How Sri Lanka's president survived a suicide ...

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest, gemmologist James Evans discusses the creation of synthetic diamonds.We begin with the trial of the former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor. It was claimed that h ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Professor Guri Hjeltnes, an author and World War Two historian. We start with Nazi Germany’s occupation of Norway during World War Two by hearing about a secret res ...  Show more

In 2006, Sri Lanka’s current president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, came within metres of death when he was targeted in a suicide bomb attack in Colombo. The attack was orchestrated by the Tamil Tigers during what was supposed to be a ceasefire in Sri Lanka’s long-standing civil war. Mat ...  Show more

In June 1968, US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy was assassinated shortly after addressing his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was less than five years after his older brother, President John F Kennedy, had also been assassinated. Sirhan Sirhan was c ...  Show more

On 15 December 2013, South Africa held the funeral of Nelson Mandela who led the struggle in defeating apartheid and became the country’s first black president. His ancestral home in the village of Qunu in South Africa’s Eastern Cape hosted 60 world leaders including four United ...  Show more

Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected the modern world's first female head of government in 1960 when she became Prime Minister of Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was known then. She entered politics after the assassination of her husband Solomon Bandrainaike in 1959. Farhana Haider has be ...  Show more