Tsunamis and Caster Semenya
The History Hour23 Des 2023

Tsunamis and Caster Semenya

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

This week, we hear from Lumepa Hald who survived the devastating tsunami that hit Samoa in 2009 but suffered a tragic loss.

Our expert guest, Prof Tiziana Rossetto, looks back at some of the worst tsunamis in history and how they have shaped our landscapes.

Plus we talk to Caster Semenya, the gold medallist who faced questions over her gender at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.

There’s also an interview with Peter Greste, one of three Al Jazeera journalists sentenced to seven years in jail in Egypt.

We also look at the mystery surrounding the death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda with his driver, Manuel Araya.

And finally we talk to singer Dafydd Iwan, the “bad boy of Welsh politics”, who was arrested for defacing an English sign. He wanted official recognition for the Welsh language.

Contributors: Lumepa Hald – survivor of the tsunami that hit Samoa in 2009. Tiziana Rossetto - Professor of Earthquake Engineering at University College London, UK. Caster Semenya – world champion runner who faced questions over her gender. Peter Greste – journalist sentenced to seven years in prison in Egypt. Manuel Araya – driver of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Dafydd Iwan – singer who campaigned for official recognition the Welsh language.

(Photo: Devastation at a beach in Samoa after the 2009 tsunami. Credit: Getty Images)

Episoder(467)

Princess Diana's Minefield Walk

Princess Diana's Minefield Walk

In 1997, the Princess of Wales made a high-profile visit to a landmine clearance programme in Angola. Her trip is credited with boosting the campaign for a global landmine treaty signed later that year. Also, the man who rewrote the rules on transitions of power in the USA, the first woman to wear a headscarf into the Turkish parliament and the triumph of British espionage that changed the course of World War One.PHOTO: Princess Diana in Angola in 1997 (Credit: Alamy)

14 Jan 201750min

American Communists

American Communists

The early American Communists, a North Vietnamese tunneler who helped outsmart the Americans and win the war in Vietnam, plus the pyramid scheme failure in Albania which left gun-toting children on the streets. Also how five American missionaries paid the ultimate price after seeking out a remote tribe in Ecuador but left a lasting legacy, and the petition signed in Czechoslovakia which helped bring about the end of communism.Photograph: Ella and Bert Wolfe (courtesy of the Hoover Institution Archives

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The Break-Up of the Soviet Union

The Break-Up of the Soviet Union

December 1991 saw the end of 70 years of communist rule and the collapse of the Soviet Union. We hear from two of the key signatories of the dissolution treaty, a witness to the ensuing crisis in one of the newly independent states, and from an American nuclear expert who helped clean-up the former USSR. Also, the performance artist protesting about the growing divide between rich and poor, and the first editor of Vogue magazine in Russia. Photo: The leaders of Ukraine and Belorussia, alongside Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, at the ceremony formally dissolving the USSR in December 1991, Credit: AP

31 Des 201650min

Death of an Anarchist

Death of an Anarchist

The controversial death in police custody of Italian anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, the Irish playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett how Greece and Turkey almost came to war over a tiny rocky island in the Aegean sea, also the experimental film-maker Derek Jarman and how on Christmas day in 1968 Apollo 8 became the first spacecraft to leave the Earth's orbit and travel to the moon.Photo:Giuseppe 'Pino' Pinelli, with his wife Licia and his daughters Silvia and Claudia. Credit: The Pinelli Family.

24 Des 201650min

Yoyes, ETA's female icon

Yoyes, ETA's female icon

The life and untimely death of a Basque separatist fighter, resisting the Nazis in Lithuania, a medical breakthrough that prevented babies from dying in their cots, the grand old lady of Brazilian TV soaps, and the Hindu milk miracle.Photograph: Maria Dolores Gonzalez Katarain, known as Yoyes, who was the first woman to join the leadership of the separatist group, ETA

16 Des 201650min

100 Women History Hour

100 Women History Hour

A special edition of the programme remembering some of the women that history has overlooked. From women warriors to women scientists. From rural women, to factory workers we bring you the stories of women who made a contribution to history - and who deserve to be remembered.

10 Des 201649min

Bob Marley Survives Assassination Attempt

Bob Marley Survives Assassination Attempt

The shooting of Bob Marley in 1976, the resistance of the Mirabal Sisters, how Ralph Nader made Americans safer, discovering Colombia's ancient Lost City and when Le Corbusier built Chandigarh - India's 1950s modernist marvel. Photo: Bob Marley, 1970s (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

3 Des 201650min

The 1948 French Miners' Strike

The 1948 French Miners' Strike

This week, the French Miners' strike of 1948, 50 years since the launch of the Cabaret musical, the Silk Letters Movement of British India, the plane-spotters jailed for spying and how to save baby elephants!(Photo: French President Francois Hollande welcomes former striker Norbert Gilmez during a ceremony at the Elysee Palace in Paris. September 2016. Credit:Reuters.)

25 Nov 201650min

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