The dirtiest chess match in history

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ...  Show more

In 1995, Klaus Teuber’s board game Catan launched in Germany. The board is made up of hexagonal tiles, and it's a game about strategy and collecting resources.It's since sold over 40 million copies and been translated into more than 40 different languages. Klaus Teuber died in 20 ...  Show more

On the 24th of June, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his paramilitary group Wagner carried out what appeared to be an attempted coup in Russia. In a seismic turn of events, his mercenaries marched across the Russian border without resistance and seized key military installations i ...

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service all about figures branded as traitors.

In 1939 Wang Jingwei, once a national hero in China, signed an agreement with Japanese invaders which made his name synonymous with ...

*Content Warning - This episode contains references to rape and suicide* The Russian Civil War was a brutal episode in the rise of Bolshevik Russia. Taking place between 1917 and 1922 (after the perhaps better known, Russian Revolution) it pitted the Communist Red Army, led by Vl ...  Show more

Garry Kasparov is one of the greatest chess players of all time. He was one of the youngest world champions ever, and had a 20-year streak as the world’s top-rated player. But even though he is known as a champion, he is also particularly famous for losing—against Deep Blue. Afte ...  Show more