Witness History: Archive 2014

In December 1919, the first woman took her seat in the British parliament. Her name was Lady Nancy Astor and she had been born in America. Witness History listens back through the BBC archives, and talks to her grandson David Astor about his memories of her. (Photo:American-born Nancy Witcher Langhorne, or Viscountess Astor, at the declaration of the poll in Plymouth which made her Britain's first woman member of parliament. Credit: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

California students staged a sit-in which became the model for student activism across the USA in the 1960s. It all started over who could, or could not, use a small strip of land outside Berkeley's front gates. Lynne Hollander Savio, who took part in the sit-in, remembers the mood of the time. (Photo: The leader of the Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio. Credit: AP)

Throughout much of 1967 striking workers and students filled the streets of the colony. They were inspired by the Cultural Revolution in China and wanted an end to British rule. Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, now the president of Hong Kong's Legislative Council, was then an idealistic young student. Hear his story. (Photo: Left wing workers put up Anti British posters in Hong Kong outside Government House. Credit: Central Press/Getty Images)

In November 1993, one of Bosnia's most famous landmarks, the old Ottoman bridge in Mostar, was destroyed by Croat guns in the Bosnian war. Built by the Ottomans in the 16th Century, the bridge was a symbol of Bosnia's multicultural past. We talk to Eldin Palata, who filmed the destruction of the bridge; and to local journalist Mirsad Behram about what the bridge meant to the people of Mostar. Photograph: the gap where Mostar's historic bridge had stood, November 1993. Credit: AP

For decades, Australia's countryside was ravaged by billions of rabbits. So in the 1950s, the government released the disease myxomatosis to kill off the rabbit plague. We hear from farmer, Bill McDonald, who remembers Australia's battle against the bunnies. (Photo: Rabbits around a waterhole at the myxomatosis trial enclosure on Wardang Island in 1938. Credit: National Archives of Australia)

In November 1974, West German band Kraftwerk released their seminal album Autobahn. They would go on to become one of the world's most influential bands. Witness listens to BBC archive interviews with Kraftwerk frontman Ralf Hütter and former drummer Wolfgang Flür, along with Kraftwerk biographer David Buckley. (Photo: Kraftwerk perform Autobahn during the Kraftwerk Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012. Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

On 25 November 1970 the acclaimed Japanese author and film-maker Yukio Mishima killed himself in a very public way. Listen to his friend and biographer Harry Scott Stokes remembering the man and his beliefs. (Photo: Yukio Mishima with some of his young followers. Credit: AFP)

In 1935 a new school opened in India. The Doon School went on to produce some of the country's leading figures including former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and author Vikram Seth. We hear from one of the first pupils, award-winning journalist George Verghese.

The flamboyant and eccentric gay writer and raconteur died on 21 November, 1999. He was on a visit to England from his home in New York - a city that he loved. Hear from his biographer Tim Fountain, about the man who became a celebrity after his memoir The Naked Civil Servant became a bestseller. Photo:Quentin Crisp in 1980. Copyright: BBC.

In November 1945 the first major war crimes trials in history opened in the German city of Nuremberg. Witness talks to the only surviving American prosecutor at the trials, Benjamin Ferencz, who helped unearth evidence of mass murder by the Nazi mobile death squads and prosecuted them. (Photo: Chief prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz presents evidence during the Einsatzgruppen (death squads) trial. Ferencz is flanked by German lawyers for two of the defendants. Credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Benjamin Ferencz)