Witness

On 9 November 1938 Nazis led attacks on Jewish homes and businesses across Germany. Because of the number of windows that were smashed it would be remembered as the "night of broken glass" or Kristallnacht. Writer and artist Nora Krug has investigated her German family's wartime experiences for her graphic history "Heimat". She spoke to Kirsty Reid about what happened in her hometown of Karlsruhe that night in November 1938.(Photo: Nora Krug. Credit: Penguin Books)

In November 1968 a young activist hit Germany's leader in public, to draw attention to his Nazi past. The activist was Beate Klarsfeld - the Chancellor was Kurt Georg Kiesinger. Tim Mansel has been listening to Beate Klarsfeld's memories of what happened after she attacked the political leaderPhoto: Beate Klarsfeld today. Credit: Tim Mansel

In October 1955, Britain was gripped by a romance between the young Princess Margaret and a glamorous, but divorced, ex-fighter pilot called Captain Peter Townsend. The couple had been in love for years, but after opposition from Buckingham Palace courtiers, the princess eventually announced that she would not go ahead with a marriage. Simon Watts talks to Lady Jane Rayne, a former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret and one of the first to spot the chemistry between the pair.PHOTO: Captain Townsend with Princess Margaret in the 1940s (Getty Images)

Eldridge Cleaver, one of the leaders of the radical African American Black Panther party, spent more than three years in exile in Algeria in the late 1960s. He set up an international office for the Black Panthers, mingling with dozens of left-wing revolutionary activists who had also sought refuge in north Africa. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Elaine Klein Mokhtefi, a left-wing American woman who lived and worked in Algiers, and who became Cleaver's fixer and close confidante.Photo: Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Mokhtefi (credit: Pete O'Neal)

Senior KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin risked his life smuggling thousands of top-secret Soviet intelligence files out of KGB headquarters, and bringing them to the West. His archive was one of the largest hauls of information to leak out of a major intelligence service anywhere in the world. Louise Hidalgo talks to Cambridge historian Professor Christopher Andrew, one of the few people let into Mitrokhin's secret who helped him turn his archive into a book.Picture: Vasili Mitrokhin, taken in March 1992 when he walked into the British embassy in Latvia and announced he had a big haul of KGB intelligence (Credit: Churchill Archives Centre, University of Cambridge)

An eyewitness account of a discovery that changed Nigerian history. Chief Sunday Inengite was 19 years old when prospectors from the Shell D'Arcy oil company first came to his village of Oloibiri in the Niger Delta in search of crude oil. It was there in 1956, that commercial quantities of oil were first discovered more than 3km below ground. It marked the start of Nigeria's huge oil industry, but it came at a cost for villages in the Niger Delta. Alex Last spoke to Chief Sunday Inengite about his memories of those days and the impact oil had on his community.Photo: An oil worker watches over the drilling at of an oil well in Nigeria (Photo by © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

When Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003, it was the start of President Putin's crackdown on the oligarchs. He shares his memories of that time with Dina Newman. Photo: former head of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky leaving the courtroom in Moscow, Russia, September 22, 2005. Credit: Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images

The former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in London in October 1998. Spanish lawyers wanted him extradited to Spain to face charges of torturing and murdering political opponents in Chile. He claimed immunity as a former head of state. He was held under house arrest in the UK for over a year. Lucy Williamson spoke to public relations expert Patrick Robertson about his efforts to get the General back home to Chile.Photo: General Pinochet in 1999. Credit: PA

In October 1984, one of South Africa's most well-known human rights activists, Desmond Tutu, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to apartheid. Two years later he became the first black head of the Anglican church in Southern Africa. Archbishop Tutu's friend and former deputy, Bishop Michael Nuttall, has been telling Louise Hidalgo about those milestones on the road to a new multi-racial South Africa, and about his friend's irrepressible spirit.Picture: Desmond Tutu in Washington addressing a US House Subcommittee hearing on apartheid shortly after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. (Credit: David Tulls/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1999 Belgian teenagers started to become ill after drinking Coca-Cola. Many ended up in hospital and the government banned the sale of all Coca-Cola products. But the fizzy drink was given the all-clear so what was making the children sick? Claire Bowes has been speaking to Belgian toxicologist, Benoit Nemery, about a country in crisis.(Photo: A poster saying 'out of order' is stuck on a Coca Cola vending machine in Mouscron, Belgium in 1999. Credit: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images).

In October 1993 news broke about an arms deal with Malaysia that led to the biggest development aid scandal in British history. It became known as the Pergau Dam Affair. Tim Mansel has been speaking to Tim Lankester, a British civil servant, who found himself caught up in the aid deal.Photo: Roger Briottet, director of the World Development Movement, celebrates with supporters after their High Court victory. The organisation had challenged the right of Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd to authorise £234 million in aid for the Pergau Dam Project. Credit: PA News/Sean Dempsey.

In the early 1970's, at the peak of political repression and persecution in Brazil, a collection of left-wing students and liberal professionals decided to move to a remote region in the Amazon to fight the military dictatorship. Two survivors from the so-called Araguaia Guerrilla War spoke to Thomas Pappon about how they endured life and war in the jungle.Photo: Two guerrilla fighters after being captured in 1974 (Archive PCdoB)

In October 1973 Arab nations slashed oil production in protest at American support for Israel during it's war against Egypt and Syria. Oil prices sky rocketed. Alex Last heard from former deputy secretary general of OPEC, Dr Fadhil Chalabi, about the struggle for the control of oil in the early 1970s.Photo: Cars queuing at a petrol station in London, during a petrol shortage, November 1973. (Credit: Aubrey Hart/Evening Standard/Getty Images)

The Italian authorities tried to divert the stream of molten lava pouring down the slopes of the Etna volcano on the island of Sicily in 1983. Susan Hulme has been speaking to volcanologist, Dr John Murray, who was there watching their efforts to save homes and businesses from destruction.Photo: Mount Etna erupting in 2017. Credit:Reuters/Antonio Parrinello

The murdered Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, is being made a saint of the Roman Catholic church. He was killed in 1980 by a right-wing death squad as he said mass at the altar. His death pushed El Salvador into its bloody civil war. Mike Lanchin spoke to local journalist, Milagro Granados, who was there at the moment of his assassination.Photo: Archbishop Romero, pictured in July 1979 (Credit: Corbis via Getty Images)

In October 1945, Austria got its first provisional government since its annexation by Nazi Germany a year before the Second World War. Wilfriede Iwaniuk was 14 when Hitler marched into Vienna; she tells Louise Hidalgo about the harshness of the war years and how, after the war too, there was no food and few jobs.Picture: Wilfriede Iwaniuk in 1946.(Credit: the Iwaniuk family)

During World War Two the German secret service compiled a book listing all the people they wanted to arrest in Britain if it fell to the Nazis. The top-secret 'Special Search Index GB' contained details of politicians and intellectuals and people who had fled Germany before the war - but it also included relatively ordinary British citizens. Vincent Dowd has been speaking to someone whose father appeared in the book, and to historian Terry Charman who published a facsimile edition of the so-called 'Black Book'.Photo: the front of the 'Black Book' with the German word 'Secret' stamped on it. Credit: BBC

In 1948 racist violence broke out against Romany-speaking traveller people in Sweden. The riots in the town of Jönköping lasted for several days. Birgitta Hellström and Barbro Gustafsson are sisters from the traveller community and they have been speaking to Tim Mansel about the events of that time. (Photo: Birgitta Hellström (L) and Barbro Gustafsson (R). Credit: Tim Mansel)

Britain's Labour government was determined to get rid of the unelected aristocrats sitting in the House of Lords - Parliament's second chamber. But the hereditary peers didn't go without a fight. Susan Hulme has been speaking to Marquis of Salisbury the man at the centre of the backroom deal to keep some seats for the nobility.Photo: Lords at the State Opening of Parliament in Westminster. in 2008. Credit: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

Allen Ginsberg first read his poem Howl, at an art gallery in San Francisco in October 1955. It marked a turning point in American literature and is credited with starting the "Beat Generation" of American writers. Michael McClure, a fellow poet, took part in the reading that night. The programme was first broadcast in 2012.Photo: Allen Ginsberg, front row centre, with other poets in 1965. Express/Getty Images.