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The History Hour

BBC World Service

A compilation of the latest Witness History programmes.

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50:13

The Computers for Schools revolution

The History Hour ·

2020/01/11

In 2009, Uruguay became the first country in the world to give a laptop computer to every child in state primary schools. We hear from the man whose initiative is credited with transforming the lives of students and teachers. Plus, a US soldier's account of the battle for the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, and memories of the Brazilian rubber-tapper and environmentalist Chico Mendes.PHOTO: Two Uruguayan children enjoying their laptops (Courtesy Plan Ceibal)

50:17

The book that warned of an end to civilisation

The History Hour ·

2020/01/04

In 1972 a book which outlined the possible future of the world became a best-seller. 'The Limits to Growth' was based on computer modelling which suggested that if economic growth remained unfettered, there'd be a 'traumatic' decline in civilisation from 2020. It also suggested global policy changes which could prevent a downward trend. Find out which path the world took and why...Plus, why East German punks were targeted by the secret police in the 1980s, a top UN negotiator remembers how peace was

49:56

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

The History Hour ·

2019/12/28

On 24th December 1979 Soviet troops poured into Afghanistan in support of an anti-government coup. The Soviet occupation would last for nine years. Plus, the hidden history of the board game Monopoly, the invention of chemotherapy, the heaviest aerial bombardment of the Vietnam war at Christmas 1972, and the street-performer origins of the global circus phenomenon Cirque du Soleil.Picture: Russian tanks take up positions in front of the Darulaman (Abode of Peace) Palace in Kabul, January 1980

50:02

The Romanian revolution

The History Hour ·

2019/12/21

In this edition the fall of the Ceaușescus in Romania in December 1989, a global panic over bees in the early 2000s and WW2 black GIs finally recognised decades after the war. Plus the building of Abuja as Nigeria's capital and a woman's right to pray in some Hindu temples in India.(Photo: The army join the revolutionaries in Romania 1989. Credit: Getty Images)

50:27

The Cuban writer who defied Castro

The History Hour ·

2019/12/07

On 7 December 1990 the dissident Cuban novelist and poet Reinaldo Arenas killed himself in New York after years of suffering from AIDS. Before fleeing Cuba, Arenas had been jailed for his homosexuality, sent to re-education camps and prevented from writing. We hear from his friend and fellow writer, Jaime Manrique. Plus the memories of the daughter of the renowned British sculptor, Henry Moore; how the DEA helped track down Pablo Escobar; the ill-fated voyage of Shackleton's ship The Endurance; and

50:06

The man who gave his voice to Stephen Hawking

The History Hour ·

2019/11/30

The story of the American scientist Dennis Klatt who pioneered synthesised speech. He used recordings of himself to make the sounds that gave physicist Stephen Hawking a voice. Plus India:struggling to live through economic shock treatment in the 1990s, also LEO the first electronic office system, the first confirmed case of AIDS in America and when Uluru, Australia's famous natural landmark was handed back to the control of the country's indigenous people.(Photo: BOMBAY, INDIA: World-renowned

50:07

I saw the soldiers who killed El Salvador's priests

The History Hour ·

2019/11/23

The woman who risked her life to reveal that the army, not left-wing rebels, were responsible for the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1980s El Salvador; the moment when the Taser first hit the streets; the long legal fight to reclaim Klimt's masterpiece Woman in Gold; the man who got the Delhi metro built; and travels in Arabia with Wilfred Thesiger.(Photo: a plaque commemorating the murdered priests in San Salvador- courtesy of David Mee)

50:09

Rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean

The History Hour ·

2019/11/16

In 2004, a German aid agency ship, Cap Anamur, was sailing to the Suez Canal, when it came across 37 Africans on a sinking rubber boat. The captain, Stefan Schmidt, rescued the men and headed for a port in Sicily to drop them off, but he and his crew were promptly arrested by the Italian authorities. Max Pearson finds out more about the incident and about the migration crisis that faced the European Union in later years.Also this week, an eye-witness account of secret preparations by Hindu

50:26

Britain's secret propaganda war

The History Hour ·

2019/11/09

Subversive warfare and 'fake news' in World War Two, the scandal which exposed horrific Indian police violence in the 1980s, two sides of the Iran hostages crisis in 1979, the woman who transformed cancer treatment, and a defining Berlin Wall rock concert.Photo The actress and singer Agnes Bernelle, who was recruited to be a presenter on a fake German radio station during the war)

48:44

'Jane' - the underground abortion service

The History Hour ·

2019/11/02

The feminist network that performed illegal abortions in the 1960s in Chicago, the Algerian nationals who fought alongside the French in Algeria’s war of independence and when Margaret Thatcher first expressed anti- Europe sentiment. Plus the Paris hotel that hosted Holocaust survivors at the end of the Second World War and the battle to protect the Barrier Reef. Photo courtesy of Martha Scott

49:54

The fall of the Berlin Wall

The History Hour ·

2019/10/26

1989 was a seismic year in world history and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the clearest symbol of the Cold War. But it was a series of events across Europe that added to the momentum. We journey back through Poland, Hungary and East Germany ahead of that historic moment in November, through the testimonies of the people who were there at the centre of events; the Solidarity movement in Poland, the protesters in Hungary and East Germany and an account from the first people to cross the

50:49

An environmental history special

The History Hour ·

2019/10/19

A pioneer of climate change science, UK's Windscale nuclear accident, Kenya's Green Belt heroine who won the Nobel Peace Prize, the man "who fed the world", and banning cars in Mexico City.(Photo: Thick black smoke blowing out of an industrial chimney. Credit: John Giles/PA)

50:35

Black British history

The History Hour ·

2019/10/12

To mark Black History Month in the UK we look back at some landmark moments in British Black History. We hear how the famous cricketer Learie Constantine broke the colour bar, and about the Notting Hill race riots and the Bristol bus boycott. Plus, we speak to Britain’s first black female MP Diane Abbott, and one of the thousands of mixed race children born of relationships between black GIs and British women during the Second World War. With Professor Hakim Adi.Photo: Sir Learie Constantine outside

49:57

The birth of the People's Republic of China

The History Hour ·

2019/10/05

To mark 70 years of communist China we hear from a soldier at the founding ceremony on October 1st 1949. Also, the memories of an American friend and comrade of Mao Zedong, a Red Guard who regrets the cultural revolution and the pro-communist protests in 1960s Hong Kong, plus the economic liberalisation of the 1980s. Our guide is China expert Isabel Hilton. Photo: An officer reads a newspaper to soldiers while they are waiting for the announcement of the foundation of the People's Republic of

50:07

Fighting the Islamic State group online

The History Hour ·

2019/09/28

When the Islamic State group took over Mosul in Iraq in 2014 they flooded the internet with propaganda, claiming life under IS was fantastic. One historian living in the city decided to post a counter-narrative online, setting up a website called "Mosul Eye". Also in this edition, one black man's experience of growing up in Hitler's Germany; the gruesome death of the famous bullfighter Paquirri, switching on the Large Hadron Collider and the birth of the Sound of Music on Broadway in 1959.(Photo:

50:12

The Cambridge spy network

The History Hour ·

2019/09/21

The distinguished British art historian Anthony Blunt was exposed as a former Soviet spy in 1979. He was one of a group of double agents recruited at Cambridge University who passed vital information to Moscow. The BBC's Gordon Corera explains the scandal which shook the British establishment.Plus the Black Panther Party's free breakfast programme; the abolition of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy towards LGBT troops in the US military; Ethiopian troops in South Korea; and memories of celebrated

50:10

Conflict timber in Liberia's civil war

The History Hour ·

2019/09/14

How the timber industry fuelled a brutal civil war in West Africa, the Honduran coup that left the president holed up in an embassy plus the Indian affirmative action controversy, the first ever voyage all the way around the globe 500 years ago and the sit-com "Friends" hits TV screens worldwide.(Photo: Timber near Buchanan in Liberia in 2010. Credit: Getty Images)

52:00

The outbreak of World War Two

The History Hour ·

2019/09/07

On September 1st 1939 German forces invaded Poland. Douglas Slocombe, a British cameraman, was there at the time and filmed the build-up to the war. Also the man who resisted the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s plus the first all-female peacekeeping force, the defining trial of holocaust denial and why Apollo 11's astronauts were put in quarantine after their historic landing on the moon. (Image: German citizens in Gdansk (also known as Danzig) welcoming German troops during the invasion of Poland on

50:27

The Kindertransport children

The History Hour ·

2019/08/31

Around 10,000 children were sent by their parents to safety in the UK out of Nazi-dominated Europe in the run-up to the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. Many of the so-called Kindertransport children never saw their parents again. We hear from Dame Stephanie Shirley who arrived in London as a five-year-old girl. Also, how the legendary singer Nina Simone went to live in Liberia, plus a key breakthrough in criminal forensics, the lynching of a black teenager that galvanised America's civil rights movement,

50:13

The return of the wolf

The History Hour ·

2019/08/24

Why the wolf was brought back to the US in the 1990s and the history of "rewilding", plus the liberation of Paris 75 years on, the missing children from El Salvador's civil war, the life and death of Brazil's legendary president Vargas, and the man who wanted to be a cyborg.Photo:.A Yellowstone wolf watches biologists after being tranquilized and fitted with a radio collar during wolf collaring operations in Yellowstone National Park (William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images)

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