muslims. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Arik Achmon, one of the first Israeli paratroopers to enter the old city that day and reach the Western Wall.

(Photo: Israeli photographer David Rubinger's iconic photograph of Israeli soldiers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's old city following its capture by Israel. Credit: David Rubinger/AFP/Getty Images)

Senator Robert Kennedy died in the early hours of June 6th 1968. He had been shot the day before in a Los Angeles hotel as he prepared to celebrate winning the California primary in the race to become the Democratic Party's nominee for President. His labour adviser Paul Schrade, who was standing next to him, was also injured in the attack. He spoke to Ashley Byrne about Robert Kennedy the man, and about the events surrounding his death.

Photo: Robert Kennedy speaking in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly before the shooting took place. Copyright: BBC.

The story of a Pakistani boy, Iqbal Masih, who was forced into bonded labour as a carpet weaver at the age of four. He later escaped and began speaking out against child labour. He became an international campaigner for the rights of children, speaking at schools in the US and Europe. Iqbal was tragically killed in 1995 at the age of 12. Farhana Haider has been talking to Ehsan Ullah Khan, whose organisation helped free Iqbal.

Photo: Ehsan Ullah Khan and Iqbal Masih in Sweden, 1995. (Credit: Ehsan Ullah Khan)

On June 3rd 1972 Sally Priesand became the first woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the USA. However it still took her another nine years to secure a full-time post in a synagogue. She spoke to Zeinab Dabaa about overcoming the traditional gender barriers in her ground-breaking career.

Photo: Sally Priesand in 1972 (With thanks to the American Jewish Archive)

On May 31st 1986 a small group of musicians staged the first charity rock concert ever held in the USSR. It was organised in less than two weeks to raise money for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. The nuclear reactor accident had happened just a month before in Ukraine. Some of the artists who played at the concert had been previously banned by the Soviet authorities, so the concert was a social revolution, as organiser - Artemy Troitsky explains to Rebecca Kesby.

(PHOTO Credit TASS: Soviet pop star Alla Pugacheva performs at a concert for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster)

In June 1972 one of Hitchcock's most controversial movie was released. It was his penultimate film and provoked some critics to accuse him of revelling in scenes of violence against women. Vincent Dowd speaks to actor Barbara Leigh-Hunt about working with the renowned director and about her role as the female victim in Frenzy.

(Photo: Alfred Hitchcock on location of the film "Frenzy" in Covent Garden, London, 1971. Credit: Jack Kay/Daily Express/Getty Images)

In 1968 Dr Bindeshwar Pathak began his mission to improve toilet facilities for the poorest people of India. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, he developed an affordable, ecological twin-pit latrine system that has helped millions of people in India and around the world to avoid potentially fatal diseases. He explained to Rebecca Kesby, why sanitation became his life's passion.

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In 1979, Canadians launched a revolutionary private sponsorship scheme to aid thousands of Indochinese refugees fleeing Vietnam. Under the scheme, groups of ordinary Canadians could pay for a refugee to be resettled in Canada. Thousands of Canadians took part, and supported the resettlement of 34,000 refugees in a year. Alex Last speaks to Professor Howard Adelman who set up Operation Lifeline - the first private sponsorship campaign in Canada. Photo: A Vietnamese boat crowded with refugees runs aground on the Malaysian coast. 1979 (BBC)

In May 1998 Pakistan courted international criticism after it responded to an Indian nuclear test, with an explosion of its own. In 2011 Rob Walker spoke to Dr Samar Mubarakmand who organised the test on the Pakistani side.

Photo: Pakistan nuclear scientist Dr. Samar Mubarakmand (right) alongside Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed and Minister of Information Mushahid Hussain, in front of the hill under which Pakistan conducted its nuclear tests in May 1998 (SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images)

In May 1975 one of Latin America's leading young poets was shot dead in El Salvador by members of his own rebel group. Roque Dalton was a prolific writer, who spent years in exile before returning to his native El Salvador to join the guerrillas fighting to overthrow the military regime. Dalton was killed along with another rebel, accused of spying for the Americans. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to one of the poet's sons, Juan Jose, about his father's short life and untimely death.

Photo: Roque Dalton receiving the Casa de las Américas prize for poetry in 1969.

In May 1970 Ireland's banks were forced to close for 6 months when workers went on strike. But in an age before ATMs and debit cards the Irish found a way of getting hold of their money - at the pub.

Photo:Three glasses of Guinness on a bar in Downings, Co. Donegal, Ireland (BBC)

In 1942, the fascist government of Romania deported 25,000 of its Roma citizens to the former Soviet territory of Transdniestria. Half of them died of hunger and disease. Dina Newman spoke to one Roma Gypsy man who was five years old when he was sent to Transdniestria with his family.

Photo: Nomadic Roma in Bucharest, Romania, outside their tent. Circa 1930. (General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Teresa Teng was a Taiwanese singer who gained popularity with her soft-focus image and romantic songs. But when her music reached mainland communist China, she became a superstar - and part of a propaganda battle between Taiwan and the mainland. Lucy Burns has been speaking to Teresa's brother Frank Teng about her life and early death. Image copyright: Teresa Teng Foundation

In June 2009 after the presidential elections in Iran, millions took to the streets to dispute Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory. A young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, became a symbol of the protest movement after she was shot dead at a demonstration in Tehran. Her death was captured on a mobile phone and uploaded on to the internet. That footage was seen around the world within hours. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Arash Hejazi who tried to save Neda's life as she bled on the streets.

(Photo: Supporters of then-defeated Iranian presidential candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, attend a rally in Tehran on June 18th 2009. Credit: Reuters)

A Broadway musical has led to renewed interest in the story behind the 18th century American politician. He fought alongside George Washington for independence from British rule, and was key to the formation of the American financial system.

Photo: Alexander Hamilton on the US ten Dollar bill. Credit: KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images.

In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. The case was a turning point in the long battle for civil rights in America. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Cheryl Brown Henderson, the youngest daughter of Oliver Brown, who was the named plaintiff in the class action against the local board of education.

(Photo African American student Linda Brown, Cheryl Brown Henderson's eldest sister (front, C) sitting in her segregated classroom.Credit: GettyArchive)

New York housewife, Jean Nidetch, started by simply talking to her friends about how to lose weight. They weighed each other and swapped dietary advice, but soon Weight Watchers had turned into a franchise. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to Lauren Cohen who joined in the 1960s and eventually became a 'trainer' leading her own Weight Watchers group.

Photo: Jean Nidetch in 1969. Credit Alamy.

In May 1972, the controversial American populist politician, George Wallace, was shot while running for President of the United States. The governor of Alabama had made his name as a supporter of segregation during the civil rights era. Simon Watts talks to his son, George Wallace Junior, author of "Governor George Wallace - The Man You Never Knew"

PHOTO: Governor George Wallace, in 1963, rejecting a federal government order to allow black students into the University of Alabama (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In May 1981, documents surfaced that eventually led to the trial of the most senior French official to be convicted of war crimes during the German occupation of France in the Second World War. Former government minister, Maurice Papon, who was considered the most distinguished civil servant of his generation, went on trial twenty years ago for helping the Nazis to deport French Jews. He was sentenced to ten years in jail. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to American academic Stephanie Hare who did a series of interviews with Maurice Papon after his release.

Picture: Maurice Papon in October 1997, shortly after his trial for war crimes opened. (Credit: Francois Guillot/AFP/Getty Images)

In May 1976, new unknown Californian wines beat top French wines in a blind wine tasting in Paris. The result shocked the wine world, it transformed the reputation of Californian wine, and horrified the French wine industry. We hear from Steven Spurrier, the man who organised the wine tasting.

Photo: A man smells wine in a wineglass. (Getty Images)

In 1977 a US government body first warned Americans that the food they were eating represented as great a threat to their health as smoking. A Senate Select Committee investigating the links between diet and killer diseases, such as Diabetes and Stroke, reported back that Americans should cut back on red meat, eggs,whole milk and refined sugar. Claire Bowes has been speaking to Nick Mottern whose idea it was to launch a set of 6 dietary goals for the United States.

In 1973, the most successful TV spy series ever to be broadcast in the USSR, went on air. The central character was a Soviet secret agent in Nazi Germany, Max Otto von Stierlitz. Dina Newman speaks to actor Eleonora Shashkova who played Stierlitz's wife. Photo: the script-writer Julian Semenov (l) and actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who played Stierlitz (r), on set in Moscow in 1972. Credit: courtesy of Julian Semenov Foundation.

In May 1980 China allowed capitalist activity for the first time since the Communist Revolution, in four designated cities known as the Special Economic Zones. The most successful was Shenzhen, which grew from a mainly rural area specialising in pigs and lychees to one of China's biggest cities.

Lucy Burns speaks to Yong Ya, a musician who has lived in Shenzhen since the 1980s, and to ethnographer Mary Ann O'Donnell.

IMAGE: Pedestrians and cars stream by a giant poster of Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen, the first of China's special economic zones. TOMMY CHENG/AFP/Getty Images

Father and son, Arpad and Giorgio Fischer, were the Italian cosmetic surgeons who spent years developing the modern technique of liposuction, which involves sucking out fat from under the skin. Ashley Byrne has spoken to Giorgio Fischer about how they perfected their invention. Photo: A doctor performs a liposuction at a hospital in Shanghai, China. Credit: AFP /LIU Jin

In May 1976 the German left-wing extremist Ulrike Meinhof killed herself in prison. She and Andreas Baader had led a terror campaign against the West German state in the early 1970s. Journalist Stefan Aust knew her well - he talks to Witness.

Photo:A police photo of German left-wing terrorist Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof Group, circa 1972. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In the Spring of 1917, many French army units mutinied after enduring years of slaughter and appalling conditions during World War One. Much of the French army on the Western Front was affected. Hear first-hand accounts of the mutiny from the BBC archive. Photo: French soldiers attack from their trench during the Verdun battle, eastern France in 1916 (ARCHIVES/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1992, shortly after the collapse of the USSR, a civil war erupted in Tajikistan, a Central Asian country bordering Afghanistan. Over 30,000 people lost their lives during the five years of fighting. Dina Newman speaks to a villager whose family got caught up in the Islamic opposition. Photo: an opposition supporter holds his self-made weapon as he listens to Islamic leaders in central Dushanbe, on 7th May 1992; credit AFP/Getty Images.

In May 1947, the legendary photographic co-operative Magnum Photos was set up by a group of famous photographers, including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson whose work would inspire generations of photographers. Members of Magnum would go on to produce many of the most iconic images of the 20th and 21st centuries. Louise Hidalgo talks to Jinx Rodger, widow of one of the founders, George Rodger, and to Inge Bondi, who knew them all.

Photograph: US troops’ first assault on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings, Normandy, France. June 6, 1944. (Credit: International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos. With thanks to Magnum Photos)

In April 1977 a group of women in Argentina held the first ever public demonstration to demand the release of thousands of opponents of the military regime. It was the start of a long campaign by the women, who became known as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Mike Lanchin has been hearing from ninety-two year-old Mirta Baravalle who has spent decades searching for her missing daughter and son-in-law, and for the grandchild she has never met.

(Photo: Mirta Baravalle, with the black-and-white photograph of her daughter, Ana Maria)

During the Bosnian war of the early 1990's, thousands of women were raped. Some were kept in concentration camps and repeatedly assaulted. One survivor of Omarska camp, Nusreta Sivac tells Rebecca Kesby her story. As a former judge, she was determined to try to get some justice for the victims of that war, her testimony helped make rape an internationally recognised war crime.

(PHOTO: Bosnian Muslim women protest in Sarajevo for justice for rape and other war crimes. Getty Images.)

On April 26th 2005, Syrian forces finally pulled out of Lebanon, after being stationed there for almost 30 years. The withdrawal came after a series of massive popular protests, and international criticism following the assassination of a popular Lebanese politician - Rafik Hariri. Zeinab Dabaa has been speaking to two Lebanese people with very different opinions about the Syrian presence in their country.

Photo: Syrian Army trucks carrying tanks cross the Lebanese-Syrian border crossing point of Masnaa in April 2005. Credit: AFP/Getty Images

The man who changed the way people thought about mental illness. RD Laing became famous in the 1960s for rejecting traditional psychiatric drug treatments in favour of talking to patients.

Photo: 3rd February 1967: British psychiatrist R D Laing attends a discussion on the legalisation of marijuana. (Photo by Stan Meagher/Express/Getty Images)

In the 1980s, Bulgaria's communist regime launched a brutal policy of forced assimilation against the country's ethnic Turkish minority. People's names were forcibly changed to sound more Slavic, the Turkish language was banned, cultural and religious practices outlawed. In 1989, Bulgaria's government issued passports to Bulgarian Turks, and hundreds of thousands fled the country to neighbouring Turkey. We hear the account of one family caught up in the policy the Bulgarian government called "The Revival Process". Photo: Bulgarian Turks joining a mass exodus to Turkey in 1989 (BBC)

In post-WW2 Japan, musician Shinichi Suzuki developed a new method of teaching the violin - which would spread around the world. Brothers Hideya and Toshiya Taida were two of the first students to graduate from the Suzuki Method.

IMAGE: Children of the Suzuki Method music school play the violin at founder Shinichi Suzuki's memorial concert in Tokyo on March 28, 2008. KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

In April 1990 the huge space telescope was launched into orbit above the earth. But when it began sending images back to Nasa - they were out of focus. In 2010 Lucy Williamson spoke to Mike Weiss, the Nasa engineer in charge of fixing it.

(Photo: The Hubble Space Telescope. Credit Nasa)

In April 1972 the famous silent movie star set foot in the USA for the first time in two decades. He had left with his family in the 1950s, amid scandals over his personal life and left-wing views. The family settled in Switzerland. His son, Eugene Chaplin, speaks to Mike Lanchin about his father, and recalls Chaplin's love-hate relationship with America.

(Photo: Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp in the 1925 film, The Gold Rush. Credit: Getty Images)

In April 1966 thousands of artists and performers from all over Africa descended on the Senegalese capital, Dakar, for the first World Festival of Black Arts. Ibrahim el-Salahi and Elimo Njau are two leading African artists who took part in that first festival. They have been speaking to Ashley Byrne.

Photo: Poster from the first World Festival of Black Arts.

In April 2001 the Peruvian Air Force mistakenly shot down a small passenger plane as it flew over the Amazon jungle. The Peruvians believed the aircraft was carrying drugs. Onboard was a group of American missionaries. Mike Lanchin spoke to Jim Bowers, who survived the crash, but whose wife and baby daughter were killed.

Photo: The missionary plane shot down by the Peruvian Air Force lies in shallow waters of the Amazon River. (Photo by Newsmakers)

NTV, the only nationwide independent TV channel in Russia, was taken over in April 2001. It lost its independence despite a vigorous protest campaign mounted by its staff. Dina Newman speaks to the head of NTV at the time, Yevgeny Kiselev. Photo: Life size puppets of Russian political leaders including president Putin, on the set of NTV's popular satirical television show "Puppets"; June 29, 2000. Credit: Oleg Nikishin/Newsmakers/Getty

In April 1977, a group of disabled activists occupied a government building in San Francisco for nearly a month. The protesters were demanding the signing of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, protecting disabled people from discrimination - it would be a breakthrough for the disability rights movement. Judith Heumann was one of the leaders of the sit-in.

Image copyright: Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

In April 1969 Sikh bus drivers and conductors in the northern English town of Wolverhampton won the right to wear a turban on duty after a two year campaign. One of the key tenents of the Sikh religion is that men must grow a beard and long hair secured by a comb and covered by a turban. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Avtar Singh Azad who led the campaign in the fight for Sikh religious rights.

Photo Sikh bus driver 1972. Credit BBC

Tens of thousands of Polish officers were secretly executed in the USSR during World War 2. The German occupying forces reported the first mass grave, in the village of Katyn in 1943, but Moscow only admitted to the killings in 1990. Dina Newman speaks to the son of one of the murdered officers, Waclaw Gasiorowski. Photo: Gasiorowski family in Warsaw in 1936. Credit: family archive.

In the 1970s up to half a million people were killed during the brutal campaign of repression launched by Ethiopia's military regime called the Derg. Hear from one survivor who was imprisoned and tortured.

Photo: Human remains. Copyright: BBC.

Israa Abd El Fattah was one of the first Egyptian activists to use social media to help organise anti-government demonstrations. In April 2008 she tried to organise a general strike in protest at low wages, and rising prices. She was given the nickname "Facebook Girl". She says the experience of using Facebook to spread the word helped activists learn how to mobilise people before the Egyptian Uprising in the spring of 2011.

Photo: Israa Abd El Fattah in her office in Cairo in 2011. Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

America declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917, tipping the balance in favour of Britain, France and their Allies. The USA had resisted getting embroiled in the war in Europe for almost three years, but after the declaration of war, it sent troops to fight on the Western Front in France and Belgium.

Photo: Postcard of Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing (Centre - R), the US Army General who led the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, being welcomed in Boulogne, northern France, by French General Peltier . Credit: AFP PHOTO / Historial de Péronne

In the mid-80s, the world was terrified by HIV Aids caused by a lack of understanding and misinformation. In April 1987, Princess Diana opened the UK's first purpose built HIV Aids unit at London Middlesex Hospital that exclusively cared for patients infected with the virus. In front of the world's media, without wearing gloves, Princess Diana shook the hand of a man suffering with the illness. This gesture publicly challenged the notion that HIV Aids was passed from person to person by touch. John O'Reilly was a nurse on the ward at the time of the Princess of Wales' visit. He spoke to Farhana Haider about the landmark moment in the fight against HIV Aids.

(Photo: Princess Diana with an AIDS patient at the Middlesex Hospital April 1987. Credit REX/Shutterstock)

In April 1993, the Azerbaijani town of Kalbajar fell to ethnic Armenian separatists during the war over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Photojournalist Khalid Asgarov tells Louise Hidalgo how he and his father were among a column of refugees who fled to safety on a two-day trek over the mountains.

Picture: A refugee woman from Kalbajar comforts two of her children after escaping over the mountains in Azerbaijan, 10th April 1993. (Credit: Dima Korotayev/AFP/Getty Images)

In April 1982 the film star Jane Fonda launched her first workout video - encouraging millions of women to "go for the burn". Hear how the idea of home workouts took off, and why she felt such a compulsion to exercise.

Photo: Jane Fonda on the red carpet for the Annual Academy Awards 2013. Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

In March 2002 a massive ice shelf with a surface area of more than 3,200 square kilometres collapsed into the ocean around western Antarctica. The Larsen B ice shelf had existed for more than 10,000 years, but it split apart in a period of just 35 days. Mike Lanchin hears from the leading glaciologist Pedro Svarka who saw it happen.

Photo: Satellite images showing the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in early 2002 (Science Photo Library)

In March 1997 the BBC launched one of the most successful children's TV programmes ever. Teletubbies was aimed at toddlers and became controversial for its use of playful language - the BBC fielded complaints from parents who feared that the 'gibberish' language used would stop their children from learning how to speak properly.

Claire Bowes speaks to original cast member Pui Lee Fan, who played red Teletubby Po.

PHOTO: courtesy of DHX media

In 1979, an outbreak of anthrax poisoning caused dozens of deaths in the Soviet Union. Geneticist and molecular biologist Professor Matthew Meselson and his team accessed the area years later to determine what had happened. He told Rachael Gillman about his experience.

Photo: Anthrax Vial Credit: Getty Images

In 1994, biotech company Calgene brought the world's first genetically modified food to supermarket shelves.

The Flavr Savr tomato kept fresh for 30 days and could be shipped long distances without going off.

Yet the world was wary of this new food, and it took 10 years and $100m of investment to get it to market.

In 2017, Calgene's then-CEO Roger Salquist told Claire Bowes about his mission to revolutionise the world's food.

(Photo: Roger Salquist with a crop of Flavr Savrs. Credit: Richard Salquist)

On March 24 1980, as El Salvador edged towards civil war, a right-wing death squad shot dead the head of the Roman Catholic church. Archbishop Oscar Romero was killed by a single bullet as he said mass at the altar in San Salvador. Mike Lanchin hears from local journalist, Milagro Granados, who was there at the moment of the assassination.

(Photo: A man cleans a mural of former Archbishop Romero in Panchimalco, El Salvador. Credit: Marvin RECINOS/AFP/Getty Images)

On March 25th 1975, the King of Saudi Arabia was assassinated, shot at point-blank range by one of his nephews. King Faisal's oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani was standing beside the king when the shots were fired. His daughter, the academic and author Dr Mai Yamani, talks to Louise Hidalgo about the impact of his death on her father and on Saudi Arabia.

Picture: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, 1967 (Credit: Pierre Manevy/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In 1957, the Russian-born American philosopher, Ayn Rand, published Atlas Shrugged, one of the most politically influential American novels of the 20th Century. The best-seller imagines a dystopia in which all wealth-creators go on strike causing the global economy to collapse. Atlas Shrugged made Ayn Rand a hero for free-market economists and political libertarians. Simon Watts talks to Leonard Peikoff, one of Ayn Rand's earliest followers.

(Photo: Ayn Rand in New York in 1962. Credit: AP)

In 1949, Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of Estonians to Siberia. They included rich peasants and "nationalists" and their families, as well as other social groups who were viewed as a threat to communist rule. Rita Metsis was one of the child deportees. She shares her story with Dina Newman. Photo: Rita (r) and her twin sister Tiia (l) with their parents in 1940. Courtesy of the family.

During World War One, submarines began to be used widely for the first time. German submarines called U-boats tried to cut off Britain’s sea routes to starve it into submission. Alex Last presents archive recordings of the German and British submariners who risked their lives fighting in the new undersea weapon 100 years ago.

Photo: Two German submarines, the U35 and U42, surface off the Mediterranean coast. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

In March 1990 the left-wing politician and presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo, was shot dead at Bogota's international airport. He was leader of the Patriotic Union, a party formed by members of the FARC guerrillas and the Colombian communist party. Jaramillo was among several thousand of its members killed by right-wing paramilitaries with close links to the country's drug cartels. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to the murdered politician's widow, Mariela Barragán, who was with him the day he died.

Photo: Mariela Barragán and Bernardo Jaramillo (courtesy of the family)

In March 2001 thousands of sex workers gathered in the Indian city of Kolkata for a festival organised to improve their rights and counter the stigma they faced. Sex worker groups across the world now celebrate this day in March as an annual event. Farhana Haider has been speaking to a former prostitute, Bharati Dey, who took part in the gathering.

Photo: Sex workers from around the world relax during the Sex Workers' Freedom Festival in Kolkata 2012. Credit: DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images

On March 15th 1939, the German army occupied Czechoslovakia. Witness hears the story of one young boy who watched the German troops march into Prague and who later escaped on the Kindertransport. These were trains that brought thousands of mostly Jewish children out of Austria, Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia, without their parents, to safety in Britain. That young boy went on to become a British MP and today sits in Britain's House of Lords; Alf Dubs tells Louise Hidalgo his story.

Picture: German troops enter the centre of Prague on 15th March 1939; the German leader Adolf Hitler visited the city the next day. (Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

A hundred years ago, photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii travelled around the Russian Empire taking the first colour photographs of a world that was about to be swept away by the Bolshevik Revolution. Using a unique method of colour photography, which he had developed, he managed to capture images previously never seen. Dina Newman speaks to Michel Soussaline, Prokudin-Gorskii's grandson. Photo: Peasant Girls, 1909. Credit: Library of Congress; Famille Procoudine-Gorsky.

In March 1917 Tsar Nicholas II abdicated ending centuries of autocratic royal rule in Russia. The revolution started with demonstrations in the capital Petrograd (St. Petersburg) against the First World War and shortages of food. Troops joined the protestors in the streets, A Provisional Government was set up to replace Tsarist rule but it had to share power with a new Council of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, called the Petrograd Soviet. Hear eyewitness accounts of the revolution from the BBC radio archive.

Photo: 12th March 1917: Barricades across a street in St Petersburg, as a red flag floats above the cannons, during the Russian Revolution. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In the early days of Aids, a misunderstanding made one man the face of the epidemic. French-Canadian air steward Gaetan Dugas developed the symptoms of HIV/Aids in the early 1980s, but a misreading of scientific data led to him being identified as "Patient Zero", giving the mistaken impression he was responsible for the spread of the disease.

Lucy Burns speaks to researcher William Darrow, who worked on the epidemic, and to Gaetan Dugas' friend Rand Gaynor.

Photo: Gaetan Dugas. Credit: Rand Gaynor)

In March 1977 a group of American Muslims took over a hundred people hostage in Washington. The siege ended after ambassadors from three Islamic countries helped with the negotiations. Simon Watts has been speaking to Paul Green, one of the hostages who was held for almost 40 hours.

PHOTO: Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, the leader of the hostage-takers, arriving for a court hearing in Washington with his wives (AP)

Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the world's most influential female artists - in 2014, her painting "Jimson Weed" sold for the highest price ever paid for a work by a woman. Famous for her vivid oil paintings of flowers, landscapes and animal skulls, she lived and worked in the wild dry canyons and deserts of New Mexico in the southern United States. Lucy Burns speaks to her former assistant Agapita Judy Lopez.

PICTURE: Journalists view 'Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1' by Georgia O'Keeffe at Tate Modern on July 4, 2016 in London, England. (Rob Stothard/Getty Images)

In the 1970s and 80s a deadly cocktail of toxic factory fumes and car pollution turned Mexico City into the world’s most polluted city. In response, the authorities came up with an ambitious solution: curb the use of each of the city’s two million cars for one day a week, the first time any country had tried such a bold plan. Ramon Ojeda Mestre is an environmentalist who was behind the initiative, introduced in November 1989. He tells Mike Lanchin about overcoming fierce opposition to the plan, and how some critics even predicted riots from irate motorists.

(Photo credit: Alamy)

On 7 March 2005 a group of women held an unprecedented rally outside the Kuwaiti parliament. They were trying to force the all-male body to change the electoral law. Two months later they succeeded. Zeinab Dabaa has been hearing from Rola Dashti, one of the organisers of the protest, who later became one of the first women to be elected to her country's legislature.

(Photo: Kuwaiti candidates for the 2006 parliamentary election, Aisha al-Rashid (R) and Rola Dashti (C), the first ever women to be allowed to stand for office Credit: Yasser al-Zayya/AFP/Getty Images)

During World War One, two British nurses set up a first aid station just a few hundred metres behind the trenches of the Western Front. Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker became known as “the Madonnas of Pervyse”. Mairi Chisholm spoke to the BBC in 1977.

(Photo: Mairi Chisholm (left) and Elsie Knocker. courtesy of Dr Diane Atkinson, author of Elsie and Mairi Go To War)

In 1998 someone cut the head off the most famous statue in Denmark. Inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, it's a bronze figure of a girl sitting on a rock in Copenhagen harbour. After a police search to find the head, it was Peter Jensen's job to reattach it to the mermaid's body.

Photo: The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour. Credit: Reuters/Bob Strong.

On March 4th 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt became America's First Lady, a role she transformed during the 12 years that her husband Franklin D Roosevelt was president. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to her granddaughter and namesake, Eleanor Roosevelt Seagraves, who with her young brother lived for a while with her grandparents in the White House.

Photograph: Eleanor Roosevelt at a United Nations conference in New York in 1946. She was appointed as a representative to the UN following her husband's death in office in 1945. (Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

In 1951 cells taken from an African American woman suffering from cancer were found to be unique because they carried on reproducing endlessly in the laboratory. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951. Cultures from her cells have since been used to provide medical breakthroughs but as Farhana Haider reports, Henrietta Lacks was never asked if her cells could be used in medical research.

(Photo: Henrietta Lacks. Copyright: Lacks Family)

In March 1997 Mother Teresa retired from her charity work in India just 6 months before she died. She had devoted her life to working in Kolkata's poorest slums and in 2016, Pope Francis declared her "Saint Teresa of Calcutta". Mari Marcel Thekaekara lived around the corner from Mother Teresa's orphanage and volunteered there as a child, she told Rebecca Kesby about that experience, her own faith, and how she felt conflicted about Mother Teresa’s methods.

(PHOTO: AP Mother Teresa holds a child in 1978)

In 1997 obesity was first recognised as a global problem when the World Health Organisation first agreed to discuss the issue. Researchers had discovered startling information about an increase in the number of overweight people in the developing world. The consultation was led by a group calling itself the International Obesity Task Force which was led by Professor Philip James. He's been telling Claire Bowes how he had to persuade the WHO that areas of the world struggling with malnutrition were now also suffering from obesity.

PHOTO: BBC Copyright.

The story of the 1992 film which launched Nigeria's hugely successful movie industry known as Nollywood. The film was called "Living in Bondage". We speak to one of the stars of the film, Kanayo O. Kanayo. Photo: Kanayo O. Kanayo (Kanayo)

Valya Chervenyashka was tortured in a Libyan jail and accused of infecting hundreds of children with HIV in hospital. She spent eight years in prison and was sentenced to death three times. She tells her story to Dina Newman. Photo: Nurses Valya Chervenyashka (front) and Snezhana Dimitrova on trial at the High Court in Tripoli, August 2006. Credit: AFP/Getty Images.

In the 1930s, a group of German-American Nazi sympathisers known as the German American Bund held rallies and summer camps across the US. In Feburary 1939, they held a meeting for 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Lucy Burns speaks to Skip Eernisse, who remembers the Bund summer camp Camp Hindenburg in his home town of Grafton, Wisconsin. We also hear from Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German American Bund.

(Photo: German-American Nazi sympathisers rally in the US. Credit: Library of Congress)

In February 1990 half of the original manuscript of one of America's best loved books, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, was found in an attic in Hollywood. The handwritten document had laid undiscovered for a century. Rachael Gillman has been speaking to Pam Lindholm, whose sister made the discovery.

In February 2002 the former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, went on trial for war crimes committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The man once known as the 'butcher of the Balkans' would die in prison before the trial had concluded. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to two lawyers, Zdenko Tomanovic and Steven Kay QC, who worked on his defence.

Photo: Slobodan Milosevic in the courtroom at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, The Netherlands, February 2002. (PAUL VREEKER/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1995, a Christian campaign started in America to encourage teenagers to promise not to have sex before marriage. It was known as the Silver Ring Thing - and it soon caught on across the country. Lucy Burns has been speaking to its founder, Denny Pattyn.

(Photo: A member of the Silver Ring Thing arrives at Holy Trinity Church in Claygate, England, 2004. Credit: Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

In 2006, a Ugandan newspaper began printing the names of professionals believed to be gay. It foreshadowed a range of strict laws prohibiting homosexuality, and a sharp increase in violent homophobic attacks on LGBT people. One prominent Ugandan doctor tells Rebecca Kesby how he battled homophobia at home before finding love with a Zimbabwean man and living happily in South Africa.

(Photo: Ugandan men hold a rainbow flag reading "Join hands to end LGBTI (Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Intersex - called Kuchu in Uganda) genocide" as they celebrate on August 9, 2014 during the annual gay pride in Entebbe, Uganda. Getty Images)

In May 1974, Italians defied the Catholic Church and overwhelmingly backed divorce in a referendum. The vote is now seen as a watershed in modern Italian history. Alice Gioia talks to two women involved in the campaign.

PHOTO: A rally in support of divorce in Italy (Getty Images)

In 1998, Rabbi Yaacov Deyo and his students came up with a new way for single people to meet each other - they called it "speed dating". It started as a programme for Jewish singles in Los Angeles, but soon spread all over the world.

(Photo: Men and women take part in an evening of silent speed dating in a bar in east London on 23rd September 2015. Credit: Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images)

When Giovanni Vigliotto went on trial for fraud and bigamy in the USA, he claimed he'd married more than a hundred women. Dave Stoller was the Arizona prosecutor who brought him to trial. He's been telling Ashley Byrne the story of the man who would first charm women, then marry them, then cheat them out of their savings and possessions.

Photo: a man wearing two wedding rings. Credit: Alamy.

Mayors across America have vowed to resist efforts by President Trump to crack down on so-called Sanctuary Cities, which offer refuge to illegal immigrants. Simon Watts looks at the history of one of the most prominent Sanctuary Cities - San Francisco.

(Photo: Supporters of Sanctuary Cities demonstrating in San Francisco, January 2017. Credit: AP)

In February 1941, a ship carrying nearly 30,000 cases of whisky was wrecked off the Scottish island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. The islanders began to salvage the bottles from the wreck. Lucy Burns presents material from the BBC archives about the incident that later became the inspiration for the film Whisky Galore.

(Photo: An assortment of bottled whisky is displayed at Glenkinchie distillery, 2008, in Edinburgh, Scotland)

The story of a 1980s Kenyan pop song which became an unlikely global hit. The song, Jambo Bwana was recorded by the veteran Kenyan band, Them Mushrooms, and first proved to be a huge hit amongst tourists on the Kenyan coast. We hear from members of Them Mushrooms, Teddy Kalanda Harrison, and his brother Billy Sarro Harrison, who recorded the song in February 1980 Photo: Teddy Kalanda Harrison and the Kenyan band Them Mushrooms presented with their platinum record for Jambo Bwana (Teddy Kalanda Harrison)

On February the 20th 1991, the captive bull orca, Tilikum, drowned his trainer, Keltie Byrne at Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia, Canada. It was the first recorded killing of a human by an orca whale. 19 years later - almost to the day - Tilikum killed another trainer, Dawn Brancheau. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to Corinne Cowell, an eye witness to the first killing, and biologist Eric Walters, the whale trainer who warned the authorities 2 years before that keeping orcas in captivity could be fatal.

(PHOTO: SeaWorld orca Tilikum performs at SeaWorld Orlando in Florida, in 2009. REUTERS)

In 1951 the young British scientist began one of the key scientific investigations of the century. Rosalind Franklin produced an x-ray photograph that helped show the structure of DNA, the molecule that holds the genetic code that underpins all life. The discovery was integral to the transformation of modern medicine and has been described as one of the greatest scientific achievements ever. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Rosalind Franklin's younger sister Jenifer Glynn.

Photo: Dr Rosalind Franklin. Credit: Science Photo Library.

In early 1995 Peru and Ecuador went to war over a strip of land that both claimed to be theirs. The "Cenepa War" was the last time that two armies from Latin America fought each other. As many as 500 people were thought to have died in the brief conflict. Mike Lanchin has been hearing from (retired) Lt. Col. Juan Alberto Pinto Rosas, who led his troops in the cross-border fighting.

Photo: Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori poses with soldiers in the Cenepa River at the border with Ecuador. (AFP/Getty Images)

On February 2nd 1990, the South African president FW de Klerk surprised the world by announcing in parliament that he was dismantling apartheid - the system of institutionalised racial segregation which had denied black South Africans their basic rights for forty years, including the right to vote. Louise Hidalgo has been talking to Adriaan Vlok, FW de Klerk's law and order minister, about that day and about coming to terms with the crimes committed in apartheid's name.

Picture: Anti-apartheid protestors demonstrate in Cape Town on the same day that President de Klerk announced the lifting of the ban on the ANC and the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela (Credit: RASHID LOMBARD/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1993, the United States launched a disastrous raid against the forces of the Somali warlord General Mohamed Farah Aideed. During the operation, two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, 18 American troops were killed, dozens more were injured. Somali casualties were estimated to be in the hundreds. The disaster would have a major impact on US foreign policy in Africa and was made famous by the film Black Hawk Down. We hear a Somali account of the operation, and from one of the American helicopter pilots who was shot down during the raid. (Image: UH60 Blackhawk US Army Gunship patrolling Mogadishu. Credit: AP)

In January 1997 Norwegian polar explorer Borge Ousland became the first person to cross Antarctica alone. It took him more than two months to ski across the frozen territory. He spoke to Louise Hidalgo about the highs and lows of his dramatic journey.

(Photo Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In 1988 a woman in India accused the Director General of Police in Punjab, KPS Gill, of sexual harassment. It was the first case of its kind to reach court and the country was forced to confront the taboo. Claire Bowes has been speaking to Rupan Deol Bajaj about the incident she couldn't ignore and why she spent 17 years of her life trying to convict KPS Gill.

Photo: Rupan Deol Bajaj (courtesy of Rupan Deol Bajaj)

In January 1942, the BBC broadcast the first edition of its longest-running radio programme: Desert Island Discs. The idea was simple: persuade a well-known person to imagine they were marooned on a desert island and ask them which eight records they would like to take with them. Simon Watts introduces highlights from over 3,000 interviews with film stars, musicians and public figures.

PHOTO: Long-time Desert Island Discs presenter Roy Plomley (BBC)

On 26 January 1972 four Aboriginal men began a protest for land rights in Canberra, Australia. First they erected a beach umbrella on the grass outside Parliament House and labelled it an 'embassy'. Soon they were joined by other activists with tents. Ashley Byrne has spoken to Gary Foley, an aboriginal activist who took part in the demonstration which lasted until July 1972 when it was broken up by police.

(Photo: Aboriginal demonstrators with flags outside Old Parliament House on Australia Day 2016. Credit:Mick Tsikas/EPA)

One of the best-loved children's stories of all time, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, was first published in January 1964. Roald Dahl's nephew Nicholas Logsdail was one of the few people to read the first draft. He tells Witness what he thought of it and talks about the adventures he and his uncle had together when he was a small boy.

Extracts from audio book ©2014 Roald Dahl & Penguin Books Ltd.

(Photo: Roald Dahl, 1971. Credit: Ronald Dumont/Daily Express/Getty Images)

In January 1977, fascist gunmen killed five people at a left-wing law firm in Atocha Street, Madrid. The murder was a turning-point in Spain's transition to democracy. Simon Watts talks to Alejandro Ruiz-Huerta Carbonell, the last survivor of the killings.

(Photo: A monument to the Atocha Street Lawyers in Madrid. Credit: Getty Images)

Domestic microwave ovens first became widely available in 1967 in the United States. Until then they had mainly been used in restaurants or vending machines. Dr John Osepchuk, an engineer and expert in microwave technology spoke to Cagil Kasapoglu about the innovation.

Photo: A Londoner demonstrates how to use a new vending machine with frozen meals and a microwave oven for heating. Credit: Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images

In January 1974 the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons was launched from a Wisconsin basement. Within years it was being played by millions around the world. Witness speaks to Michael Mornard, one of the first people to play the game.

Photo by Paul Brown/REX/Shutterstock (193168d) Teenagers playing Dungeons and Dragons FIRE, 1991

The epic mini-series about slavery in the USA hit TV screens in January 1977. Based on a novel by Alex Haley it imagined the lives of his ancestors who had been brought to the US from Africa on slave ships. It revolutionised perceptions about African-Americans and their history. Ashley Byrne has spoken to Leslie Uggams who played the character Kizzy in the series.

(Photo: Actors LeVar Burton, Todd Bridges and Robert Reed in Roots. Credit: Alamy)

In the early 1990s, Somalia was consumed by civil war and famine. Millions fled their homes. Many tried to reach neighbouring Kenya in search of survival. In response, the UN set up a refugee camp complex at Dadaab, in a remote part of Eastern Kenya. It became the largest refugee camp in the world. At its height Dadaab was home to 500,000 refugees, most of them Somalis. But the Kenyan government has now announced that it will close down the camp and return the refugees to Somalia. We hear the story of Zamzam Abdi Gelle, a young woman who arrived in Dadaab 25 years ago, after her family was attacked in war torn Somalia. Photo: Dadaab refugee camp in 2011 (BBC)

On 19 January 2007, Hrant Dink, Turkey's most prominent Armenian journalist was shot dead by an ultra-nationalist teenager in front of his office in Istanbul. Dink had founded Turkey's only bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. The murderer confessed to the crime saying he'd killed Dink 'for insulting Turks'. Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran spoke to Cagil Kasapoglu about the day she lost her friend.

Photo: Hrant Dink is pictured on May 19, 2005. (Credit: Burak Kara / Getty Images)

In January 1992 a peace treaty was signed by El Salvador's Marxist FMLN rebels and the US-backed government to end one of the most bitterly fought Cold War conflicts in Latin America. It took two years of UN-brokered negotiations to reach a deal, which saw the FMLN lay down its weapons and become a legal political party. In return, the government agreed to radical reforms of the military and the creation of a new civilian police force. Mike Lanchin hears from a former female guerrilla about her experience of war and peace.

Photo: Two women launch doves during celebrations in San Salvador of the peace accords signed by the government and the guerrillas (FRANCISCO CAMPOS/AFP/Getty Images)

What exactly goes on during the months between the election of a President and their inauguration? Witness looks at past 'transition' periods and hears from Senator Ted Kaufman the man who re-wrote the rules about how the US government handover should take place.

Photo: President Obama with President-elect Trump in the White House. Credit: Getty Images.

In January 1997 the world's most famous woman, Diana Princess of Wales, called for an international ban on landmines. She was visiting Angola where she caught global attention by walking through a live minefield. Paul Heslop from the Halo Trust helped organise the Princess' visit and was with her during her iconic walk. He spoke to Farhana Haider about the impact of Princess Diana's campaign.

Photo: Princess Diana with Paul Heslop in a landmine field in Angola, 15th January 1997. (Credit: Alamy)

In January 1956, members of the Auca tribe in Ecuador attacked and killed five American missionaries. They had made contact with the isolated tribe to try to convert them to Christianity. Mike Lanchin speaks to Steve Saint and Valerie Shepard, children of two of the victims, who later met their fathers' killers.

Photo: Nate Saint and Wao, a member of the Auca tribe, January 1956 (courtesy of Saint family)

In January 2003, the city's governor announced that four men living on death row were to be pardoned. They had given false confessions after being tortured by police. Darrell Cannon, another of the victims, and his lawyer Flint Taylor spoke to Rachael Gillman for Witness.

Photo credit: Tim Boyle

In 1917, British code-breakers exposed a German plot against the United States which helped alter the course of World War One . The Americans had remained neutral during the first three years of war, but by 1917, Germany was planning to restart unrestricted submarine warfare which it feared would trigger America's entry into the war on the Allied side. German foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann, proposed a Mexican attack on the United States. Photo: (L) The Zimmermann telegram in code as sent from Washington to Mexico (R) A portion of the telegram as decrypted by British intelligence.(US National Archives and Record Administration)

In May 1999, a newly elected woman MP for the pro-Islamic Virtue Party in Turkey, Merve Kavakci, appeared in parliament wearing a headscarf. She faced a strong reaction from secular MPs and the Prime Minister at the time. She was booed, shouted at and prevented from taking her oath of office. Merve Kavakci spoke to Cagil Kasapoglu about that day.

Photo: Merve Kavakci in the Turkish parliament. (Credit: Turkish Assembly TV)

Albania was hit by a wave of violent unrest in January 1997 after the collapse of 'pyramid' investment schemes. At least two-thirds of the population had invested in the get-rich-quick schemes. Demonstrators took to the streets calling for the resignation of the Albanian President Sali Berisha. Soon protesters were clashing with armed police. Monica Whitlock speaks to Lorina Naci who was a schoolgirl in Tirana at the time.

(Photo: The Albanian capital Tirana in January 1997. Credit: Associated Press)

In January 1977 an opposition movement began in Czechoslovakia with a call for human rights. More than 200 writers and intellectuals signed the original Charter - many of them were then arrested. One of the leaders of the movement was Vaclav Havel, the playwright who went on to become President after the fall of communism. Louise Hidalgo has spoken to Martin Palouš who was one of the original signatories.

Photo: Vaclav Havel talking about Charter 77 in 1978. Credit: Getty Images.

Vietnamese veteran, Le Van Lang, remembers the war in the Viet Cong's underground tunnel network in South Vietnam. A resident of Cu Chi district, 20 km north of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) he helped construct the tunnels and joined the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The vast tunnel network became a key base and shelter for Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese units during the war, Photo: A Vietnamese soldier in a preserved section of tunnel in the Cu Chi district, 1979 (BBC)