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The History Hour
The Chindits and USAID
The History Hour
Sep 6, 2025

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week's episodes of Witness History.

The formation of an unconventional special force during the Second World War sparks a discussion about three others around the world with military historian Lucy Betteridge-Dyson.

Plus, the founding of the United States Agency for International Development, the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic 40 years ago and the first baby born after a womb transplant.

Finally, Mexican-American boxer Oscar De La Hoya's toughest test - a clash with Ghana's Ike 'Bazooka' Quartey and how the online marketplace started at a house party in Lithuania in the noughties.

The first item contains outdated and offensive language.

Contributors: Major General Orde Wingate - leader of the Chindits. Baroness Jackson - economist who influenced the founding of USAID. Cathy Offinger and Jean Louis Michel - explorers who helped find the wreck of the Titanic. Prof Pernilla Dahm-Kähler - gynaecologist who helped deliver the first baby after a womb transplant. Oscar De La Hoya - boxer nicknamed 'the Golden Boy of Boxing'. Milda Mitkutė - co-founder of Vinted.

This programme has been updated since the original broadcast to add additional context.

(Photo: Members of the Chindits in the jungle in Burma, now Myanmar. Credit: Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

More Episodes

Aug 15, 2026
The Mau Mau uprising and man-eating lions

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes focussing on Kenya.

We hear about Muthoni Kirima, one of the last Mau Mau fighters to come out of hiding and lay down her arms.

Caroline Elkins, Professor of History at Harvard University, discusses the brutality of the conflict between Kenya’s Land and Freedom Army, the British and Kenyan loyalists.

Next, when Princess Elizabeth became queen while staying at the Treetops Hotel, a lodge in the Aberdare National Park.

In 1997, scientists travelled to Kenya, in search of a cave believed to have been the den of the man-eating lions that terrorised railway workers in 1898.

Plus, we hear how Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga signed an unprecedented power-sharing deal to end a wave of violence that left more than 1,200 people dead.

And the heartwarming story of the friendship between a baby hippo and a 130-year-old giant tortoise.

Finally for our Sporting Witness story, we head to the first Ultimate Frisbee World Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1983.

Contributors: Caroline Elkins - Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. Muthoni Kirima - Field Marshall in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Frank Gillard - BBC correspondent. Thomas Gnoske - Scientist. Alan Patterson - British Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson's grandson. Maina Kiai - Chair of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights in 2008. Maini Schildt - Swedish Ultimate Frisbee player.

(Photo: Mau Mau suspects are rounded up by police outside the camp in Manyani, Kenya, 1955. Credit: Getty Images/Authenticated News)


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The Chindits and USAID

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