With me, tanya beckett. I am here at the British Library to guide you through another five extraordinary moments from the recent past. We will meet a man who was the first to walk the entire length of the great wall of china, a scientist who sealed herself inside a giant greenhouse for an environmental experiment and a cuban musician who remembers recording one of the countrys most successful albums. But first, in september 1977, anti apartheid activist steve biko, leader of the black Consciousness Movement in south africa, died in police custody. Weeks earlier, he had been arrested. Witness has spoken to bikos friend, peterjones, who was arrested with him. I miss my friend steve biko and i am forever in his debt. Steve biko is one of the people that originated the new generation of Young Political minded black people. The black Consciousness Movement. We believe in our country there will be no minority, no majority, there willjust be people. And those people will have the same status before the law and they will have the same rights before the law. The apartheid government ensured there was no resistance against its doctrines and against its policies. There was a roadblock and they then searched the car. They found an identity document which was mine, they then said, who is peter jones . And i said, thats me. He said, oh, and who are you, big man . Thats now steve. And steve said, i am steve bantu biko. And we were then locked up together in one cell. The next morning we started getting an uneasy feeling that there were now more police and in a convoy of three cars we sped towards Port Elizabeth. In Port Elizabeth was the headquarters of the Security Police for that region. The building has been converted into a block of flats. Steve biko was being walked to his death along with very steve biko was being walked to his death along this very corridor, a man poised to fill the void left behind after mandela was jailed. We got taken up to the fifth floor and we were manacled each to a separate window. One of the senior police, a major, came in and said, now i can confirm that you are officially being detained under section six of the terrorism act. That is the act in which you literally disappear. They separated us, i only had a chance to shout steves name and that was the last time i saw steve alive. Three weeks and three days later, i had just heard a lot of commotion, many, many people singing protest songs, the cell next to mine was being filled with many people. Then this young man told me that they have just returned from the funeral is steve biko and that was the first time that i heard about the death of steve bi ko. I went to my mat that was my bed and i then sat there. With. To me, it was like a huge hole in my soul, just inconsolability which even today would make me weep at unexpected moments. The police said the leader of the black Consciousness Movement had lost his life by accident when his head struck a wall while he was being restrained. Steve bikos family believe he was very glad the wall quite steve bikos family believe he was thrown at the wall quite deliberately by the police officers. Steve bikos death and the brutality of it highlighted like no other event at the time the extent to which the Apartheid Regime would go to protect itself. Peterjames remembering his friend, steve biko. In september 1991, an ambitious environmental experiment was launched in the arizona desert. Eight researchers aim to prove that human beings could produce everything they needed to survive in an artificial environment. Biosphere 2. Botanist linda leigh was one of the eight who spent two years sealed inside a giant greenhouse. I was drawn to a group of people who had a vision to build a biosphere and it was that Magnetic Pull of having a vision, working towards it no matter what, that pulled me into it. At dawn tomorrow, a unique experiment begins. Biosphere 2, the prototype space colony in arizona, is being sealed up, with four men and four women inside. It is an attempt to discover whether human beings can design a completely artificial world and whether they can live in it. Biosphere 2 was built to be a completely separate world from biosphere 1, which is the earth, and in making its separate, we have a glass covering that means that all of the air inside of the biosphere is created by what is inside of it. So we had a couple of acres to grow all of our own food, we had to grow our own oxygen. We had to get along with each other, do the research, keep the mechanical systems going. When we finally got in, closed the door, looked outside from inside, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief because we had done it. I was responsible for the health and the management and the research being done in the wilderness terrestrial biomes which were the savanna grassland, the desert and the rainforest. I think i had a lot of my own ego tied up in the wilderness systems that i was managing. In retrospect, i didnt like that person so much. The worst experience i would say is our relationships with each other and this became very strained during the latter half of the biosphere. It was kind of a microcosm of the earth and that is one of the things that we all have to learn to do much, much, much better. Even if we have really different opinions about something, being able to speak civilly with each other about that, we did not get to that point for biosphere 2. But there is hope for biosphere one. The other thing that i learned personally which was so tangible was being actually a part of the system, not being apart from it. Just being a part of it. Just another part in addition to, you know, the plans and the animals and the soil microbes. There is linda, the human. Their experiment is complete, the eight project members emerged a little thinner but all in good health after two years spent in an elaborate greenhouse. It was really the first time in two years on that day that i stepped out of the biosphere that i did not see the bars in my vision looking up into the sky. And it felt infinite. If i look at the whole mission of biosphere two for those two years, i will say, yes, it was a success. We learnt a lot when we have problems, we learned why we had problems. I miss a lot of things about being inside the biosphere. I miss knowing well my oxygen comes from and being a part of growing i miss knowing where all my oxygen comes from and being a part of growing the oxygen by growing the plants. I just missed it. Period. I miss the lifestyle of going to work in the morning, knowing that i was creating a world that supported me and i supported it. It is a beautiful life. It was a very, very beautiful life. And linda still works in botany down the road from the biosphere two site. During the second world war, tens of thousands of british women and girls volunteered for farm work to produce vital food supplies. Even with rationing, britain was in danger of running out of food because of blockades and bombardment. Mona mcleod was just 17 years old when she joined the Womens Land Army in rural scotland. I can look back on the war and know what i did was worth doing. Creating food was essential and we did not starve. Which was what hitler hoped he do, make us starve. Archive down on the farm, the land girls are doing their bit and a bit more and you should see their curls. I was 17, i was studying, i thought, to go to cambridge and i knew nothing about the land army. My father appeared one day and said, mona, i want to talk to you. And he said, i believe i always have done about the importance of the Higher Education of women but first we should concentrate on winning the war. And he said, i had arranged that you should join the Womens Land Army and work on the University Farm at york, but i have discovered it is surrounded by the raf so perhaps it is not a good idea. Didnt make clear to me why, but my father was a world expert on venereal disease. So, ijust said, yes, daddy, and a week later also, i had left school and was on a train for scotland. The war has taken most of the younger men away from scotlands farms, leaving the farmers without enough help to produce of vital food supplies. Help to produce our vital food supplies. They treated me very nicely and it was a dairy farm, about 65 cows, and the first week i was sent into the dairy and i was told to handle the difficult cows and i am sorry to say that at the end of the week, they had all gone dry. And dairyman said he thought i ought to be sent to the stables. Fortunately, i loved horses and the horses and i got on very much better. The work was very hard and we had no protective clothing and the uniform we had was absolutely useless for keeping you warm in winter so the first winter i had chilblains on my ears and my hands and my knees and my heels and my toes. The land girls i knew all worked quite separately on different farms, i never met a girl who worked in a gang. All the girls i got to know were isolated, totally and absolutely one girl on a farm and the nearest girl to me ever was four miles away. It was definitely lonely. Women have proved themselves able to undertake the most skilled work. All thanks and honour to the land girls who are doing this magnificent job. I never saw one moment thought of giving up. I did not expect the war to go on for five years but the idea of stopping was unthinkable, you just went on. You went on and on. Mona mcleod at her home in edinburgh. Remember, you can watch witness every month on the bbc news channel or you can catch up on all of our films along with more than 1000 radio programmes in our online archive. Just go to bbc. Co. Uk witness. In september 1985, Three Friends finished an epic trek along the great wall of china. They relied on local villagers for food and water as they documented every step of the walk, part of which that had as they documented every step of the wall, part of which that had not been walked on the years. Yaohui dong spoke to witness about their journey. Translation often when i touched the stones, i would have this feeling that i was having a conversation with people from ancient times. The people who carved the stone out of the mountain and placed it on the wall, it was very moving. We set off on may the 4th, 1984 from shanhai pass, which is on the seacoast in the east. It took us 508 days. We walked over some of chinas most famous mountains and through many deserts, including the gobi. We walked across the whole northern part of the country. In the early 1980s, i was an electrician, installing high voltage power lines. But in my spare time i was a writer, mostly poems and essays. You could see the wall from my house and i often worked near it, installing electricity lines. I found it really inspiring and i would always think, how did they actually build it . And the oldest part of it is more than 2000 years old and even the new part are 500 or 600 years old. It was built to keep out invaders from the north. At the time, there were not too many books written about, it so i had the idea, if i could walk it and document every step, well, that would be a great contribution to our history. Also the First Complete set of footprints across the great wall would be mine, just thinking about it made my heart beat faster. So i got together with my best friend from school, wu deyu, and we planned our adventure. Then another guy, zhang yuanhua, joined us. Wu deyu was very poetic and had an artistic temperament. Zhang yuanhua had been a soldier for many years and it was very obvious that had. I was somewhere in the middle. These differences between us led to quite a few arguments. Every day we endured fatigue, thirst and the winter freezing temperatures. But the biggest challenge was psychological. It was the same monotonous drill day after day. The real problem was water. We would have to go downhill to find it and carry as much back up as we could, which would take several hours and a lot of energy so we drank as little as possible. There were quite a lot of villages along the great wall, they always supported us. Even when they can not afford any meat, they would share the best food that they had with us. You couldnt rely on the map, in many places the terrain was extremely dangerous and only locals knew the safe routes. When we finally finished the expedition and arrived atjiayu pass, we were swamped by the press. Everyone was saying you are heroes, this is a great accomplishment. It felt pretty good at the time, but we decided fame wasnt really consistent with our ideals. We wanted to keep our feet firmly on the ground. Yaohui dong, who has dedicated his life to studying the history of the wall. In 1996, a group of musicians gathered in havana a for unique recording session of traditional cuban songs. 0ur witness, musician barbarito torres, remembers the recording sessions that resulted in that massive hit album the buena vista social club. And the album, buena vista social club, went on to sell millions of copies worldwide. Thats all from this edition of witness here at the British Library. We will be back next month for another five accounts of extraordinary moments in history. But, for now, from me and the rest of the witness team, goodbye. Hello again. Its typical autumn fare over the next few days. The start of a new month, wind, sunshine and rain. These weather systems tracking rain in from the atlantic, deepening low pressure strengthening winds as well. Quite a contrast in temperatures. Clear skies in scotland, not far from freezing this morning. Much milder weather with rain and drizzle further south, low cloud as well. Rain on the way for the great scottish run after a chilly start. Temperatures lifting but winds picking up as well. Heavy rain across western scotland as the rain moves in and east across the country through the morning, some rain will drizzle at times in england and wales. A glimmer of sunshine, the best in the afternoon across northern ireland. Improving across some other Western Areas later in the day. Quite a muggy field across england and wales. A windy day across the uk. Winds picking up in wembley for the nfl. Drizzly rain at times. You can see the saints vs dolphins game on bbc two later on today. This rain finally clearing away in the evening across eastern parts of england. Skies clearing away from showers in the north west. Seeing whether changing. Warmer, tropical, muggy air giving way to a north westerly winds overnight and into monday. Pulling in something a bit colder. This is the former hurricane maria, sliding through the english channel. A big impact on monday because of the low pressure to the north. Winds Even Stronger by monday morning. 50 mph for rush hour on monday. 60 mph quite possible across some western and northern parts of scotland. Accompanied by a lot of showers as well, quite misty weather for a while. Further south, wind is not as strong. Not much rain, a decent day for the south east. Chilly in the wind, temperatures a bit lower on monday. Seeing rain clipping the far south west of england in the afternoon. This is what is left of hurricane maria. Rain running through much of england, through the channel, gone by monday. We still have north westerly winds. By this stage, not as strong, thankfully. Some sunshine around, probably not as many showers. Quite a chill in the air, 13 1a fairly typical. High pressure on the scene in the week, but not likely to hang around. Getting squeezed out by this low pressure, bringing wind and rain back to the north west. This is bbc news. Im tom donkin. 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