Witness

In October 1956 students and workers took to the streets of Budapest to protest at Soviet rule in Hungary. The demonstrations turned violent and for a while the revolutionaries were in control before being brutally repressed. Ed Butler spoke in 2010 to one of the rebels, Peter Pallai.(Photo: November 10, 1956 - A crowd of people surround the demolished head of a statue of Josef Stalin, including Daniel Sego, the man who cut off the head, during the Hungarian Revolt, Budapest, Hungary.) (Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)

In World War One, thousands of troops began suffering from psychiatric disorders which were given the name 'shell shock'. It was initially thought that shell shock was caused by soldiers' proximity to exploding shells, but it soon became clear that the conflict was having an unprecedented psychological impact. Alex Last presents BBC archive recordings of WW1 veterans talking about their experiences. Photo: French soldiers taking cover during a German bombardment, 1918 (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

In 1961 a new generation of comic-book super heroes with more credible characters, was launched in the US to great acclaim. The 'Fantastic Four' was the creation of Marvel's writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby. It propelled the company from a small division of a publishing company to a pop culture conglomerate. Ashley Byrne has been speaking to Roy Thomas, who began as a young writer at Marvel in the 1960s and rose to become its editor-in-chief.(Photo: The Fantastic Four, first issue, Nov 1961. Credit: Marvel Comics)

On 21st October 1966, tragedy struck a village in Wales when a landslide of coal waste engulfed a primary school. 144 people, most of them children, were killed. Rob Walker introduces interviews and reports from the BBC archive to commemorate the disaster.Photo: Rescue workers trying to reach children trapped in Pantglas Junior school. Credit: Press Association.

In October 1942, the great French conceptualist artist Marcel Duchamp helped put on the first major surrealist exhibition in New York. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to Carroll Janis, whose parents were friends of Duchamp, about the exhibition, the man and his art, including Duchamp's famous urinal.Picture: A replica of Marcel Duchamp's iconic work, Fountain, at the opening of an exhibition in London in 2010. Duchamp first exhibited Fountain in 1917 (Credit: Geoff Caddick)

During the 1950s in Kenya, rebels known as the Mau Mau were fighting a bitter battle against colonial rule. Thousands of rebels were taken captive and interned in camps. Many of the prisoners suffered beatings and torture at the hands of the British authorities. Louise Hidalgo has spoken to a former Mau Mau rebel, Gitu wa Kahengeri, about his internment and about the day the Mau Mau leader, Dedan Kimathi was caught.Photo:Gitu wa Kahangeri in Kenya in 2016. Credit: BBC

In the 1930s, a controversial Catholic priest called Father Charles Coughlin had a weekly radio programme with millions of listeners in the United States. As the decade wore on, Father Coughlin's views became so extreme and anti-Semitic that he was seen as a threat to national security by the White House. Simon Watts introduces recordings of Father Coughlin and talks to his biographer, Sheldon Marcus.PHOTO: Father Coughlin at the microphone (Associated Press)

In the mid 1980s the US discovered that the Soviets had hidden listening devices deep inside the walls of its new embassy building in Moscow, while it was still under construction. It sparked a trans-Atlantic row between the two super powers. President Reagan threatened to have the whole building pulled down. Mike Lanchin hears from Thomas Jendrysik, an American engineer stationed at the embassy, tasked with dismantling the secret Soviet equipment. (Photo: A US Marine stands guard inside the high fence surrounding the American Embassy construction site in Moscow, May 1983. Credit: Dave Martin/AP Photo)

In 1992 the vacuum cleaner manufacturer Hoover began offering free flights to British customers with every appliance they bought. The promotional campaign soon came unstuck when thousands of people took them up. Harry Cichy led the campaign to try to make the company provide the flights. He's been speaking to Susan Hulme for Witness.Photo: A cleaning lady vacuuming a red carpet. Credit: Getty Images.

On October 13th 1990, the Syrian airforce forced their most outspoken opponent in Lebanon, General Michel Aoun, to take refuge in the French embassy in Beirut, ending the last chapter of Lebanon's bitter 15-year civil war. Veteran Lebanese journalist, Hanna Anbar, remembers that day. Photo: Syrian soldiers celebrate in front of the presidential palace in east Beirut after capturing it from troops loyal to General Michel Aoun, October 13th 1990 (Credit: Nabil Ismail/AFP/Getty Images)

In October 1988 Chile held an unprecedented referendum on whether the country's ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, should remain in power. A majority of voters rejected the dictator, ending 15 years of brutal military rule. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Eugenio Garcia, who was creative director of the campaign to oust the dictator.(Photo: Getty Images)

In 1918, more than fifty million people died in an outbreak of flu, which spread all over the world in the wake of the first World War. We hear eye-witness accounts of the worst pandemic of the twentieth century.PICTURE: An American policeman wearing a mask to protect himself from the outbreak of Spanish flu. (Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

On 9 October 1986 the dissident poet was released from a prison camp on the eve of a US-Soviet nuclear summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. Irina Ratushinskaya has been speaking to Louise Hidalgo about her imprisonment, her poetry, and the day she was set free.(Photo: Irina and her husband Igor, arriving in London in December 1986. Credit: Topfoto)

In October 1966, California pop group the Beach Boys released their "pocket symphony" Good Vibrations. It's regularly named as one of the best pop songs ever written - but it came at a turning point for the band. Singer Mike Love tells Witness about recording the song.PICTURE: The Beach Boys in 1964. From left to right, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson (1944 - 1983) and Carl Wilson (1946 - 1998). (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

In 1994, a TV programme broadcast in Northern Ireland lifted the lid on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Rape help lines in Belfast and in the Republic of Ireland were inundated with calls as other victims came forward. Rebecca Kesby spoke to Chris Moore who made the programme for "Counterpoint" on UTV, "Suffer Little Children". Further investigations by Chris and his team uncovered hundreds of other cases, exposing the extent of child abuse around the world. (Photo: An Irish churchgoer holds a cross and rosary beads 2010. AFP/Getty Images)

On October 6th 1976 Thai security forces opened fire on student demonstrators in Bangkok. Dozens of students were killed and thousands were arrested. The killings heralded a new era of military rule in Thailand.Photo: Police stand guard over Thai students on a soccer field at Thammasat University, in Bangkok, Thailand. (Credit: AP Photo/Gary Mangkorn.)

In October 1982 seven people in the US died after taking, Tylenol, a painkiller which had been deliberately contaminated with cyanide. Claire Bowes has been speaking to David E Collins, the drug company executive who dealt with the aftermath of the tragedy.(Photo: Mrs. Helen Tarasiewicz, mother of Tylenol cyanide victim Theresa Tarasiewicz Janus, weeps over the casket containing her daughter"s body during graveside services at Maryhill Cemetery in Chicago Tuesday, 6 Oct 1982. Theresa, her husband Stanley Janus and Stanley"s brother Adam Janus all poisoned by cyanide from the same Tylenol bottle. Credit: Charles Knoblock/AP Photo)

In 1946, Roland Berrill and Lancelot Ware were travelling on a train when they sparked up a conversation about intelligence testing. That chance encounter sparked the high IQ club, Mensa. Rachael Gillman speaks to the society's archivist Ian Fergus about those early days.(Photo: A computer generated image of the human head and brain. Credit: Getty Images)

In 1926 Stanley Spencer, one of the most admired British painters of the twentieth century, began work on an ambitious project in the village of Burghclere near London. He'd been commissioned to fill a new chapel with images of his experiences in the First World War, at home and abroad. Vincent Dowd speaks to Spencer's daughters, Shirin and Unity Spencer, about their father and his work.Photo: Stanley Spencer in 1958.(AP)

On September 29th 1957 there was a major accident at a secret nuclear facility in the Soviet Union. Dozens of workers died and a huge cloud of radioactivity spread across the surrounding countryside. But news of the disaster was only made public decades later. Dina Newman has spoken to Zhores Medvedev, the first scientist to disclose what happened to the international community.Photo: The Mayak nuclear reprocessing plant in 2010. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency.