Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.
We hear about Cyberia - the first commercial internet café which opened in London in 1994. Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, Professor Vicki Nash, talks us through other notable landmarks in the internet’s history. Plus how the Covid N95 mask was invented by a scientist from Taiwan in 1992.
Also how Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was punished for his writing on liberation theology. Staying with Brazil, we hear how poor rural workers occupied land owned by the rich, resulting in violent clashes in 1980.
And the world's first global seed vault, buried deep inside a mountain on an Arctic island.
Contributors: Eva Pascoe – a founder of Cyberia internet café Prof Vicki Nash – Director of the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford Peter Tsai – inventor of N95 mask Leonardo Boff – Brazilian theologian Maria Salete Campigotto – Landless Workers Movement protestor Dr Cary Fowler – founder of Doomsday seed vault
(Photo: People using Cyberia in 1994. Credit: Mathieu Polak/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
Cambodian genocide trials
How Sri Lanka's president survived a suicide bombing
The Syrian civil war
Artists who made history
The Marcos regime in the Philippines
The war in Transnistria
Fighting for Uyghur rights in China
Algeria's War of Independence
The Falkands War
Protesting against Putin
Ukrainian history special
Women who made history
Russia under Putin
LGBT history special
The Ukraine crisis: an eyewitness history
Kazakhstan's new capital
Fifty years since Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday
The rise of Boko Haram
Hitler's Indian ally: Subhas Chandra Bose
Mozambique's Eduardo Mondlane: From professor to freedom fighter
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The Infinite Monkey Cage
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Elis James and John Robins