Witness: Archive 2011

In July 1999 two members of British celebrity royalty tied the knot. Victoria Adams of the Spice Girls, and David Beckham of Manchester United were both at the top of their professions. When they announced their wedding, the British press went into celebrity overdrive.

For 65 years the BBC World Service has broadcast in Russian, this weekend it stops.The Russian Service came into its own during the attempted coup by communist hardliners in August 1991.Mikhail Gorbachev said he got his news from the BBC, while being held under house arrest in Crimea.

When Leonardo da Vinci, the great Renaissance painter, was invited to paint a huge fresco in Florence - he could not have imagined that he would end up in direct competition with Michelangelo. Jonathan Jones, art critic for the Guardian newspaper, has written about the rivalry.

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In September 1999 there was a nuclear accident at Tokaimura in Japan. Workers mixing nuclear fuel had managed to start a nuclear reaction by mistake. For several days radiation leaked into the surrounding area.

The English author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin throughout the 1930s. His vision of the city has been linked with the German capital ever since.

In March 1994, the first women were ordained as Anglican priests. Witness speaks to Angela Berners-Wilson, one of 32 women ordained that day. She speaks about her long fight to become a priest in the Church of England.

It was during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 that Saddam Hussein's jets carried out a gas attack against Halabja in northern Iraq.Five thousand people were killed in the Halabja attack, considered one of the worst atrocities of Saddam Hussein's regime.Mariwan Hama-Saeed was a small boy living in the town at the time.

When a nuclear reactor at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania malfunctioned - Victor Galinsky was one of the men charged with putting things right. He talks to Witness. This programme was first broadcast last year.

They lasted for less than 12 minutes, but US air strikes against targets in Libya in April 1986, shook the country.Three of Colonel Gaddafi's children were among the injured - his adopted daughter died.But did they strengthen or weaken his hold on power?

Bombs planted on Spanish commuter trains and detonated at the height of the morning rush hour caused chaos in Madrid. The attacks killed 191 people and injured almost 2,000. One rescue worker remembers that day.Photo: One of the wrecked trains outside Atocha station (AP)

In 1996, a heavily-armed gunman killed sixteen children at a primary school in the small Scottish town of Dunblane.The attack caused shock not just in Britain, but around the world.Witness speaks to the father of one of the victims. The loss of his daughter made him a campaigner for gun control.

We hear what it was like to be trapped in the Herald of Free Enterprise car ferry when it sank off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in 1987 - killing more than 190 people.

To mark a century of International Women's Day we bring you a portrait of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Feminist icon, writer and theorist - Lenin called her the Eagle of the Revolution.

In 2002, a brutal civil war broke out in Ivory Coast.It turned the once prosperous city of Abidjan into a place where African migrants and westerners all feared for their lives.Paul Welsh covered the Civil War for the BBC. He recalls the atmosphere in Abidjan and how journalists themselves were targetted.

In March 1970, three white middle-class revolutionaries from the Weatherman movement accidentally killed themselves at their New York safehouse.They died when the pipe bombs they were planning to use at a military base accidentally went off in the basement.Witness speaks to Cathy Wilkerson, one of the survivors of the blast.

"I felt a slap in the face, this was a declaration of a racial war." Wilf Mbanga was a young journalist when the white minority government in Rhodesia declared the country a republic.Photo: Wilf Mbanga

The city of Krakow in Poland was home to a large Jewish community before World War II. But with the arrival of the Nazis many of its Jews were deported, or fled. Then in 1941 a Jewish ghetto was built.This programme begins with a deeply disturbing recollection.Photo: Dr Ludwik Zurowski

When Colonel Muammar Gaddafi first took control in Libya in 1969 - few people had heard of him. He and a group of fellow army officers carried out a coup while the King was out of the country. Two ordinary Libyans remember that day.(This programme was first broadcast last year.)

When Edward VIII fell in love with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, he had to choose between his throne and her. We take you back to their low-key wedding in France, in 1937.Part of the Witness Royal Weddings series.(Photo:Getty images)