Witness

In the mid 1970s an epidemic of the fungal infection, Dutch Elm disease, killed millions of Elm trees in England, and changed the British landscape forever. Witness talks to tree pathologist Dr John Gibbs who was at the centre of the attempt to save them.Picture: Dr John Gibbs and a colleague at the Forestry Commission pump fungicide into an elm tree in St James' Park in London during the fight against Dutch Elm disease. (Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

In 1916, Muslims in Central Asia rose up against Russian imperial rule. The revolt was brutally supressed. Tens of thousands of Central Asians were killed, and hundreds of thousands fled to China. Dina Newman reports.Photo: Nomadic Kirghiz family, circa 1911. (Credit: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection)

At the height of the Spanish Civil War, thousands of Basque children were evacuated to safety in Britain. In 1937, Herminio Martinez was sent away by his parents at the age of seven. It was 23 years before he saw them again. Herminio Martinez talks to Witness about his memories of the evacuation and the reunion with his family. The programme was first broadcast in 2011.PHOTO: The Basque children arriving at Southampton in 1937 (Hutton Archive/Getty Images)

In July 1977 US campaigners launched a boycott against Nestle over the sale of baby milk. The action was prompted in part by a publication by the British campaign charity, 'War on Want' of 'The Baby Killer' report. It highlighted problems arising from the use of baby milk formula in the developing world. We hear from the author of the report about his findings and his meeting with Nestle.Photo: Mother and baby feeding in Kenya 1975. Courtesy of BBC Panorama.

In July 2006, seven coordinated explosions tore through packed commuter trains in Mumbai. More than 180 people died and hundreds more were injured. Witness speaks to one man who was travelling home on one of the trains, and survived.Photo: Railway workers clear the debris of the first class compartment of a local train which was ripped open by a bomb (SEBASTIAN D'SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images)

Over ten days in June and July 1991, the Yugoslav federal army tried to stop the tiny republic of Slovenia from becoming the first republic to break away from the former Yugoslavia. The country's then foreign minister, Dimitrij Rupel, recalls those days of Slovenia's war of independence and how it was a precursor for the greater, more bloody conflict to come.Photograph: a Yugoslav army tank on the Croatian/Slovenian border behind a road sign daubed with a peace symbol, 3rd July 1991 (Credit: Peter Northall/AFP/Getty Images)

In July 1989 four of Cuba's highest-ranking army officers were convicted of drug trafficking and executed by firing squad. The case sent shock waves through the communist island, but was seen by some as a show trial of opponents to the rule of Fidel Castro. We hear from the daughter of Col. Antonio de la Guardia, one of the officers involved.(Photo: Still from a local TV broadcast of the trial of Col. Antonio de la Guardia (left) and his twin brother Brigadier General Patricio de La Guardia (right) on charges of drug trafficking (FILES/AFP/Getty Images)

In July of 1967 London Bridge was put up for sale. It was sold to an American millionaire who had it dismantled and transported to the USA where it was rebuilt, stone by stone, in Arizona.(Photo: American entrepreneur Robert P McCulloch, standing in front of London Bridge as it is dismantled, ready for transportation back to America, 1968. Credit: Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images)

In 1993, Denmark held a second referendum on greater EU integration, after a previous vote failed. But angry anti-EU demonstrators took to the streets of the capital, and riots followed. We speak to the former foreign minister who campaigned for a 'Yes' vote, and a former activist who protested against any Danish involvement in the EU, but who has since changed his mind about Europe.Image: Riot police in Copenhagen after Denmark voted Yes to ratify the Maastricht Treaty in May 1993. (Credit: AFP)

Alan Johnston talks to the former US Marine and peace activist Ron Kovic about two moments that changed his life forever - one on the battlefield, and one at an anti-war protest in Washington. He became famous when his life story was made into a Hollywood film.

In 1941, far-right Ukrainian nationalists declared an independent state. They expected Hitler to support them, but their hopes barely lasted a week. They ended up fighting against the Poles, the Russians, the Germans, and fellow Ukrainians who disagreed with them. Dina Newman speaks to an OUN member.Photo: a youth with his face painted with the colours of the flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carries a portrait of Stepan Bandera, the founder of the UPA, during an ultra-nationalist march in Kiev on October 14, 2009. The UPA was a group of Ukrainian nationalist partisans who engaged in a series of guerrilla conflicts during WW2. Photo: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

In the summer of 1665, London was gripped by one of the worst epidemics in its history. The outbreak later became known as the Great Plague. Witness hears eye-witness testimony from the time, including an account by famous diarist Samuel Pepys.(Photo: The angel of death presides over London during the Great Plague of 1664-1666, holding an hourglass in one hand and a spear in the other. Published in The Intelligencer, 26 June 1665. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On June 25th 1996 a huge truck bomb was planted at a US housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of people were injured and 19 US servicemen were killed. Witness speaks to two survivors of the attack, who's lives were forever changed as a result of what happened at Khobar Towers.(The aftermath of the Khobar Towers bombing June 1996: Credit; Getty Images.)

In June 1969 the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River, in Ohio in the USA, caught fire. It became a national embarrassment and inspired new laws to protect the environment. Hear from one of the local officials who had to try to clean it up.(Photo: The Cuyahoga River, Cleveland, Ohio)

Between 1996 and 2000 more than 280,000 women were sterilised in Peru, many of them against their will. Most of the women were from poor indigenous communities. The sterilisations were carried out as part of a controversial family planning programme launched by the country's populist president, Alberto Fujimori. Witness has spoken to one of the women who was sterilised and to a Peruvian doctor who refused to take part in the scheme.Listeners may find some of the accounts in this programme upsetting.Photo: Felicia Mamaniconsa, a victim of forced sterilisation (credit: Ronald Reategui).

On 23 June 1993 a young wife cut off her husband's penis in a frenzied attack. She was Lorena Bobbitt - he was John Wayne Bobbitt - and their story was soon a talking point all over the world. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to John Bobbitt's lawyer, Greg Murphy, about the case.(Photo: John Wayne Bobbitt arriving at court. Credit:AFP/Getty Images)

Michael Foale was on board the Mir space station when a resupply vessel crashed into it in June 1997. It was worst collision in the history of space flight and it sent Mir spinning out of control. Michael was one of the three astronauts on board who had to try to repair the damage and get the space station back on course.Photo: Mir Space Station. Credit: Getty Images.

Robert Robinson, a Jamaican born engineer, was recruited to work in the USSR from a factory in Detroit in 1930. Having had his US citizenship revoked, he spent 43 years unable to leave the Soviet Union. Dina Newman tells his story, using BBC archive. (Photo: Robert Robinson in the 1920s. Source: BBC archive)

In June 1940, German forces, having swept across Belgium and Holland, and into France, were closing in on Paris. In the face of the German army, millions of French, Dutch and Belgians had taken to the roads in one of the biggest exoduses of people the world had ever seen. Witness talks to Daphne Wall, who lived in Paris in 1940 as a young English girl and whose family joined the exodus south as Paris fell.Photograph: the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler visits the Eiffel Tower following the occupation of Paris by the German army on the 14th June 1940 (Credit: Harwood/Keystone/Getty Images)

It was not until the 1950s that British researchers first connected cigarette smoking with the huge rise in people suffering from lung cancer. Initially, scientists had thought pollution was a much more likely cause. Hear an archive interview with Sir Richard Doll who carried out the original studies and Sir Richard Peto who worked with him.This programme was first broadcast in 2013(Photo: A man smoking a cigarette. Credit: Press Association)