The Americans with Disabilities Act and the invention of GPS

The Americans with Disabilities Act and the invention of GPS

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

We find out about the landmark protest in 1990 when wheelchair users crawled up the steps of the US Capitol Building in Washington DC, campaigning for disability rights.

Our expert is Dr Maria Orchard, law lecturer at the University of Leeds, who has carried out research into disability and inclusion.

We hear about the 2015 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunisia's capital, in which 22 tourists were killed.

Next, the Gambian woman who in 1997 began making bags and purses out of old discarded plastic and is now globally recognised as Africa's Queen of Recycling.

The South African musical King Kong which opened to critical acclaim in 1959 and whose all-black cast defied apartheid.

Finally, the invention of the Global Positioning System - GPS - in the late 1970s, which now keeps aircraft in the sky and supports banking transactions.

Contributors:

Anita Cameron - disability rights campaigner Dr Maria Orchard - lecturer in law at the University of Leeds Hamadi Ben Abdesslem - tour guide Isatou Ceesay - environmental campaigner Nelson Mandela - former President of South Africa Marian Matshikiza - daughter of Todd Matshikiza, jazz pianist and composer Professor Brad Parkinson - chief architect of GPS

(Photo: 8 year-old Jennifer Keelan crawls up the steps of the US Capitol, 12 March 1990. Credit: AP/Jeff Markowitz)

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The outbreak of World War Two

The outbreak of World War Two

On September 1st 1939 German forces invaded Poland. Douglas Slocombe, a British cameraman, was there at the time and filmed the build-up to the war. Also the man who resisted the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s plus the first all-female peacekeeping force, the defining trial of holocaust denial and why Apollo 11's astronauts were put in quarantine after their historic landing on the moon. (Image: German citizens in Gdansk (also known as Danzig) welcoming German troops during the invasion of Poland on September 3rd 1939 . Credit:EPA/National Digital Archive Poland.)

7 Sep 201952min

The Kindertransport children

The Kindertransport children

Around 10,000 children were sent by their parents to safety in the UK out of Nazi-dominated Europe in the run-up to the outbreak of WW2 in 1939. Many of the so-called Kindertransport children never saw their parents again. We hear from Dame Stephanie Shirley who arrived in London as a five-year-old girl. Also, how the legendary singer Nina Simone went to live in Liberia, plus a key breakthrough in criminal forensics, the lynching of a black teenager that galvanised America's civil rights movement, and the murder of Mexican young women in the border town of Ciudad Juarez.(Photo:Getty Images)

31 Aug 201950min

The return of the wolf

The return of the wolf

Why the wolf was brought back to the US in the 1990s and the history of "rewilding", plus the liberation of Paris 75 years on, the missing children from El Salvador's civil war, the life and death of Brazil's legendary president Vargas, and the man who wanted to be a cyborg.Photo:.A Yellowstone wolf watches biologists after being tranquilized and fitted with a radio collar during wolf collaring operations in Yellowstone National Park (William Campbell/Sygma via Getty Images)

24 Aug 201950min

The division of Kashmir

The division of Kashmir

The origins of the crisis in Kashmir, the warnings ignored about 9/11 and the arrest of the notorious terror suspect Carlos the Jackal. Plus the invention in a British back garden of the daily disposable contact lens and how Dr Seuss taught America to read.Photo: Indian troops arriving in Kashmir in October 1947 (Getty Images)

17 Aug 201950min

The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'

The mass exodus of Algeria's 'Pieds Noirs'

The French colonialists who returned to France after decades in Algeria, the Catholic welcome when the British army was first deployed to Northern Ireland, plus the US nuclear submarine that went under the north pole, Britain's last battle in China in WW2 and the introduction of Community Service to help relieve overcrowded prisons.(Photo: French repatriates leaving Algeria May 1962. (Photo by REPORTERS ASSOCIES/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

10 Aug 201949min

The anti-nuclear protesters who won

The anti-nuclear protesters who won

The eight year protest campaign which stopped the construction of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf in Germany, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and from more than a decade later, the death of British weapons expert David Kelly, who got caught up in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Also, the Warsaw uprising of 1944 and from one of the most significant discoveries of Anglo-Saxon treasure in 1939.Picture: demonstrators fight against police during a protest at the Wackersdorf construction site (Istvan Bajzat/DPA/PA Images)

3 Aug 201951min

When Tunisia led on women's rights

When Tunisia led on women's rights

Liberation for Tunisia's women in the 1950s; gay and lesbian fake marriages in China; the Chappaquiddick incident in the US; the birth of Mamma Mia! the musical, and the discovery of the fossilised remains of humanity's oldest ancestor.Photo: courtesy of Saida El Gueyed

27 Juli 201950min

Exploring space

Exploring space

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing in July 1969, five personal accounts of landmarks in space exploration. We hear from an Apollo flight controller about the moment Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, and from one of the astronauts who survived the Apollo 13 near disaster. Plus how Laika the dog became the first living creature in space, the pioneering woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, and Britain's attempt to put the Beagle 2 lander on Mars.PHOTO: Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969 (Getty Images)

20 Juli 201950min

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