By BBC World Service
History as told by the people who were there.
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In 2001, the American Ana Montes, who was working for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested for espionage. Although the FBI knew that there was a spy they didn't know who it was. The Cubans always referred to...
In the late 1990s, a heavy metal band called Acrassicauda formed in Iraq, when the country was under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Over the next decade, the pioneering band found themselves on a collision course with the dictatorship...
It's 20 years since elections in French Polynesia in 2004, where the independence movement stunned the France-aligned government of the day, propelling pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru to the presidency. It was a landmark in the country's politics, where protests...
On 14 May 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. Tears and applause met the declaration, witnessed by 200 dignitaries, but fighting intensified in the days that followed. In 2010, Arieh Handler and Zipporah Porath spoke to Lucy Williamson about...
In 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians left their homes in the Middle East, never to return. The period after World War Two in the region was tense, at times violent and politically complex. For Israeli Jews it was...
In 1992, a photograph of Princess Diana alone on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal became one of the most famous photos in the world. Anwar Hussein was a photographer who documented the lives of the...
In 2009, the Indian government embarked on an ambitious task to register all of the country's billion-plus citizens with a unique digital ID. Aadhaar - which means foundation in many Indian languages - became the world's largest ever biometrics...
In 1963, Dr Jose Ignacio Barraquer Moner performed the first surgery on a human eye aimed at correcting short-sightedness. The ophthalmologist had been developing his technique for years, believing that there was a better solution for blurry vision than...
In the 1980s, a thirst for caffeine caused an unusual global collaboration. Coffee-loving East Germans were left without after a crop failure in the world’s biggest exporter of the drink, Brazil. So the East Germans hatched a scheme, linking up...
When a new show called Friends hit American TV screens in September 1994, it made household names of its cast. Over 10 series, it charted the lives of six young New Yorkers, through marriages, divorces, births and deaths. The...
Thirty years on from the opening of the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France, we look at the moment the two halves of the tunnel were connected in 1990. Graham Fagg was the man who made the breakthrough, and the...
In February 2014, Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych fled the country. His estate was abandoned by security guards, so for the first time ordinary people got to see inside Mezhyhirya, the extraordinarily extravagant home of the former president. Denys Tarakhkotelyk...
In 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote one of the world’s most popular self help books - How to Win Friends and Influence People. The idea was suggested by a book editor who had attended one of Dale’s public speaking courses in...
In 1961, the American psychologist Stanley Milgram began a series of controversial experiments on ‘obedience to authority’. His study aimed to show how ordinary people could be capable of committing evil acts, if ordered to do so. He wanted...
It’s 70 years since General Alfredo Stroessner seized power in Paraguay in a military coup. Stroessner remained in power for almost 35 years, before being toppled in 1989. More than 450 people were murdered under Stroessner's rule, with the...
On 13 December 1990, the anti-apartheid politician Oliver Tambo returned to South Africa after 30 years in exile. As the president of the banned African National Congress (ANC), he had lived in Zambia building the liberation movement while other...
Brenda Fassie was one of South Africa's biggest pop stars in the late 1980s. The singer’s career nosedived in 1990, but her comeback saw her dubbed the 'Madonna of the townships' by Time magazine. Yvonne Chaka Chaka, born a year...
In August 2002, the remains of an indigenous South African woman called Sarah Baartman were returned to South Africa after almost 200 years away. Sarah died in Paris in 1815 after being forced to perform in European 'freak shows' where...
When South African schoolchildren marched in protest against having to study Afrikaans in 1976, they were gunned down by the police. The killings sparked a cycle of protests across the country against the racist apartheid regime. In 2010, march organiser...
On 18 March 1992, white South Africans overwhelmingly backed a mandate for political reforms to end apartheid and create a power-sharing multi-racial government. It was a high-stakes referendum coming on the back of three by-elections where the ruling National...
Major Charity Adams was the first African-American woman to lead a World War Two battalion. It was known as the Six-Triple-Eight (6888). The 6888 was a majority African-American women’s unit, the women sorted through mountains of post across Europe, using...
On 18 April 2014, an avalanche on Mount Everest killed 16 men, who were carrying supplies for commercial expeditions to higher camps. The sherpas were on the Khumbu Icefall, just above Base Camp in Nepal, when the avalanche happened. It...
The 2014 Ebola outbreak devastated West Africa, killing more than 11,000 people over a two year period. One country that suffered was Sierra Leone. The disease started in Guinea, but quickly spread to neighbouring countries. Before May 2014, there...
When the train service between India and Bangladesh was suspended in 1965, following war between Pakistan and India, it lay dormant for 43 years. But in a day of celebration in 2008, the Maitree (or Friendship) Express rumbled into life...
A group of men known as the ‘Cairo 52’ were arrested in Egypt in May 2001. They were on board the Queen Boat, a floating gay nightclub on the River Nile. Omer, not his real name, was arrested and imprisoned...
Hiroo Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who spent nearly 30 years in the Philippine jungle, believing World War Two was still going on. Using his training in guerilla warfare, he attacked and killed people living on Lubang...
After winning the Spanish Civil War in 1939, Franco's dictatorship began. During the war, he acquired St Teresa of Avila's severed hand and kept it for spiritual guidance, it was returned when he died in 1975. The hand was...
When Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream was stolen in 1994, an undercover operation was launched to get it back. Thirty years on from its recovery, hear from the art detective at the centre of the story. In 2013, Charley Hill...
Lake Karla supported hundreds of families in Thessaly, providing fish for all of the region and beyond. Christos and Ioanna Kotsikas grew up on the shores of the wetland and have mixed memories of the lake. They too lived...
In July 2010, two bombs went off at a rugby club in Uganda's capital Kampala. It was where hundreds had gathered to watch the football World Cup final. The attack killed 74 people and injured 85 others. The militant Islamist...
A bonus episode from the Amazing Sport Stories podcast – The Black 14. Sport, racism and protests are about to change the lives of “the Black 14” American footballers. It’s 1969 in the United States. They’ve arrived on scholarships at...
Sweden’s most beloved pastry is the cinnamon bun and every year on 4 October, locals celebrate the sweet, spiced snacks. The country’s first official Cinnamon Bun Day (or Kanelbullens dag in Swedish) took place in 1999. The woman behind the...
In the 1990s, Bluetooth was invented in a lab in Lund, Sweden. The technology is used today to wirelessly connect accessories such as mice, keyboards, speakers and headphones to desktops, laptops and mobile phones. It’s named...
Fifty years ago Sweden became the first country in the world to offer paid parental leave that was gender neutral. The state granted mothers and fathers 180 days that they could divide between them however they saw fit. The pioneering...
In 1958, the late Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin invented the three-point safety belt for cars. It's estimated to have saved more than one million lives around the world. In 2022, Nils's stepson Gunnar Ornmark told Rachel Naylor about the inventor’s...
It's 50 years since Swedish pop group Abba won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. The victory provided a platform for the band to become one of the most popular and successful musical groups of all time. Abba's current manager, Görel...
April 1994 was the start of the Rwandan genocide, 100 days of slaughter, rape and atrocities. As part of the Tutsi ethnic group, Antoinette Mutabazi’s family were a target for the killings. So her father told her to run, leaving...
Nato - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - was formed in 1949 by 12 countries, including the US, UK, Canada and France. Its aim was to block expansion by the then Soviet Union - a group of states which included...
In 1980, the seaside town of Brighton opened a very unusual attraction. It was the first British beach dedicated to nudists. The opening followed a passionate battle between two local politicians and caused controversy among some locals. In 2011, Madeleine...
Since its adoption as a first aid method, the Heimlich Manoeuvre has saved untold numbers of lives around the world. Developed by American physician Dr Henry Heimlich as a way to save choking victims from dying, his manoeuvre would...
In 1967 a dam was built in Mirpur, Pakistan, that would spur a huge global migration. Water diverted by the dam forced around 100,000 people to leave their homes. Thousands migrated to the UK and today between 60% and 70%...
In 1985, the British band Wham! became the first Western pop act to play in China. Around 12,000 fans packed into the Worker’s Gymnasium in Beijing to hear such hits as Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Freedom. Wham!’s...
It's 50 years since a chance find by Chinese farmers led to an astonishing archaeological discovery. Thousands of clay soldiers were uncovered in the province of Shaanxi after being buried for more than 2,000 years. They were guarding the tomb...
Between 1932 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of women and girls across Asia were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. Referred to as "comfort women", they were taken from countries including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and...
In 1968, Jingyu Li and her parents were among hundreds of thousands of Chinese people sent to labour camps during Mao Zedong’s so-called cultural revolution. The aim was to re-educate those not thought to be committed to Chairman’s Mao drive...
In 1958, a brand new writing system was introduced in China called Pinyin. It used the Roman alphabet to help simplify Chinese characters into words. The mastermind behind Pinyin was a professor called Zhou Youguang who'd previously worked in...
The Mount Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii in 79AD is well known, but far fewer people know about the last time the volcano erupted in 1944. It was World War Two, and families in southern Italy had already lived through...
Winifred Atwell was a classically-trained pianist from Trinidad who became one of the best-selling artists of the 1950s in the UK. She played pub tunes on her battered, out-of-tune piano which travelled everywhere with her. Her fans included...
In 1992, Guarani was designated an official language in Paraguay’s new constitution, alongside Spanish. It is the only indigenous language of South America to have achieved such recognition and ended years of rejection and discrimination against Paraguay’s majority Guarani speakers....
In 1992 off the coast of Ireland, a Swiss geology student accidentally discovered the longest set of footprints made by the first four-legged animals to walk on earth. They pointed to a new date for the key milestone in evolution...