Witness: Witness Archive 2015

In the 1950s, the quintessentially English singer, actor and playwright, Noel Coward, was invited to do a show in Las Vegas, which was then controlled by the Mob. At the time, Coward's career was on the decline. But against the odds, his Las Vegas show turned out to be a huge success. Photo: Actor, dramatist, and composer, Noel Coward rehearsing for a show at the Cafe de Paris, London,1951. (Photo by Jimmy Sime/Central Press/Getty Images)

Ghanaian musician E.T Mensah took Africa by storm in the 1950s with a new style of dance band Highlife music. For many, it was the soundtrack to a new, independent Africa. Photo: E.T Mensah and the Tempos band c.1955 Copyright. John Collins

The fall and rise of Maryam Mursal, who was one of the superstars of Somali music in the 1970s. Musicians were employed by Siad Barre's socialist state and were seen as crucial to nation-building. But many fell foul of the regime, and Maryam was one of them. Photo: Maryam Mursal (Credit: Real World Records)

Russia's first radio DJ, Seva Novgorodsev, went on air on the BBC Russian Service in 1977, at the height of the Cold War. Over the years, his pop music shows gained millions of fans throughout the Soviet Union. As Dina Newman reports, for many Russians, his name became synonymous with the BBC. (Photo: Seva in 1990, courtesy of Seva Novgorodsev)

In 1943, the cellist, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She expected to be killed in the gas chambers, but survived because she was recruited to play in an orchestra set up by the women prisoners. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch talks to Witness about her experience and the power of music in the darkest moments in history. PICTURE: Anita Lasker-Wallfisch in 1938 (Private Collection).

In August 2005 a massive hurricane hit the city of New Orleans in the USA. It flooded the area resulting in widespread death and destruction. Dave Cohen was one of the few local journalists who continued to broadcast live throughout the storm. (Photo: Rescue workers take residents to a ramp on Interstate 10 after a tidal surge from Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed a levee Monday, August 29th 2005. Credit: Douglas R. Clifford/AP)

It's sixty years since the first edition of one of the world's best-selling books was published. Compiled by the McWhirter brothers, the idea for the book arose after an argument at a shooting party in Ireland. (Image: Norris and Ross McWhirter. Credit: Guinness World Records)

In August 1970, tens of thousands of Mexican-Americans took part in a march against the Vietnam War known as the Chicano Moratorium. The protest in Los Angeles ended in chaos as police and demonstrators fought running street battles, resulting in three deaths. Rosalio Munoz was the organiser of the Chicano Moratorium. PHOTO: The poster for the Chicano Moratorium (Courtesy: Rosalio Munoz).

On August 21 1983, the opposition leader, Benigno Aquino, was shot dead in the Philippines. He was killed at Manila airport, minutes after returning from exile in the US. We hear from his brother-in-law, Ken Kashiwahara, who was with him that day. Photo: Benigno Aquino on the plane home (courtesy of K. Kashiwahara)

In the summer of 1988 thousands of political prisoners were suddenly executed in Iran. The killings, ordered by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, were kept secret at the time. Witness hears from Chowra Makaremi, whose mother was among those put to death. (Photo: Chowra's mother, Fatemeh, executed in 1988.Courtesy of the family)

In 1984, a clash between a religious commune in the US state of Oregon and locals residents resulted in the mass food poisoning of a town. Dina Newman speaks to a county official and a former member of the commune, run by an Indian guru, Bhagwan Rajneesh. Photo: Bhagwan Rajneesh denounces his former followers at a news conference on Monday, Sept.17, 1985 in Rajneeshpuram, Oregon (Photo Credit: AP/Jack Smith)

In August 1915 the celebrated Scottish architect was arrested on suspicion of being a German spy. We hear how the man who designed the Glasgow School of Art ended up in a Suffolk jail. (Photo: Charles Rennie Mackintosh circa 1900)

In August 1940 the exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, was killed in Mexico City, stabbed in the head with an ice-pick. Trotsky's grandson, Esteban Volkov, then aged 14, was living with his grandfather. He recalls how he arrived home from school that fateful day. (Photo: Esteban Volkov with his grandparents, Leon Trotsky and Natalia Sedova. Credit: Trotsky Museum, Mexico City)

In the early hours of 19th August 1942, a convoy of Allied ships approached the port of Dieppe carrying more than 6,000 troops. The mainly Canadian force was supposed to carry out a hit and run raid that would help the Allies learn and plan for the real invasion of occupied France later in the war. But almost immediately things started to go wrong. Ronald Miles, then aged 20, was a crew member on a landing craft. (Photo: Two German prisoners brought back from the Allied raid on Dieppe, blindfolded after landing. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

In the 1830s, many farmworkers in rural England were living in desperate poverty. Conditions were particularly harsh in the village of Tolpuddle where landowners had lowered wages to starvation level. In response, a group of workers decided to form a trade union. But they were soon arrested and received a punishment that shocked other workers across the country. They became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. (Photo: Drawing of the six Tolpuddle Martyrs. Credit: The Tolpuddle Martyrs' Museum)

After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, Korea is split along the 38th parallel, with Soviet forces in the north and the US military in the south. Shin Insup tells Witness what happened in the northern city of Pyongyang. (Photo: Korea 38th parallel. Credit: Getty Images/AFP)

In August 1945 Japan surrendered to the Americans and World War Two finally came to an end. Within days, prisoners held by the Japanese in China began to be released. Among them, a young American girl, Mary Previte. She tells her story to Witness. (Photo: The Japanese delegation arrives on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, to sign the Instrument of Surrender. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In 1996, after many rejections, author JK Rowling at last finds a publisher for her first Harry Potter novel. Witness talks to editor, Barry Cunningham, who spotted the boy wizard's potential and helped create a phenomenon that would revolutionise childrens' book publishing, selling more than 450 million copies. Picture: author JK Rowling holds the sixth and penultimate Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (Credit: AP) Audio recording © J.K. Rowling

A convict's experience of Devil's Island, the notorious French penal colony in South America, which closed in 1953. Thousands of inmates died from disease, mistreatment, or trying to escape the network of prisons in the jungles and islands of French Guiana. Bashir Saoudi tells the story of his father, Kaci, an Algerian who was imprisoned there in the 1930s. Bashir Saoudi is the co-author of The Guillotine Choice which was published in 2014. (Photo: 673 convicts in France being escorted to a ship bound for Devil's Island in 1935. Credit: AP)

Peter Larson, president of the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota, tells Witness how his team discovered Sue the T-Rex, the most complete T-Rex fossil in the world, in August 1990. (Photo Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)