“I was 30 years old, and was watching TV while my wife was at work. All of the sudden, a news bulletin came up. It said ‘one of the Beatles has been shot and killed.’ I remember thinking ‘Please let it not be John.’ But it was.”

To this day, Tom still thinks that John Lennon’s death marked the end of the 60’s and the end of a generation.

The BBC website includes a section called On this Day, an archived site that offers a choice of reports drawn from the years 1950-2005 and 1939-45 and “some of the quirkier stories broadcast by BBC News since 1950.”

Witness Memories is a part of the site that collects accounts of past events from different perspectives. Besides John Lennon’s death, it collects the memories of the end of the Suez crisis and the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

David was living in West Berlin and had family in the East who he frequently visited.
“My friend dropped me off at the Eddinger Cafe on the K’damm where I met up with my parents for dinner. As we got to the main course a woman was wandering up and down outside shouting: ‘Die Mauer ist gefallt! Die Mauer ist gefallt!’ Everyone thought she was mad or having a mental breakdown - then suddenly the kitchen staff burst out of the kitchen and started saying the same thing. Everyone scrambled to get to a TV or radio or even down to the checkpoints to see what was happening,” he recalls.

The website also features images of past events. Among others, it collects pictures of the 1986 Challenger disaster and of the riots following the royal family massacre in Nepal.

Wold War 2 is a compilation of key stories “as they broke throughout the war”, from the invasion of Poland to the Nuremberg trial. It links to the BBC history section, where it is possible to find another comprehensive WW2 archive.

Every theme includes audio and video material and a relevant timeline.
Obviously it couldn’t miss some truly British features, such as a young Queen Elizabeth’s first Christmas broadcast and the report of a bedroom intruder into Buckingham palace.

To discover the content of the website and interesting news of the past, it is possible to search the archive by date, by theme and by correspondent. Trials & Inquests, Pope John Paul II and Political Scandals, everything (and everyone) that left the mark in history is filed.

E. Delaini

Published: June 22, 2007