300 episodes

History as told by the people who were there.

Witness History BBC Podcasts

    • Society & Culture
    • 4.4 • 662 Ratings

History as told by the people who were there.

    Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write

    Pinyin: The man who helped China to read and write

    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 United States as a banker.
    Pinyin helped to rapidly increase literacy levels in China. When it was introduced, 80% of the population couldn't read or write. It's now only a couple of percent.
    Despite being responsible for such an important tool in China's development, Zhou was subjected to re-education as part of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. He was forced to work on a farm in rural China.
    In 2017 Zhou Youguang died aged 111. Matt Pintus has been going through archive interviews to piece together Zhou's life.
    This programme contains archive material from NPR and the BBC.
    (Photo: Zhou Youguang. Credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)

    • 9 min
    The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

    The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius

    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 a German invasion, air bombardment, and surrender to the Allies.
    And then at 16:30 on 18 March, Vesuvius erupted. The sky filled with violent explosions of rock and ash, and burning lava flowed down the slopes, devastating villages.
    By the time it was over, 11 days later, 26 people had died and about 12,000 people were forced to leave their homes.
    Angelina Formisano, who was nine, was among those evacuated from the village of San Sebastiano. She’s been speaking to Jane Wilkinson about being in the path of an erupting volcano.
    (Photo: Vesuvius erupting in March 1944. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

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

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

    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 Sir Elton John and Queen Elizabeth II.
    She was the first instrumentalist to go to number one in the UK.
    This programme, produced and presented by Vicky Farncombe, tells her story using archive interviews.
    (Photo: Winifred Atwell. Credit: BBC)

    • 9 min
    Paraguay adopts its second language

    Paraguay adopts its second language

    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.
    Mike Lanchin hears from the Paraguayan linguist and anthropologist David Olivera, and even tries to speak a bit of the language.
    A CTVC production for the BBC World Service.
    (Photo: A man reads a book in Guarani. Credit: Norberto Duarte/AFP/Getty Images)

    • 8 min
    Finding the longest set of footprints left by the first vertebrate

    Finding the longest set of footprints left by the first vertebrate

    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 when the first amphibians left the water 385 million years ago. The salamander-type animal which was the size of a basset hound lived when County Kerry was semi-arid, long before dinosaurs, as Iwan Stössel explains to Josephine McDermott.
    (Picture: Artwork of a primitive tetrapod. Credit: Christian Jegou/ Science Photo Library)

    • 9 min
    11M: The day Madrid was bombed

    11M: The day Madrid was bombed

    A regular morning turned into a day of nightmares for Spanish commuters on 11 March 2004.
    In the space of minutes, 10 bombs detonated on trains around Madrid, killing nearly 200 people and injuring more than 1,800.
    With a general election three days away, the political fall-out was dramatic.
    In 2014, two politicians from opposite sides told Mike Lanchin about that terrible day – and what happened next.
    (Photo: The wreckage of a commuter train. Credit: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images)

    • 8 min

Customer Reviews

4.4 out of 5
662 Ratings

662 Ratings

Jasp002 ,

Consistently high standard

Surely one of the best short podcasts currently available

David Meynell ,

Bite sized insights

A great format combined with skilfully selected and presented subjects.

BuergaBob ,

Superbly researched and so interesting

Little slices of history - big and small. Things I would never otherwise have know. Thank you for all the work you do on these programmes.

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