The weather report that delayed D-Day and panda-mania in Taiwan
The History Hour7 Juni 2024

The weather report that delayed D-Day and panda-mania in Taiwan

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

First, we hear how a young Irishwoman called Maureen Flavin Sweeney drew up a weather report that delayed the date of D-Day.

Then, 99-year-old former field medic, Charles Norman Shay, shares his remarkable account of landing on the Normandy beach in France codenamed Omaha on D-Day.

Next, we also talk to Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi who hurled his shoes at the President of the United States.

Plus, we hear about China gifting Taiwan two giant pandas, in a practice known as ‘panda diplomacy’.

Finally, it’s the 40th anniversary of the popular computer game Tetris being invented.

Contributors:

Edward Sweeney – Maureen Flavin Sweeney’s son. Charles Norman Shay – former field medic in the United States Army. Muntadhar al-Zaidi – Iraqi journalist. Eve Chen – curator of the Giant Panda House at Taipei Zoo. Alexey Pajitnov – Russian engineer. Henk Rogers – American businessman.

(Photo: U.S Troops rushing to the Normandy beaches. Credit: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

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Vatican II: Reforming the Catholic Church

Vatican II: Reforming the Catholic Church

In January 1959 Pope John XXIII announced a council of all the world's Catholic bishops and cardinals in Rome. It led to sweeping reforms. Plus Carmen Callil recalls setting up Virago, the most successful feminist publishing house to date; India gives birth to the call centres and remembering the Carry-on films.(Photo; Pope John XXIII at the Vatican. Credit: Getty Images)

26 Jan 201941min

Strikers in Saris

Strikers in Saris

How South Asian women led thousands of UK workers in an industrial dispute in the late 1970s, plus Dr Crippen's alleged gruesome crime, Judy Garland's emotional last performances, the 'miracle waters' in Mexico and excitement over a whale in London's River Thames.(PHOTO: Jayaben Desai, leader of the Grunwick strike committee holding placard 1977 Credit: Getty images)

19 Jan 201950min

When Stalin Rounded Up Soviet Doctors

When Stalin Rounded Up Soviet Doctors

Stalin's last terror campaign against the best Soviet doctors, Castro's triumphant entry into Havana, the extraordinary story of how a destitute single mother produced a best selling memoir about her life in a Brazilian favela. Also, the controversy over 'Fat Is a Feminist Issue', and the world's only seed vault. Photo: Yakov Rapoport, one of the few survivors of Stalin's 'Doctors' Plot'. Credit: family archive.

14 Jan 201949min

Vikings in North America

Vikings in North America

The discovery that proved the Vikings got to North America, a former Marxist rebel describes how his group overran an army base in El Salvador's bitter civil war in the 1980s, the enormous palace built by the Romanian communist dictator, Nicole Ceausescu, how the prolific romantic novelist Barbara Cartland was made a Dame by the Queen and the summer of 1987 when thousands of tins of marijuana washed up on a Brazilian beach.Photo: Replicas of Norse houses from 1000 years ago at L'Anse aux Meadows. (LightRocket/Getty Images)

5 Jan 201950min

UFO Sightings: The Rendlesham Forest Incident

UFO Sightings: The Rendlesham Forest Incident

The most striking and well documented UFO "sightings" there have ever been plus the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the theft of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey in 1950 also one of the first electronic instruments and how Britain has long honoured its' military animals.(Photo: Computer illustration of UFOs - Unidentified Flying Objects)

29 Dec 201851min

Stopping The 'Shoe Bomber'

Stopping The 'Shoe Bomber'

Passenger Kwame James recalls how he helped overcome the British-born Richard Reid on American Airlines flight 63. Reid had hidden explosives in his shoe which failed to go off. Plus, the US apology for the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans in WW2, the first computer password, the woman who wrote Mary Poppins and a British theatrical group tours the Sahara.Photo: One of the shoes worn by Richard Reid on the American Airlines flight to Miami (ABC/Getty Images)

22 Dec 201850min

Apollo 8

Apollo 8

At Christmas 1968, the biggest audience in TV history watched NASA's Apollo 8 mission beam back the first pictures from an orbit around the Moon. The broadcast captured the world's imagination and put America ahead of the Soviet Union in the Cold War battle to make the first lunar landing. Plus, the rape of Nanking, WWII spy drama in the Netherlands and the woman who revolutionised the treatment of the dying.Picture: The Earth as seen from the Moon, photographed by the Apollo 8 crew (NASA)

15 Dec 201850min

Adopted By The Man Who Killed My Family

Adopted By The Man Who Killed My Family

A child survivor of a Guatemalan army massacre during the country's brutal civil war, the women who cleared up post war Berlin, plus Armenia's 1988 earthquake, how Bokassa became Emperor of the Central African Republic, and Angela Merkel's rise to power. Photo: Ramiro as a child in Guatemala (R.Osorio)

8 Dec 201850min

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