:00:00. > :00:00.There were celebrations in Auckland after the Rugby union Test match was
:00:07. > :00:25.drawn. In the meantime, let's bring you a programme called Witness.
:00:26. > :00:30.Hello and welcome to Witness, with me, Rebecca Jones,
:00:31. > :00:33.here at the British Library in London.
:00:34. > :00:35.We've got another five people who've experienced extraordinary moments
:00:36. > :00:41.This month on the programme, a mother who took on Argentina's
:00:42. > :00:45.military rulers to find her daughter.
:00:46. > :00:49.Paul McCartney's brother who remembers one of the Beatles'
:00:50. > :00:59.And an astronaut who survived a collision in space.
:01:00. > :01:02.But first, back in 1953, American husband and wife,
:01:03. > :01:05.Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair
:01:06. > :01:11.after being convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.
:01:12. > :01:16.Our first witness is the Rosenberg's son Robert.
:01:17. > :01:20.ARCHIVE: One of the greatest peacetime spy dramas in the nation's
:01:21. > :01:24.history reaches its climax as Julius Rosenberg
:01:25. > :01:28.and Mrs Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of transmitting secrets
:01:29. > :01:30.to Russia entered the federal building in New York
:01:31. > :01:35.The last time I saw my parents was in Sing Sing prison,
:01:36. > :01:42.just a couple of days before they were executed in June 1953.
:01:43. > :01:45.I have this very strong visceral sense of a warm and loving family.
:01:46. > :01:52.My father played word games with my brother.
:01:53. > :01:59.They were pretending like nothing was wrong,
:02:00. > :02:03.that we'd see them, like we'd see them in another few weeks.
:02:04. > :02:10.And he wanted them to acknowledge the terrible situation
:02:11. > :02:20.And so he started wailing, "one more day to live."
:02:21. > :02:23.Both my parents were children of the depression.
:02:24. > :02:27.They grew up in poverty on the lower East side of Manhattan.
:02:28. > :02:31.My father, Julius, was an electrical engineer.
:02:32. > :02:34.He was a member of the American Communist Party.
:02:35. > :02:44.My father was arrested in July of 1950, in New York City
:02:45. > :02:54.Both were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage.
:02:55. > :03:00.The government said Julius Rosenberg was a master spy who led an spiring
:03:01. > :03:04.The government said Julius Rosenberg was a master spy who led an spy ring
:03:05. > :03:07.that stole the secret of the atomic bomb and gave it to
:03:08. > :03:11.Julius was guilty of espionage, but it didn't have anything to do
:03:12. > :03:16.It's hard for me to believe that my mother didn't know
:03:17. > :03:22.But there is no credible evidence that my mother
:03:23. > :03:28.This was the great red scare, the McCarthy period.
:03:29. > :03:32.The government was saying there was this international
:03:33. > :03:35.Communist conspiracy that was out to destroy our way of life.
:03:36. > :03:40.Fear makes powerful people do very dangerous things.
:03:41. > :03:45.The trial at which they were convicted was a travesty.
:03:46. > :03:48.We now know the judge secretly communicated with the prosecution,
:03:49. > :03:55.The chief prosecution witnesses perjured themselves.
:03:56. > :03:58.The government of the United States use the death penalty,
:03:59. > :04:01.The government of the United States used the death penalty,
:04:02. > :04:05.The purpose, as one of the FBI agents put it,
:04:06. > :04:10.we didn't want them to die, we wanted them to talk.
:04:11. > :04:12.There was a worldwide movement and mass movement,
:04:13. > :04:15.even within the United States at the height of the McCarthy
:04:16. > :04:29.They were executed on June the 19th, a month after my sixth birthday.
:04:30. > :04:33.My brother just kind of hung his head.
:04:34. > :04:36.And I came in and I knew something was wrong,
:04:37. > :04:49.Even a month after the execution, I was saying, "when are we going
:04:50. > :04:53.And he'd have to remind me they were dead.
:04:54. > :04:55.My parents should not have been executed and we took
:04:56. > :05:09.My brother and I, we are marathoners.
:05:10. > :05:13.Robert Meeropol, remembering his parents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
:05:14. > :05:16.Now, back in 1967, the BBC organised a live international television
:05:17. > :05:28.They invited The Beatles to play and they came up with a new song
:05:29. > :05:31.Paul McCartney's brother Mike was in the studio
:05:32. > :05:44.This is Steve Race in The Beatles recording studio in London,
:05:45. > :05:47.where the latest Beatles record is at this moment being built up.
:05:48. > :05:53.Not just a single performance, but the whole montage of performances.
:05:54. > :05:56.None of us knew what the hell was going on, but everyone went
:05:57. > :05:59.along with it and it was just a magic thing.
:06:00. > :06:08.It was that ridiculous three, two, one...
:06:09. > :06:27.In 1967, I was in a comedy group, it was a satirical comedy,
:06:28. > :06:30.poetic word imagery group called The Scaffolds.
:06:31. > :06:34.And I used to stay with my brother in his house.
:06:35. > :06:36.So he said, there's this big thing coming up,
:06:37. > :06:42.The Our World broadcast was this extraordinary idea to link
:06:43. > :06:48.For the first time we can see right round our world from sunset
:06:49. > :06:54.In 43 control rooms all around the world, production teams
:06:55. > :06:56.are monitoring and selecting the hundreds of pictures and sounds
:06:57. > :07:00.from five continents which will combine to make
:07:01. > :07:10.And so, how do you wrap up what was happening in London
:07:11. > :07:21.John had written this thing called All You Need Is Love,
:07:22. > :07:26.We'd had the Vietnam War, Kennedy had been shot and it seemed
:07:27. > :07:28.to sum up the hopes and positive thinking of that era.
:07:29. > :07:36.That will do for the vocal backing, very nicely.
:07:37. > :07:45.Everyone was rather polite, very quiet because it was such a big
:07:46. > :07:50.Here then is final mix track take one of the song
:07:51. > :08:08.And then to actually experience the slow and the format of the song,
:08:09. > :08:10.you heard all the little bits fitting in and then
:08:11. > :08:20.It was getting better, and better and people
:08:21. > :08:28.# Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
:08:29. > :08:31.The whole thing built slowly, slow and apprehensive at first.
:08:32. > :08:34.And then into it and then John and our kid delivering the harmonies
:08:35. > :08:36.and delivering the song and then building up to the crescendo
:08:37. > :08:48.All our friends are there, Mick Jagger from the Stones,
:08:49. > :08:56.Marianne Faithfull, his girlfriend, all the cream of pop society.
:08:57. > :08:59.Everyone is on such a high, the placards are going round,
:09:00. > :09:01.the balloons, the confetti is like snow, you are
:09:02. > :09:11.And this atmosphere was electric and beautiful.
:09:12. > :09:18.And it goes to another country and then this beautiful
:09:19. > :09:31.Mike McCartney in the Beatles home town of Liverpool.
:09:32. > :09:33.For almost 20 years, the Nobel prize-winning author,
:09:34. > :09:36.Ernest Hemingway, had a house on the Caribbean island of Cuba,
:09:37. > :09:38.where he wrote some of his bestselling novels.
:09:39. > :09:42.As a young boy, Alberto Ramos worked on the estate and he later
:09:43. > :13:05.Alberto Ramos, speaking to us from Hemingway's house.
:13:06. > :13:09.Remember, you can watch Witness every month on the BBC News channel
:13:10. > :13:25.or you can catch up on all of films along with more than 1000 radio
:13:26. > :13:31.In the late 1970s, thousands of young men and women were detained
:13:32. > :13:32.in Argentina for their opposition to military rule.
:13:33. > :13:35.Among those who went missing was Ana Maria Borivali.
:13:36. > :13:42.ARCHIVE: They are called the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo,
:13:43. > :13:44.the square in the centre of Buenos Aires where
:13:45. > :13:46.they hold the same sad demonstration every week.
:13:47. > :17:24.They've all had at least one relative who's disappeared.
:17:25. > :17:27.Merta, in the offices of The Mothers Of The Disappeared.
:17:28. > :17:29.And finally, in June 1997, an unmanned supply vessel crashed
:17:30. > :17:35.The station quickly began to leak air and the astronauts on board
:17:36. > :17:49.He spoke to Witness about surviving a crash in space.
:17:50. > :17:52.Mir was a space station built by the Russians.
:17:53. > :17:58.The impression you got when you opened up the hatch
:17:59. > :18:00.and went into Mir for the first time were two fold.
:18:01. > :18:07.It was a smell, a bit like an oily garage.
:18:08. > :18:11.Maybe a little bit of must, because we did have mould on the Mir.
:18:12. > :18:12.And then the other impression is clutter.
:18:13. > :18:15.As you go through, it's basically like going into the oesophagus
:18:16. > :18:19.After about six weeks of being on the station,
:18:20. > :18:25.I'd been doing my experiments, I'm very happy, I get up on June 25.
:18:26. > :18:33.The commander and the flight engineer had been using radio
:18:34. > :18:36.control equipment to fly a cargo ship called Progress that
:18:37. > :18:39.weighs about seven tonnes into the Mir station using a TV,
:18:40. > :18:45.As I look at the TV screen, I can see the orientation
:18:46. > :18:49.is all wrong for a proper docking to take place.
:18:50. > :19:02.And Sasha, the flight engineer, says to me...
:19:03. > :19:05.And he means, the spacecraft which was joined on to the end
:19:06. > :19:07.of the station, which was at that point our lifeboat.
:19:08. > :19:11.But I understood because of the emergency in which he said it,
:19:12. > :19:16.that he meant go there to save your life.
:19:17. > :19:20.And as I float through, I feel the whole space station
:19:21. > :19:32.I'm pretty sure this may be my last breath,
:19:33. > :19:34.because I'm looking at the thin three millimetre thick
:19:35. > :19:41.aluminium walls, just waiting for them to pass.
:19:42. > :19:43.aluminium walls, just waiting for them to part.
:19:44. > :19:45.Klaxons go off when there is a pressure leak.
:19:46. > :19:47.Then I felt my ears popping, which meant in this case,
:19:48. > :19:50.the air was leaving the space station and there was a whistling
:19:51. > :19:54.After 23 minutes, if we did not think we would start
:19:55. > :20:01.Sasha comes to me and doesn't say a word.
:20:02. > :20:03.He just starts trying to remove cables
:20:04. > :20:16.Sasha looked around for a large hatch that could be put in place. As
:20:17. > :20:25.it went on, it sucked in. Because the station had been hit by the
:20:26. > :20:31.Progress, we were rolling. The batteries had given out, none of the
:20:32. > :20:37.carbon dioxide removal was working, no auction regeneration and no
:20:38. > :20:41.communication with Moscow. It was a totally dead station. This is not
:20:42. > :20:47.something you see in the movies where it gets solved instantly by
:20:48. > :20:54.some brainy chap. It probably took about six hours. We use the
:20:55. > :20:58.spacecraft fibre jets to stop the space station tumbling and rolling
:20:59. > :21:07.wonderfully, somehow after this, all of sudden the fans started to come
:21:08. > :21:15.on and the lights came on. And I said, we'd done it. How ever, the
:21:16. > :21:20.next month, the station was inoperable in any normal sense. It
:21:21. > :21:24.could just sustain our lives and nothing else. When finally the
:21:25. > :21:30.shuttle came in October, I was really, quite happy to see them. As
:21:31. > :21:36.we backed away from the Mir station, I looked at it and thought, I don't
:21:37. > :21:42.really mind if I don't ever see that again. Michael Foale, safely back on
:21:43. > :21:47.Earth. That is it from Witness this month. , Lucy will be here at the
:21:48. > :21:54.British library to guide you through another five moments in history. But
:21:55. > :21:55.from me, Rebecca Jones and the rest of the Witness team, thanks for
:21:56. > :22:21.watching and goodbye. The latest live upstate will take
:22:22. > :22:25.you to the rest of the weekend, give you a look at the start of next week
:22:26. > :22:27.which is looking unsettled, which means if you want rain on the
:22:28. > :22:28.garden, there is