Witness
Summary: History as told by the people who were there. Witness talks to people who lived through moments of history to bring you a personal perspective on world events. Broadcast on weekdays.
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- Artist: BBC World Service
- Copyright: (C) BBC 2015
Podcasts:
After 26 years in jail, the veteran anti-apartheid activist is released.
In October 1984 Margaret Thatcher survived a bomb attack on the hotel where she was staying.
In October 1943, hundreds of Jewish slave labourers staged a revolt in a Nazi death camp.
In 1987 one of Africa's most popular leaders was gunned down in a coup in Burkina Faso
In October 1925 a young black American dancer took Paris by storm.
In October 1964 a group of students helped 57 people escape from communist East Germany via a tunnel under the Berlin Wall.
Almost all the Jews in Denmark escaped the Nazis during WW2 - thanks to a tip off.
The outspoken Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in October 2006.
How a First Lady's struggle with drugs led to the founding of a world famous rehab clinic.
In October 1986, Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel's secret nuclear weapons programme to a British newspaper.
How Australia's refusal to allow more than 400 refugees aboard a freight-ship to land provoked an international stand-off.
Mao declares the formation of the People's Republic of China on October 1st 1949. We hear form an American who helped to plan the revolution in the caves of Yan'an. Sidney Rittenberg remembers what the early days of communist rule in China were like.
In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain tried to negotiate with Hitler over Czechoslovakia.
In September 1953 an American academic published an in-depth study of women's sex lives. The results shocked America.
In 1991 the Croatian town of Vukovar was shelled by the Yugoslav National Army for almost 3 months.
