LanguaTalk

Witness History

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from how the Excel spreadsheet was developed, the creation of cartoon rabbit Miffy and how the sound barrier was broken.We look at the lives of some of the most...

How a billion Indians got a digital ID

9 mins; May 09, 2024

The pioneering eye surgery that led to Lasik

9 mins; May 08, 2024

East Germany's coffee from Vietnam

10 mins; May 07, 2024

Friends: The making of a smash hit

8 mins; May 06, 2024

The Channel Tunnel breakthrough

9 mins; May 03, 2024

Ukraine's 'museum of corruption'

10 mins; May 02, 2024

How to win friends and influence people

10 mins; May 01, 2024

How the Milgram 'obedience' experiment shocked the world

9 mins; April 30, 2024

Finding the victims of Stroessner's Paraguay

9 mins; April 29, 2024

Oliver Tambo returns to South Africa from exile

9 mins; April 26, 2024

Brenda Fassie: Madonna of the townships

10 mins; April 25, 2024

Sarah Baartman's 200-year journey back home

10 mins; April 24, 2024

Soweto uprising: Children who marched against apartheid

9 mins; April 23, 2024

South Africa's referendum on apartheid

9 mins; April 22, 2024

Major Charity Adams and the Six-Triple-Eight

9 mins; April 19, 2024

Deadly Everest avalanche

10 mins; April 18, 2024

West Africa's Ebola virus epidemic

9 mins; April 17, 2024

The friendship train: Connecting India and Bangladesh

9 mins; April 16, 2024

Egypt and the ‘Cairo 52’

8 mins; April 15, 2024

Hiroo Onoda, Japan’s last WW2 soldier to surrender

9 mins; April 12, 2024

St Teresa of Avila's severed hand

9 mins; April 11, 2024

The Scream: A stolen masterpiece

9 mins; April 10, 2024

How Lake Karla in Greece was drained

8 mins; April 09, 2024

The 2010 Kampala bombings

8 mins; April 08, 2024

Bonus: The Black 14

32 mins; April 06, 2024

Sweden's Cinnamon Bun Day

9 mins; April 05, 2024

The Bluetooth story

10 mins; April 04, 2024

Sweden's pioneering paternity leave

9 mins; April 03, 2024

The man who invented the seat belt

9 mins; April 02, 2024

Fifty years of Abba

8 mins; March 31, 2024

Surviving the Rwandan genocide

8 mins; March 29, 2024

The founding of Nato

9 mins; March 28, 2024

Britain's first beach for nudists

10 mins; March 27, 2024

The Heimlich Manoeuvre

8 mins; March 26, 2024

Britain's Mirpuri migration

10 mins; March 25, 2024

Wham! in China

9 mins; March 22, 2024

Discovering the Terracotta Army

9 mins; March 21, 2024

The 'comfort women' of World War Two

9 mins; March 20, 2024

Surviving re-education in China’s Cultural Revolution

10 mins; March 19, 2024

Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write

9 mins; March 18, 2024

The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

9 mins; March 15, 2024

Winifred Atwell: The honky-tonk star who was Sir Elton John’s hero

9 mins; March 14, 2024

Paraguay adopts its second language

8 mins; March 13, 2024

Finding the longest set of footprints left by the first vertebrate

9 mins; March 12, 2024

11M: The day Madrid was bombed

8 mins; March 11, 2024

MH370: The plane that vanished

10 mins; March 08, 2024

Rehabilitating Kony's child soldiers in Uganda

9 mins; March 07, 2024

The Carnation Revolution in Portugal

9 mins; March 06, 2024

French child evacuees of World War Two

10 mins; March 05, 2024

Uruguay v the tobacco giant

10 mins; March 04, 2024

The Whisky War: Denmark v Canada

9 mins; March 01, 2024

The discovery of the Lord of Sipan in Peru

8 mins; February 29, 2024

The lost Czech scrolls

9 mins; February 28, 2024

Crimea's Soviet holiday camp

9 mins; February 27, 2024

Russia annexes Crimea

9 mins; February 26, 2024

Whistler: Creating one of the world’s biggest ski resorts

9 mins; February 23, 2024

Columbus Lighthouse

10 mins; February 22, 2024

Trans murder in Honduras

9 mins; February 21, 2024

Icelandic women's strike

9 mins; February 20, 2024

The Soviet scientist who made two-headed dogs

8 mins; February 19, 2024

Supermalt: The malt drink created after the Nigerian civil war

9 mins; February 16, 2024

The small Irish town known as ‘Little Brazil’

10 mins; February 15, 2024

The Juliet letters

9 mins; February 14, 2024

Patty Hearst: Rebel heiress

10 mins; February 13, 2024

The WW2 escape line that fooled the Nazis

9 mins; February 12, 2024

The Battle of Versailles: Catwalk clash of American and French fashion

10 mins; February 09, 2024

How Rosa Parks took a stand against racism

9 mins; February 08, 2024

Lucha Reyes: Peruvian music star

10 mins; February 07, 2024

A young mother saved from death by stoning

10 mins; February 06, 2024

Queen of the 'fro

9 mins; February 05, 2024

First internet cafe

10 mins; February 01, 2024

The Arctic’s doomsday seed vault

9 mins; January 31, 2024

Brazil's Landless Workers Movement

9 mins; January 30, 2024

Silenced by the Vatican

8 mins; January 29, 2024

Jack Strong aka Ryszard Kukliński: Cold War traitor or hero?

9 mins; January 26, 2024

The Hungarian footballer executed for love

9 mins; January 25, 2024

Wang Jingwei: China’s traitor or protector?

9 mins; January 24, 2024

Axis Sally: World War II traitor who broadcast for the Nazis

9 mins; January 23, 2024

Vidkun Quisling: Norway's traitor

10 mins; January 22, 2024

Jamuna Tudu: The real life 'Lady Tarzan'

9 mins; January 19, 2024

Ibadan Zoo

9 mins; January 18, 2024

Tortured in Iran's Evin Prison

8 mins; January 17, 2024

The Green March: Moroccans take over the Sahara

9 mins; January 16, 2024

The hunger-striking Bolivian president

9 mins; January 15, 2024

Gürtel scandal: Spain's Watergate

8 mins; January 12, 2024

The first World Laughter Day

9 mins; January 11, 2024

Russian ballerina defects to the west

9 mins; January 10, 2024

The mystery of France's lost king

8 mins; January 09, 2024

The world’s first lesbian couple to get married

9 mins; January 08, 2024

What the 1989 solar storm did to Quebec

10 mins; January 05, 2024

The Hindenburg airship disaster

9 mins; January 04, 2024

The invention of the wingsuit

9 mins; January 03, 2024

Discovery of the hole in the earth’s ozone

9 mins; January 02, 2024

Earth: A pale blue dot in the universe

9 mins; January 01, 2024

Ken Hom's 'Chinese Cookery'

11 mins; December 29, 2023

The disputed history of pad Thai

9 mins; December 28, 2023

Flavr Savr tomato: The world's first genetically-engineered food

9 mins; December 27, 2023

Kiwi: How New Zealand hijacked China's fruit

8 mins; December 26, 2023

Inventing Nutella

8 mins; December 25, 2023

'The bad boy of Welsh politics'

9 mins; December 22, 2023

Click here to see more

Witness History

Useful pages

Find a tutor

Languages