Wartime surrenders and the birth of Barbie

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We learn about how Play-Doh evolved from a cleaning product to a childhood favourite and the creation of one of the best-selling board games of all time, Catan. Our guest is the e ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. We learn about how a Norwegian businessman brought salmon sushi to Japan in the 1980s. Our guest is cookbook author Nancy Singleton Hachisu, who tells us more about the history ...  Show more

The first Barbie doll was sold in 1959. It took Ruth Handler, who created it, years to convince her male colleagues that it would sell.The plastic creation sold 350,000 in the first year and went on to take the world by storm selling millions. It’s now been turned into a live act ...  Show more

The Second World War officially ended on September 2nd 1945 - and it's estimated that around 3% of the Earth's population perished during the conflict. But what ultimately bought WW2 to an end - and how vital a role did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki play in obtaining a J ...  Show more

It can be hard to comprehend the magnitude of historical events, with World War Two a prime example of this.

By 1945, some 3 million British people had served. As such, the rich diversity of masculinity and sexuality of those men is often reduced or hidden from the h ...

Peter Royle, 103, endured a month of solid fighting in the hills outside of Tunis in 1943. Eventually the Allies prevailed and took more than 250,000 German and Italian prisoners of war. They declared victory in Tunisia on 13 May. Peter came close to dying many times. He recalls ...  Show more