Witness History Folgen

In December 1975, four members of one of the IRA’s deadliest units were chased by police through the streets of London before hiding out in a small flat owned by a middle-aged couple called John and Sheila Matthews. The resulting six-day siege was covered live on television and radio, and gripped Britain. It ended when Metropolitan Police negotiators persuaded the gunmen to leave the flat peacefully. In 2019, Simon Watts spoke to Steven Moysey who saw the siege unfold.Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by 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 the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.(Photo: Police in action on Balcombe Street during the siege. Credit: Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In 2011, Lagos Fashion Week debuted, putting Nigerian style on the map. Omoyemi Akerele founded the event which helped to launch the careers of designers internationally.It has grown into a major fashion event and won the 2025 Earthshot Prize for sustainability.In 2023, Omoyemi Akerele spoke to Reena Stanton-Sharma about the first show. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by 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 the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.(Photo: Founder of the Lagos Fashion and Design Week Omoyemi Akerele. Credit: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP)

In 1967, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka tried to stop the country’s Biafra war, in which Nigeria’s Igbo people responded to violence by seceding from the rest of the country. They proclaimed a new Republic of Biafra.When the fighting began, Soyinka was building a reputation as a poet and playwright abroad. However, in a last-ditch attempt to avert civil war, he set off on a secret mission behind the front line to meet the Biafran leader, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. When he left Biafra, he was imprisoned by the federal government without trial for more than two years.Soyinka drew on his prison experience in his writing over the following years, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 - the first African to win the award. He looks back on those events with Ben Henderson. Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by 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 the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.(Photo: Wole Soyinka in 1969. Credit: Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)