Witness: Witness Archive 2015

Eyewitnesses describe the first ever bombing raids on England in January 1915 during World War One. The raids were carried out by huge German airships called Zeppelins. (Photo: The L2, a German naval Zeppelin during World War I, around 1914. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis in Hungary, but he was taken into Soviet custody in January 1945 and disappeared. His fate remains a mystery. (Photo: An undated file photo of Swedish diplomat and World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg who disappeared in 1945. Credit: Staff/AFP/Getty Images.)

In January 1976, the best-selling novelist of all time, the Queen of Crime, creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie died peacefully, aged eighty-five. Her grandson, Mathew Prichard, remembers her life. (Photograph: Agatha Christie with her only grandchild, Mathew Prichard, in the 1950s at London airport. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images.)

In 1997 an Indian businessman returned home from working abroad and saw a great opportunity to start a whole new industry, that would revolutionise the country's economy. Pramod Bhasin tells Witness how he set up India's first call centre in spite of the technical difficulties he encountered. (Photo: Pramod Bhasin in one of the call centres he developed.)

In I988 India passed a law that made it a criminal offence to help anyone perform Sati, the ancient Hindu custom of a woman being burned alive on the funeral pyre of her dead husband. Witness has been speaking to Ranjana Kumari, who helped to push through the change in legislation. (Photo: drawing from 1850 of an Indian woman practising the tradition of Sati in which she burns herself to death on her husband's funeral pyre. Credit: Getty Images.)

Only a fraction of Somalia's population could read or write in the early 1970s. So the military government launched a hugely ambitious literacy campaign. What was unusual was that many of the teachers were schoolchildren - sent into the countryside to teach adults. Hear from one of those teachers - Abdirahman Abtidon - who was 14 at the time. (Photo: Literacy class in 1974.)

In January 2002, the first prisoners from America's war on terror arrived at a new hastily-built detention facility at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The camp's first commander, Major General Mike Lehnert, recalls the challenges he faced in opening what would become one of the most notorious prisons in the world. (Photo: American military police guard the first detainees at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002. Credit:Petty Officer 1st class Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images)

In 1952 a new style of music programme was launched in India. Geetmala was the first Hindi radio countdown show of Indian film songs. It would take South Asia by storm and was on the air for 42 years. Witness speaks to its host, Ameen Sayani. (Photo: Ameen Sayani. Credit: Getty images)

The Senate chamber was turned into a court to put the president on trial after he admitted to lying about an affair with an intern called Monica Lewinsky. Hear from Bill Clinton's then press secretary, Joe Lockhart, about the fight to save his presidency. (Photo: Bill Clinton on the morning before the launch of the impreachment inquiry. Credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1964, Dr Robert Wilson and Dr Arno Penzias made an unexpected discovery which became the first proof of the Big Bang Theory. They found cosmic microwave background radiation using a special antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey. Their discovery won them the Nobel Prize. We hear from Dr Robert Wilson. Photo: The horn antenna in Holmdel (BBC)

On 5 January 1968 Alexander Dubcek became leader of the Communist party in Czechoslovakia, heralding a short-lived period of liberalisation. Witness speaks to history professor Jan Rychlik, a teenager at the time. (Photo: Alexander Dubcek (3rd from the right), during a Labor Day parade, May 1968. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

In 1919 more than 200 sailors who had survived World War One were drowned when the boat taking them home for New Year was wrecked just metres from their home off the Isle of Lewis in the west of Scotland. Picture: The churches and school, North Tolsta, Isle of Lewis, Credit: North Tolsta Historical Society

The first episode of Mr Bean aired on January 1 1990 - but how did an almost completely silent comic character become such a hit? Photo: Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean, Credit: PA.

A new computer game - designed in Scotland - became a surprise global hit in 1997. But Grand Theft Auto also courted controversy and sparked debate over violence and drugs in video games. Listen to Brian Baglow - one of the original team behind the launch.