Secret D-Day rehearsal and YouTube begins

Secret D-Day rehearsal and YouTube begins

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is World War Two military historian and archivist Elisabeth Shipton.

We start by concentrating on two events from the last year of the Second World War.

Exercise Tiger took place in April 1944 in preparation for the D-Day landings of Allied forces in Normandy. But during that rehearsal a German fleet attacked and about 749 US servicemen died.

We hear remarkable archive testimony from Adolf Hitler's secretary who witnessed his last days in a bunker in Berlin before he took his own life.

Plus, 20 years since the video sharing platform, YouTube, was first launched.

We hear about the apartheid-era production of the play Othello in South Africa, which broke racial boundaries.

And finally, how in 1985, Coca-Cola messed up a reworking of the drink's classic formula.

Contributors:

Paul Gerolstein - survivor of Exercise Tiger (from archive audio gathered by Laurie Bolton, from the UK Exercise Tiger Memorial, and the journalist, David Fitzgerald).

Traudl Junge - Adolf Hitler's secretary.

Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen - on the start of YouTube.

Dame Janet Suzman - on the staging of Othello in 1987.

Mark Pendergrast - author.

(Photo: US troops ahead of D-Day. Credit: Keystone/ Getty Images)

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The First Russian Revolution of 1917

The First Russian Revolution of 1917

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Kuwaiti Women Secure the Vote

Kuwaiti Women Secure the Vote

Women in Kuwait win the right to vote, and the only women on the front line on the Western Front in World War One; battling smog in Mexico City in the 1980s, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and America's first incident of Islamic terror forty years ago.Photo: the first women candidates for parliamentary elections in Kuwait in 2006, Aisha al-Rashid (R) and Rola Dashti (C) (Credit: Yasser al-Zayya/AFP/Getty Images)

10 Mars 201750min

Mother Teresa - The Nun Who Became A Saint

Mother Teresa - The Nun Who Became A Saint

Life with Mother Teresa among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, how the World Health Organisation came to realise that obesity was a global problem and Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House. Plus the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks - a remarkable story of one woman's impact on medical research.(PHOTO: AP Mother Teresa holds a child in 1978)

4 Mars 201750min

The German American Bund

The German American Bund

In the 1930s, a group of German-American Nazi sympathisers known as the German American Bund held rallies and summer camps across the US. Also, the lawyers who helped Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic defend himself against war crimes charges and how vandals attacked Denmark's famous Little Mermaid Statue.

25 Feb 201750min

Love and Marriage

Love and Marriage

From speed-dating to gay romance, from divorce to bigamy we look at recent changes in the way society perceives love and marriage. Plus - an expert view on how to make sure your love endures.Photo: A heart hanging over Carnaby Street in London. Credit: BBC.

18 Feb 201750min

Sanctuary Cities in the USA

Sanctuary Cities in the USA

This week how American cities like San Francisco became safe havens for undocumented immigrants, the story of Tilikum and first recorded killing of a human by an orca whale, discovering DNA, the ship wreck that gave locals whiskey galore and Kenya's smash hit song - that got everyone singing in Swahili.(Photo: Supporters of Sanctuary Cities demonstrating in San Francisco, January 2017. Credit: AP)

11 Feb 201750min

The End of Apartheid

The End of Apartheid

Former South African police minister on ending apartheid, eyewitness to Black Hawk Down, landmark sexual harassment case in India, the last South American war and a record breaking solo trek across the Antarctic Picture: Anti-apartheid protestors demonstrate in Cape Town on the same day that President de Klerk announced the lifting of the ban on the ANC and the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela (Credit: RASHID LOMBARD/AFP/Getty Images)

4 Feb 201750min

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy

The Aboriginal Tent Embassy

On 26 January 1972 four Aboriginal men began a protest outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia. They erected a beach umbrella on the grass and called it an 'embassy'.Plus, the murder of five lawyers in Madrid in 1977, which became a turning point in Spain's return to democracy; the invention of the microwave oven; Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and 75 years of the BBC's longest-running programme, Desert Island Discs.

28 Jan 201750min

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