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The History Hour
Norway’s sushi contribution and Laurel and Hardy’s Christmas
The History Hour
Dec 20, 2025

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.

We learn about how a Norwegian businessman brought salmon sushi to Japan in the 1980s.

Our guest is cookbook author Nancy Singleton Hachisu, who tells us more about the history of sushi in Japan and around the world.

We hear about the first opera written for TV in 1950s America and how U.S Marshalls used fake NFL tickets to capture some of Washington DC’s most wanted.

Plus, how disability rights campaigners in India led to a change in the law in 1995 and when Scotland played hockey in Germany during the cold war.

Finally, the story of when Laurel and Hardy spent Christmas at an English country pub.

Contributors:

Bjørn-Eirik – Norwegian businessman who brought salmon sushi to Japan

Nancy Singleton Hachisu – cookbook author

Archive of Gian Carlo Menotti – Italian composer

Stacia Hylton – former U.S Marshall

Javed Abidi – Indian disability rights campaigner

Archive of customers at The Bull Inn – the pub that Laurel and Hardy visited in 1953

Valerie Sinclair – member of Scotland's hockey team who played West Germany in 1961

(Photo: Japanese demonstration to Norwegian royal family. Credit: Bjørn-Eirik Olson)

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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Norway’s sushi contribution and Laurel and Hardy’s Christmas

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