BBC World Service - Witness History

Pope John Paul I’s sudden death

Cardinal Albino Luciani became Pope John Paul I in 1978. He died 33 days later

In 1959, Pope John XXIII announced a council of all the world's bishops and cardinals

After the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI

In 1993, Burundi’s first democratically elected President was murdered

The US space shuttle Columbia broke up on its way back to Earth on 1 February 2003

Two former Prime Ministers describe how they split Czechoslovakia in two in 1993

Mordechai Chertoff was the editor on the Palestine Post when it was bombed in 1948

It took Karlheinz Brandenburg and his team more than a decade to perfect MP3 technology

Using archive recordings, Alex Last tells the story of Britain's most famous hangman

In 2010, a plane carrying the Polish president, crashed and killed everyone on board