Description
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Barbara Waibel, author of a book on the Hindenburg and Director of Archives at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany. She tells us about the history of airships.
We begin with some remarkable archive of the Hindenburg airship disaster in 1937. Then British scientist Jonathan Shanklin describes how he discovered the hole in the ozone layer in 1985.
In the second half of the programme we hear from a NASA scientist who worked on the Voyager space probe which took the famous 'Pale Blue Dot' photo of Earth. A physicist from Quebec remembers when a solar flare plunged the Canadian province into darkness. And we hear the exciting and dangerous story of the invention of the wingsuit.
Contributors:
Barbara Waibel - Author and Director of Archives at the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
Jonathan Shanklin - Scientist who discovered the hole in the ozone layer.
Candice Hansen - NASA scientist.
Aja Hruska - Physicist from Quebec.
Jari Kuosma - Inventor of the commercial wingsuit.
(Photo: Hindenburg airship. Credit: Corbis via Getty Images)
We hear about the half-clay, half-grass exhibition match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Argentinean creative entrepreneur and tennis fan Pablo del Campo tells Uma Doraiswamy how he made the iconic court possible in May 2000. Fiona Skille, professor of Sports History at Glasgow...
Published 11/16/24
We hear about Polish war hero Irena Sendler who saved thousands of Jewish children during the World War Two.
Expert Kathryn Atwood explains why women’s stories of bravery from that time are not as prominent as men’s.
Plus, the invention of ‘Baby’ – one of the first programmable computers. It was...
Published 11/09/24