The Siege of Yarmouk

How a small Nigerian Islamist group launched one of the deadliest insurgencies in Africa. In 2002, a new radical sect emerged in Maiduguri in north eastern Nigeria led by a charismatic preacher, Mohammed Yusuf. He preached against anything he deemed un-Islamic or having a western influence. Locals gave the group a nickname, Boko Haram - meaning "western education is forbidden". In 2009, the group launched co-ordinated attacks on police across northern Nigeria. Maiduguri saw the fiercest fighting. It was the start of an insurgency that would devastate the region. We hear from Bilkisu Babangida who was the BBC Hausa service reporter in the city at the time.Photo: A suspected Boko Haram house in Maiduguri set ablaze by Nigerian security forces, 30th July 2009 (AFP/Getty Images)

17 Jan 202214min

30-year-old Texan Timmie Jean Lindsey was the first woman in the world to have silicone breast implants. In 1962, she was offered the operation free of charge by two pioneering surgeons. It's gone on to become one of the most popular cosmetic procedures in the world. In 2012, Timmie Jean Lindsey spoke to Claire Bowes.PHOTO: A silicone breast implant (Getty Images)

14 Jan 20229min

Costa Concordia hit submerged rocks off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012, leaving a fifty-metre-long gash in the hull. More than four thousand passengers and crew were on board. Ian and Janice Donoff were hoping to get away in a lifeboat, but it got stuck as it was being lowered into the sea, so they had to find another way off. Thirty-two people died in the disaster. The captain was later found guilty of manslaughter for needlessly navigating the ship too close to the shore of an island it was sailing past. Produced and presented by Nick HollandPHOTO: The Costa Concordia lying aground off Giglio (2012)

13 Jan 20228min

The Malian photographer, Malick Sidibé, is one of Africa’s most celebrated artists. His most famous photographs show black and white scenes of young people partying in the capital Bamako in the joyful, confident era after Mali got its independence from France in 1960. In the 1990s, a chance encounter with a French curator brought Sidibé’s work international acclaim. The wider world had been used to seeing a narrow range of images from Africa, so when Sidibé’s work went up on show in Western art galleries, audiences were stunned by the exuberant world they revealed. Viv Jones talks to someone who knew Sidibé back when he was a roving nightlife photographer - Manthia Diawara, Malian filmmaker and Professor at New York University.(Photo: Malick Sidibé. Photo by BILLY FARRELL/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

12 Jan 20228min

After its independence, Kazakhstan had to deal with the legacy of being one of the centres of the Soviet Union's huge nuclear arsenal and nuclear weapons industry. There were particular concerns about the former nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk, a vast swathe of contaminated land where there were tunnels with spent plutonium. When the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the site was left open to scavengers. Louise Hidalgo talks to the former head of America's nuclear weapons laboratory, Dr Siegfried Hecker, about the secret operation by Russian and American scientists to make the site safe; it's been called the greatest nuclear non-proliferation story never told.PHOTO: The Semipalatinsk site in 1991 (Getty Images)

11 Jan 20229min

In 2022, India is holding a series of events to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the birth of the independence campaigner, Subhas Chandra Bose. Unlike Mahatama Ghandi, Bose believed violence against the British Empire could be justified, and during World War Two he supported an alliance with Nazi Germany and Japan. Claire Bowes speaks to Bose’s great-niece, Madhuri Bose, about why many think he could have changed the course of India’s history. She also hears from Mihir Bose, author of Raj, Secrets, Revolution: A Life of Subhas Chandra Bose. PHOTO: Subhas Chandra Bose giving a speech in Nazi Germany in 1942.

10 Jan 202210min

On February 3rd 1969, Eduardo Mondlane - the founder of FRELIMO, Mozambique’s Liberation Front against Portuguese colonial rule - was assassinated in a bomb attack in Tanzania. Mondlane started out as a teacher and academic, but his daughter Nyeleti Brooke Mondlane has been telling Rebecca Kesby why he swapped the university library for guerrilla warfare - and how it cost him his life.PHOTO: Eduardo Mondlane in 1966 (Getty Images)

6 Jan 202212min

In 2022, France is marking the centenary of the death of the novelist Marcel Proust, the author of the 20th century masterpiece Remembrance of Things Past. In this archive edition of Witness History, Proust's friend, Prince Antoine Bibescu, recalls his conversations with the author, and Proust's maid, Celeste Albaret, remembers his final hours. The programme also hears from Professor Michael Wood, an expert on Proust at Princeton University.PHOTO: Marcel Proust (Getty Images)

5 Jan 20229min