In short
Podcast Summary: The History Hour - The Largest Dinosaur and Creating Miffy
Overview
- Podcast Title: The History Hour
- Episode Title: The Largest Dinosaur and Creating Miffy
- Host: Max Pearson
- Air Date: [Insert Date Here]
- Description: This episode features various historical narratives, including the discovery of the largest dinosaur, the creation of the children's character Miffy, and key political events such as the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Key Topics Covered
Discovery of the Patagotitan
- Guest: Dr. Diego Pol, paleontologist.
- Background:
- In 2012, a shepherd in Patagonia, Argentina, discovered a gigantic dinosaur bone.
- The bone was identified as belonging to a new species, later named *Patagotitan mayorum*.
- Significance:
- The dinosaur was approximately 40 meters long and weighed around 77 tonnes, estimated to be the largest dinosaur ever discovered.
- The excavation yielded about 150 bones from six different gigantic dinosaurs.
- Insights from Dr. Diego Pol:
- The discovery was a "fantastic" moment in paleontology, representing a significant leap in understanding dinosaur skeletal structure.
- Titanosaurs were likely herd animals that needed vast amounts of food due to their size.
The Creation of Miffy
- Guest: Dick Bruna, Dutch author and illustrator (archive contribution).
- Background:
- Miffy, the beloved children's character, was created in 1955 by Dick Bruna.
- Artistic Approach:
- Utilized simple shapes and bright primary colors, aiming for accessibility for young children.
- Initially faced criticism from parents who preferred traditional children's books.
- Cultural Impact:
- Miffy has been translated into over 50 languages and remains popular globally, generating significant merchandise revenue.
The Impeachment of Bill Clinton
- Guest: Joe Lockhart, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton.
- Context:
- In 1999, President Clinton faced impeachment after admitting to lying about an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
- Key Events:
- Lockhart described the political turmoil during the impeachment process, emphasizing that it was more about political maneuvering than the personal scandal itself.
- The vote to impeach occurred in the House of Representatives, leading to a trial in the Senate.
Birth of Electronic Books
- Guest: Greg Newby, CEO of Project Gutenberg.
- Historical Context:
- The concept of electronic books (e-books) was pioneered by Michael Hart, who created Project Gutenberg in 1971.
- Significance:
- Hart's vision was to make literature freely available online, which laid the foundation for the modern e-book industry.
Saadi Gaddafi in Italian Football
- Context:
- The episode includes a segment on Saadi Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, who played for Perugia in Serie A.
- Personal Accounts:
- Former teammates Jay Bothroyd and Zeljko Kalac shared insights into their experiences with Saadi, highlighting his unique lifestyle and the political ramifications of his family name.
Key Takeaways
- The episode showcases a diverse range of historical moments, from groundbreaking paleontological discoveries to cultural phenomena in children's literature.
- It encapsulates discussions on the intersections of personal and political turmoil, exemplified by the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the media's portrayal of Saadi Gaddafi.
- The narrative structure of the podcast emphasizes firsthand accounts, providing listeners with an immersive experience of historical events.
Conclusion In this episode of *The History Hour*, Max Pearson weaves together fascinating stories that not only inform but also inspire reflection on how past events shape our current understanding of history, culture, and politics.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:40We did something that no one else had ever done. There was such a excitement and energy about this moment. It opened the door for everything that rapidly followed. Witness history. History as told by the people who were there. I was walking in space, the first man ever to do so. I felt almost insignificant, like a tiny ant compared to the immensity of the universe. Witness History from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for Witness History wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
1:16Hello and welcome to the History Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there. This week's contributors who've added to the Witness History Archive include the family behind the Thunderbirds, first broadcast in the 1960s. I love Lady Penelope because she was a female warrior. She was a female icon, somebody that my mother created. And so she wanted to make the secret agent a female. Plus, we look back at the impeachment of President Clinton in 1999. We've also got some key cultural moments, including the birth of electronic books. Right away I said, holy cow, this is what computers are good for.
1:56They're not just good for computing and census taking and the historic things, but they're also going to be useful for literature. And the creator of the children's character, Miffy. I remember when I went with my books to library or to whatever there was, mothers and children came to me. The mothers didn't like it at all. That's all coming up later. But first, in 2012, a shepherd uncovered a bone belonging to a new species of dinosaur on a ranch in Patagonia in Argentina. And the new species, Patagotitan, was huge, 40 metres long, 20 metres tall. Rachel Naylor has spoken to Dr Diego Pohl, a paleontologist who led the dig.
2:40I'm here in Patagonia, in the southern part of South America, because a few years ago, a man looking for one of his lost sheep found a simply gigantic bone sticking out of the rock, a bone that was going to astonish science. That man was shepherd Aurelio Hernandez, and he found that bone in 2012, near La Fletcher, about 250 kilometres west of the city of Trelew in Argentina. The owner of the farm, Alba Mayo, rang the Museum of Paleontology, a key DO for Vuglio. The museum gets calls like this all the time. And more often than not, it's not important. Or it's not even a fossil. You learn to be, you know, cautious with reports.
3:24We probably get between 10 and 15 reports per year, right? And, you know, you have a list and you sort of make a priority list and you, you know, go and check it out. We weren't super, super excited when we heard the report. We were busy with another project, so we didn't go for almost a year. So the landowner called again. And he said, like, you're not coming, you know, or waiting for you. OK, yeah, sure, we'll put together a small team to go and check it out. That's paleontologist Dr Diego Pol. Later that year, the museum sent a small group to inspect the site, a sheep herding ranch in Chibut province.
4:07They saw, yeah, it's a fairly big bone sticking out of the ground, like a titanosaur, you know. Maybe we should come back and, you know, start digging to see if it is a, you know, a fragment of a bone or a complete bone or more than a complete bone, right? So then we put together another team, a little bit bigger and with a little more time and tools. And they went back and they started opening the quarry. And as soon as they started opening, they saw that big bone was at the tip of the femur, like right at the knee. And they saw it continue, you know, and it takes a while to dig a big bone like this.
4:52So they spent one entire week digging that single bone. After they finished digging that bone, they realized it was a gigantic femur. likely the largest dinosaur bone ever found. So that was a big deal. And if Diego thought that that was a big deal? While they were digging and exposing this femur, they realised that there were other bones. So we then put another team, bigger team with more time and more tools and so on. And that's when the really, really exciting news appeared because, you know, this femur that the landowner found was just the tip of the iceberg. This site is massive. We ended up collecting 150 bones of six gigantic dinosaurs that died in this particular place.
5:47And we continue organising expedition after expedition. We ended up staying at that farm for 18 months. Colleagues from all over the world came to help us. alongside his colleague Dr. Jose Luis Carbacchido Diego led the dig using jackhammers, shovels and even bulldozers to unearth the skeletons and the most exciting part wasn't just the sheer size and quantity of the bones it was the fact they believed it was a whole new species oh it's fantastic it's fantastic it was very entertaining very exciting because every day there was a new bone appearing right
6:31We just found another bone right here. We wasn't expecting it at all. We just started digging and finding it. And one of the really important things of this finding is that we ended up collecting bones that represent about 70 % of the skeleton of this new species. And this is not the only really, really large dinosaur. There were other ones, like Argentinosaurus, also from Argentina, from Patagonia. But there were only five bones known from that specimen. So we now have the entire body plan. We know how the forelimits build, the hindlimits build, the backbone, the tail, the neck. And it was like completing a puzzle, you know.
7:17In 2014, Diego and the museum announced their findings to the world. That was crazy. I mean, we were like four people at the museum dealing with the press, you know, calls, requests, you know, radio interviews, TV. We just didn't have time to, you know, take every single call that we got. It was exhausting, to be honest. Scientists in Argentina have discovered bones they believe could have belonged to the largest dinosaurs ever to have walked the earth. In the plains of Patagonia, Argentinian researchers made the biggest discovery of their lives, quite literally. Some of the largest dinosaur bones ever discovered.
8:00If you really want to know what a really gigantic dinosaur looks like, this quarry here has the potential to answer that question, and that's really exciting for us. As well as all of the TV interviews, a photo of Diego lying next to the gigantic thigh bone was also beamed around the world. It's really impressive. When you stand by one of these bones, you really feel tiny. By measuring the length and circumference of the thigh bone, they calculated the dinosaur, a type of titanosaur, weighed 77 tonnes, the equivalent to 14 African elephants.
8:41titanosaurs include the largest of the four-legged animals with a big belly and a long tail and a super long neck and a small head right these are herbivorous dinosaurs we know that titanosaurs were bulk feeders they were not very selective they needed a lot a lot of food and they couldn't afford to be selective. They were eating whatever they found. They migrated, which makes sense because, you know, how much food you need to feed a giant like that, they would have, you know, devastated the forest. We also know that titanosaurs form a breeding colony and each nest was, you know, a small hole in the ground with maybe 20 or 30 eggs.
9:30Eggs can be big, you know, nearly the size of a football and they have a very thick eggshell, probably like 10 times the thickness of a chicken egg. In 2017, the dinosaur was named the Patagatitan mayorum, after Patagonia and the Mayo family who owned the farm where it was found. Here's Alba Mayo. I don't have many sheep, but I do have dinosaurs. We're surprised and shocked.
10:05Aurelio Hernandez died a few years after his discovery. He never knew the bone he found belonged to the largest dinosaur in the world. You can visit both a replica of the skeleton of the Patica Titan, as well as some of the real bones at the Museum of Paleontology, Acidio Ferrucnio. It was fantastic. I mean, it was one of the best moments in my professional life. I think it was really, really interesting how, you know, this project brought together many, many, many people. And it was a wonderful experience. And then in 2016, we exhibited a replica, a full-size replica of this animal, both in Trilu and also in New York at the American Museum.
10:48So it was great that in a time frame of four years we were able to do all that. And we're very proud of that and certainly very happy. Dr. Diego Paul was speaking to Rachel Naylor, who doesn't like a good dinosaur story. And there have been some really good ones. Daria Dankina is a paleontologist from the Nature's Research Center in Vilnius, Lithuania. But today she's joining us from Pisa in Italy. Welcome. Patagotitan was a whopper and a significant find. But what have been the most significant moments in the evolution of our understanding of dinosaurs? Yeah, I think I would like to share one of the moments because I visited that amazing Dinosaurs Footcreens place by my own a few years ago.
11:34It located in Portugal near the holy city of Fatima, about three, four hours drive north of capital of Lisbon. And these days it's a protected area open both for visitors and for us, for scientists. But until 1994, when the first footprints were discovered, it was actually a working limestone quarry. Two years later only, in 1996, the site officially opened to the public. It covers roughly 60 ,000 square meters, a huge, huge area, and contains hundreds of individual sauerpods footprint. But the real highlight is two incredibly well-preserved trackways. One of them is 142 meters long and the other one 147.
12:30These are very big animals. And following the trackways of footprints has taught us about how they moved around and how they behaved in groups and so forth. But when did we first know that dinosaurs had existed? When were the first fossils that proved that found? Oh my goodness, if we would jump so, so far away in the beginning, as I remember, probably the first dinosaur that ever, ever appeared, it would be dated back in the Mesozoic era, the beginning of it. And the size of that dinosaur probably would be similar something to the modern, let's say, chicken. And we've learned all of this by digging down through layers of what was originally sediment and soil and became rocks and then the dinosaur bones that were buried in them became fossils.
13:20We've learned all of this simply by digging down through the earth to the past. Actually, it's up to which evidence we're talking about, because some of them were hidden very, very deep under the surface. But some of them would be easily reachable above it. So, for example, in Portugal, cliffs next to the Atlantic Ocean. You can just take your dog and go for a walk along the ocean. and sometimes the bones just popping up next to your legs. So you don't need to dig it somewhere, somewhere deep. It's up to which part of anatomical we are talking about. Indeed, and also we've had to learn through fossil evidence how dinosaurs reproduced during their many, many millions of years on the planet.
14:15Oh, that's also a fantastic question because we will jump to the other cool evidence of dinosaurs' existence about the X nest, right? And probably one of the, maybe not the oldest one, but at least a nest which I saw in Portugal as well. In this place, a nest of fossilized X together with few embryons was found in 1991, long time ago, right? And researchers found more than 100 eggs belonging to a meat-eater's dinosaurs known as Laurinionosaurus, which was given the name after the place where it was found. And at that time, in 1991, it was the oldest dinosaur nest ever recorded. And this amazing found transformed the small coastal town into one of Europe's most important windows in the dinosaur group.
15:17Most dinosaurs, they reproduced with eggs, as we know. Unfortunately, you know that eggshells are super fragile, according to the chemical composition. So we cannot find, of course, all of them. It's not possible. That was the paleontologist Daria Dankina. Now, in 1965, a groundbreaking children's show using cutting-edge puppets first blasted onto television screens in Britain. Thunderbirds was set in the future and involved the Tracy family whizzing around the world and sometimes into space to rescue people from impossible situations and evil villains. And they used all sorts of fantastic flying machines, boats, submarines and rockets.
16:02Millions of young boys and girls, myself included, were avid fans. Rena Stanton-Charmer has been hearing from the daughter of the Thunderbirds creators. Five, four, three, two, one. Thunderbirds are go. I remember them saying, we've got a big hit series. They came up with the idea and I could feel the excitement around them. I started to be a witness to what they were doing and how they were doing it. And I know I was the first person they told, because there were no mobile phones in those days, so they couldn't text anyone. My mother created the characters. She was really excited and said to my dad, look, I know that we want to do live action movies, but this is an opportunity and we should really grab it.
16:58And my dad was very much on the technical end, so they were both a magic team. That's Dee Anderson recalling how that magic team, consisting of her parents, Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, were the brains behind Thunderbirds. Set in 2065, it followed the antics of secret organisation International Rescue, their mission to save humanity. It was manned by former astronaut Geoff Tracy and his five sons, who travelled in futuristic rockets, satellites and submarines from their remote base, Tracy Island. The vehicles were designed by engineering whiz Brains. And of course, they were helped by secret agent Lady Penelope, voiced by Dee's mum Sylvia.
17:52Lady Penelope was driven around in her bright pink six-wheeled Rolls-Royce by her chauffeur Parker. International Rescue, Lady Penelope speaking. Require your assistance. Man with photographic records of Thunderbird 1 proceeding along M1 motorway in your direction. Over. Mobile Control, FAB. Oh dear, how inconvenient. You called, m 'lady? Yes, Parker. Get the Rolls Royce. We are going for a little drive. There Lady Penelope is in the first episode called Trapped in the Sky, produced by AP Films. Wearing pink pearls and a powder blue trouser set, she was always dressed to impress with her signature coiffured blonde bob.
18:45Dee was just a young girl when she sat down to watch that programme with her sisters as it debuted across Britain in black and white in September 1965. 65. You know, it was mind-blowing. I'd seen Lady Penelope come to life at the studio because she was based on my mum, actually, and my eyes, apparently, my mother said, because I had huge eyes when I was young. And so everything that Mary Turner had sculpted, she loved, except for the eyes. So she stole my eyes, she said. I love Lady Penelope because she was a female warrior. She was a female icon, somebody that my mother created. And so she wanted to make the secret agent a female.
19:25I mean, they had that feeling about the success of the series from that very first moment. Dee got involved with decisions about Lady Penelope's wardrobe as she shopped with her mum in high-end department stores. They were looking for fabrics which would be turned into costumes. We used to go to Liberties and Dickens and Jones. So we'd go to wig creations for the wigs and Lady Penelope was the only one who had real hair. And she also had a real mink coat. I mean, I spoke to Mary Turner, who sculpted her the other day. She's 92. And she said to me that my mother really concentrated on Lady Penelope more than any of the other characters.
20:04And I think as a result of that, she knew that she was going to really kick ass. So I think she knew that she had to do something special with her. It was an iconic sort of thing, having a female secret agent. Thunderbirds was filmed using a pioneering technique called supermarionation. with thin wires which controlled the puppet's movements. But Dee's father was not a big fan, as he explained on BBC Radio in 2008. I'm Gerry Anderson. I'm the guy who made Thunderbirds using those dreadful puppets that wouldn't do anything other than become a damn nuisance. It's been enormously successful. As we speak, it's being transmitted in this country, in Australia and most parts of the world.
20:51It was aired in over 60 countries. Gerry's frustration was down to the limited movements of the puppets. And actually, what he really wanted was to make Hollywood blockbusters. But he must have been proud of its success. Six million viewers regularly tuned in to watch in the UK alone. Conversations at dinner time would often turn to the show. and Dee remembers visiting the studio 20 miles outside of London. It was like a Hollywood movie. So they would be sitting talking with other writers about explosions, vehicles, the atmosphere of that particular episode. My mother had a big Hollywood aspiration.
21:35My dad too, but they ended up on the Slough Trading Estate. Very glamorous. Very glam. As you walked in, there were my parents' two offices that I used to sit sometimes. On the right-hand side was the recording booth, so I used to go in on a Sunday to record and peek through the window. They had, you know, very big names, like, you know, Nicholas Parsons. And then you walk round, and then there's the paint shop on the right, sculpting shop on the left. You'd go into the wardrobe department. People were making clothes on their machines. And then you'd walk round, and it would open out into the amazing shooting stage.
22:15Everyone wanted to watch the action. I remember the smell of the Mars Bar factory, which was literally next door. And we used to have Mars Bars delivered so that we wouldn't complain about the smell. So whenever I smell Mars Bars now, I think of the studio. You know, it was grey walls on the outside, but inside was the magic. They had 100 people working for them, all very dedicated. And they became experts in their field, with several crew members going on to work on Star Wars. Real explosives were often used on set and staff were very resourceful. Nothing held them back, but one day that would get them into deep water.
22:55Baby alligators were brought in and there was going to be a sequence. And what happened was they put them in warm water because they wanted them to be comfortable, but they fell asleep. So they decided that they would try and prod them a bit, but they didn't wake up. So somebody suggested to give them very, very tiny little electric shocks, like ripples in the water. And somebody reported them to the RSPCA. And this guy arrived. And my mom said, Oh, no, we're not hurting them. Honestly, we're, we're just trying to get them to move because what the sequence would you like to come and watch the filming?
23:29So he said, Yes, I would. So he came in. And he was so mesmerized by the filming. He loved it. And he said, What voltage are you using? And they said, 12. He said, Yeah, well, you could increase that to 24, because they've got very thick hides. Can you imagine that happening now? No. And here's a clip from the episode called Attack of the Alligators.
24:01Part of the magic formula behind Thunderbird's huge success lay in one ingredient created by Sylvia. She said, you know, you have to make people relate, Otherwise, they don't care about the characters. So you had to feel that sort of empath. And that's why I think she brought the human energy into that. I kind of know now why they've been so successful. Because they were so ahead of their time. You really cared about the characters. Dee Anderson, the daughter of the Thunderbirds creators Jerry and Sylvia Anderson, was speaking to Rena Stanton-Sharma. It wasn't just those of us who were kids in the 1960s.
24:41millions of children all over the world continue to be entranced by the characters and the machines of international rescue. If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC this is The Interface the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
25:26Still to come, the birth of e-books. I had heard about some wacky guy or some person that had been typing in books. I picked up a local newspaper and there was Michael talking about electronic books. and for physical book lovers, the creator of Miffy. And I try again and I try again. It takes me a long time, a really long time. Altogether, a book takes me about two or three months, you know. But before that, we're going back to the turn of this century and a moment of high drama in American politics. In 1999, the Republican-controlled Senate put the Democrat president, Bill Clinton, on trial after he admitted lying about an affair with an intern called Monica Lewinsky.
26:07Neil Rizal heard the story of the impeachment from Bill Clinton's former press secretary. Will all senators now stand and raise your right hand? Do you solemnly swear? The debating chamber is transformed into a court. Then in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws. So help you God. The senators are called one by one to give their answer. Mr. Abraham, Mr. Akaka. In the White House, the president's press secretary, Joe Lockhart, feared not their verdict, but the verdict in the court of public opinion.
26:45I think we had a sense that the public had had enough, and once this all gets put out on display again, they might finally say, you know what, I love Bill Clinton. He's doing a good job, but enough. Let's just get rid of him. Allegations of the president's affair with a young intern, Monica Lewinsky, were now a year old. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. Seven months later, he changed his story and brought the prospect of impeachment much closer. Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate.
27:22In fact, it was wrong. The relationship involved oral sex in the Oval Office, once even while he was on the phone to members of Congress. Democrats wanted to censure the president. Republicans wanted to go much further. They wanted to remove him from office entirely. Congressman Howard Coble argued for impeachment in the House of Representatives. The centerpiece to this scenario, I am convinced, ladies and gentlemen, is not sex. It is indeed perjury. It is the lie. For Joe Lockhart, it wasn't about sex or perjury, but politics. For me, it was about a political coup that was taking place in the country where Republicans were trying to remove a president for personal behavior.
28:08So as crazy as it may sound, I didn't obsess on the truth of this. I mean, he said it. I believed him. When I found out it wasn't true, I wasn't happy, but we sorted it out and we moved on. The House of Representatives did not. It began impeachment hearings. Joe Lockhart tried to focus public attention on affairs of state, but over everything loomed the vote on impeachment. We were in the Middle East, and we got ready to go home. And it was one of the strangest journeys, because the front of the plane, the president was huddled with his national security advisors, because we were planning a military attack on Iraq.
28:45Saddam Hussein was defying the U.N. inspectors, and we felt no other choice but to go on and launch a military attack. The middle of the plane was a bunch of the president's political advisors, and the phone rang every two minutes with somebody else, you know, having broken ranks with the president and decided to vote for impeachment. And because of my job as the press secretary, I was the only one who was moving back and forth between these meetings. And I remember the president's national security advisor had come out of the conference room and was just sitting on a couch with his head in his hands just from exhaustion.
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29:17And he said, oh, this is just really hard. And I remember looking at him and saying, you know, Sandy, if you think your meeting is going badly, you ought to take 10 steps back and go into the political meeting because it's much worse back there. And, you know, I knew three things when I landed at Andrews Air Force Base. One was we were attacking Iraq. Two, the president was being impeached. And three, I had a job of convincing a skeptical American public that the first thing had nothing to do with the second thing.
29:42The bombing started on December 16th, 1998. The vote on impeachment came three days later. And we were getting ready for the vote and for the reaction and how we were going to deal with it. And a dramatic development happened around lunchtime. The Speaker of the House, Bob Livingston, went to the floor of the House and confirmed rumors that had been swirling all morning that he himself had been unfaithful to his wife. And as a result of his disappointment in himself and his duty to the country, he was resigning. So I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow. This was a terrible, explosive political problem.
30:23And I remember running over to the Oval and barging in and saying, what do you think about this? And he just started to talk and tell me what he thought. And I realized that this is what we're going to say. And I quickly grabbed a piece of notepaper, which I still have, off his desk and started taking notes off of what he said. and the nice thing about the White House is there's always a press corps standing there and just went out and read from my notes. The president firmly believes that the politics of personal destruction in this town and this country has to come to an end and it has to stop soon.
30:57And in that spirit, the president's wish is that Representative Livingston would reconsider the decision he announced on the floor today. And that seemed to do the trick and it felt like, you know, We had survived the very real political scare of the day. Unfortunately, it was only about noon. The impeachment vote hadn't happened, and there was a lot of other stuff going on. For instance, America was still bombing Iraq. I got tapped on the shoulder by one of my deputies who said, you need to come back to the office. And I remember looking at her and saying, if one more thing happens today, my head's going to explode.
31:33And she said, well, come back to your office because your head's going to explode. and in my office was some of the national security folks and they had a very simple message for me, which is we've hit all our targets and the president needs to go on TV tonight and tell the American public that this operation was successful and it's over. And I remember just looking at them and saying, semi-seriously, you guys know that there's something else going on in the world today. Can't you go back and hit some of your other targets and can't you extend this for a little bit? And they laughed in a kind of way that made me feel incredibly stupid.
32:05On this vote, the yeas are 228, the nays are 206. Article 1 is adapted. That afternoon, House Republicans voted to impeach Mr. Clinton. House Democrats immediately went to the White House to stand with the president as he gave a partisan response. And I have invited members of Congress to work with us to find a reasonable, bipartisan, and proportionate response. months. That approach was rejected today by Republicans in the House. Then, in the time it took to move the president's podium to a room where he could be surrounded by flags and generals, the president spoke again, this time about Iraq.
32:48Based on the briefing I've just received, I'm confident we have achieved our mission. Mr. Clinton spoke for six minutes and never mentioned impeachment. After, Joe Lockhart was spent. I mean, even by White House standards, this was a tough day. And I remember being exhausted and I went back to my office and one of the president's political advisors, a good friend of mine, sitting there with a beer for him and a beer for me. I always remember what he said to me next because he looked at me and he said, you know, except for getting impeached, we had a pretty good day today. Impeachment in the House meant President Clinton had to face a trial in the Senate to keep his job.
33:22Republicans would need a two-thirds majority to remove him. Senators, how say you? Is the respondent, William Jefferson Clinton, guilty or not guilty? In the end, they had nowhere near the votes. Mr. Lautenberg, not guilty. Mr. Leahy, not guilty. And I remember the vote happened, and the very first call I got was from some staff person who said, I just saw Sidney and his two colleagues going over to Laffeya Park right across from the White House, and they've lit up cigars. Sidney was Sidney Blumenthal, one of President Clinton's political advisers who'd been closely involved in the impeachment.
34:01His celebratory cigar broke a strict White House ban that day on gloating. And I was like, oh, you know, so I sent Sidney an emergency page that said something like, extinguished cigar, return to White House immediately. I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am. While the president apologized, behind the scenes, Joe Lockhart lobbied to host a party for the 50 or so people who had spent more than a year trying to rescue the Clinton presidency. It was this great historical event, and that day I spent most of my day worrying about putting a cigar out and whether I was going to have a party at my house or not.
34:40And some people showed up. Absolutely, and amazingly in Washington, the press never found out. Joe Lockhart, Bill Clinton's former press secretary, was speaking to Neil Rizal in 2011 and recalling the political rollercoaster surrounding the impeachment of the 42nd president in 1999. A technological revolution next, which has its roots in 1970s America. This is the story of the moment of inspiration which gave rise to electronic books or e-books. Jill Kersley has been hearing from one of the central characters in an evolution which has changed the way the world reads. I'm taking you back to 1971 when a well-known piece of American history typed out on a university computer played a vital role in the digital revolution of electronic books it was to become known as Project Gutenberg I have a wild imagination call me a visionary and I certainly have visions and I have to tell you in less than a second I had the idea of the whole internet and laptop computers and being able to carry the Library of Congress with you in one hand.
35:54And I said these things to people, the people that were there, and they just said, yeah, right. I mean, they knew I was crazy already, so none of them thought it was going to work. That's Michael Hart, the man widely known as the father of e-books Speaking to the BBC in 2010, the year before he died Michael was extremely gregarious, extremely high energy And this is Greg Newby, who was the CEO and director of Project Gutenberg And Michael's best friend A very, very outgoing and very, very devoted to helping to spread the story of why electronic books are going to be the future. The story of how Michael Hart invented e-books is a really cool story.
36:40You can think back to 1971, the 4th of July, Independence Day in the United States. Michael Hart, he was a college-aged student himself, and he was given that week access to one of the mainframe computers that the University of Illinois operated for the computer network of the day, something called ARPANET. He said, wow, I have potentially millions of dollars of computing power at my fingertips. What am I going to do with that? I'm not going to be maybe a computer programmer, but can I do something else that's impactful? American Independence Day marks the time in 1776 when the United States declared its independence from Great Britain.
37:23It's a national holiday where people celebrate. So on that day in 1971, Michael went out for a bike ride. And went to the local quickie mart to get some snacks. And in the bag of snacks, they included a facsimile copy of the United States Declaration of Independence. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. and to assume among the powers of the earth. This triggered something in Michael. He had been trying to think of what he would do with all this computing power, and he realized that what he could do that would be more impactful than being a computer programmer would be to actually create literature and have it available for unlimited redistribution.
38:13He took that Quickie Mart facsimile and spent most of the night sitting at a terminal on the computer, and he typed the thing in. In support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. He also emailed the Declaration of Independence to everyone he could find on that computer network. So it went out maybe to 100 people. So he emailed it to the people of the day, realizing that he had done something great, realizing that he had done something with computers and literature that had never been done before and that is to create electronic books for reading enjoyment, not just for like counting words or some sort of computer exercise, but for reading enjoyment.
39:08This was the invention of the electronic book. Over the next two decades, Michael worked on about 100 more titles to transform them into e-books. He named it Project Gutenberg, after Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press in the 15th century. Whilst just as that visionary made books accessible to the public, Michael aimed to make literature freely available to everyone online. I think that Johann Gutenberg, even though they said that he was the man of the millennium on the cover of Time magazine and who knows what else, I think he got shortchanged. I don't think he got near the credit that he deserved.
39:47He created mass production and he created literacy. So whilst Michael was busy typing in all those words of all those books for Project Gutenberg, Greg didn't know of Michael yet, but was discovering the huge effort he was going to to get books to people digitally. And so I obtained by email back in about 1986 or possibly 1987 an emailed copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. And I got it right away. Right away, I said, holy cow, this is what computers are good for. They're not just good for computing and census taking and the historic things that computers were used for, but they're also going to be useful for literature, for sharing stories.
40:31And so I heard of it, but I didn't know who Michael Hart was, didn't know what Project Gutenberg was. Then Greg got a job at the University of Illinois. With my first faculty position, there was a lot of excitement. I was involved in teaching informational literacy, involved in helping people to get on the internet. And that was 1991. So those were pretty early days. So I had heard about some wacky guy or some person that had been typing in books. I picked up a local newspaper and there was Michael on the front of section B talking about electronic books, talking about giving away free literature.
41:05So I called him up and we got together. It turned out we both loved playing frisbee. It turned out we both were literary. It turned out we both were very interested in getting materials out on the internet. The two became best friends. I also had to become involved with the project and I stuck with it. I became a volunteer and then by the time it became time to form a more formal organization in around the year 2000, he tapped me to be the first director and chief executive. One of the big challenges that Michael faced and I also faced was skeptics. There were people that thought that not only should electronic books not exist, but that they were actually dangerous, that electronic books were things that should not exist because they gave too much power to people to read and to analyze.
42:00Michael was always convinced his idea was going to be a huge success, though. I think it's going to cause a neo-industrial revolution. I mean, we've got 5 billion cell phones out there. That makes a much bigger audience than you can have with just computers. And I think that people in the middle of nowhere, I mean, I've got text messages from the Serengeti plane from a guy who just read one of our books in Urdu. I just went, wow, this is the most amazing. It just blew my mind away. And I just totally, it just changed my concept. We've got to do this stuff in more languages for more people. I've got to give it to everybody.
42:36After Michael's death, Greg was determined to carry on growing the project. We've gone from around 10 ,000 books when Michael died to about 70 ,000 books. And that's a pretty decent collection. That's pretty well any literature that you might care to think of is now available. And that includes multiple languages, multiple dialects. Michael and I had a great time operating Project Gutenberg. Greg Newby was speaking to Jill Kersley about the dawn of the e-book age. Shortly after recording that interview, just last month, Greg died. He was 60 years old. This week's sporting witness involves the curious combination of top-flight Italian football and Libyan politics.
43:21It's the story of the Serie A side Perugia and their bizarre decision in the early 2000s to sign the son of Colonel Gaddafi as a player. Robert Nicholson spoke to a couple of Saadi Gaddafi's Perugia teammates in 2021. It's the summer of 2003 and Italian top flight side Perugia are starting their pre-season summer camp. The team is preparing for their annual fight to survive relegation. But this year they have a strong team. There's a healthy mixture of veteran players with a wealth of experience in the Italian game and young breakout stars looking to prove themselves and perhaps earn moves to more prestigious clubs.
43:58Jay Bothroyd was a forward for the team. He had just moved from England as a 21-year-old. There was a lot of good players there, but it was really kind of like a family-orientated club, which was nice. Jelko Kalatz was the team's respected Australian goalkeeper. We were a team that was all about playing for survival, so for us, surviving in the Serie A was like winning the title. But one of the players training with the side that season was not like the others. This is the newest recruit to the hyper-competitive world of Serie A football. Sadi Gaddafi is a young man rich beyond belief. In one of the most unusual episodes in modern football history, the club had acquired the services of al-Sadi Gaddafi.
44:43His father is Colonel Gaddafi, for three decades, oil-rich Libya strongman. Now he's supposedly a reformed character, striving to put behind him world condemnation for terrorist outrages. Al-Sadi, mostly known just as Sadi, was known to be deeply passionate about football. He made a quick and perhaps surprisingly positive impression on his new teammates, including Jay Bothroyd. Obviously, I don't condone what his father done to their people. I can only talk about my relationship with Sadi. He was just like really soft-spoken, really calm. You know, he's, I mean, he's very generous. us? We were somewhere in the Alps.
45:23I think it might have been Bolzano when we were doing pre-season. We were getting battered day in, day out. Sadi was just sitting there and I don't know, I must have been tired or grumpy. And I sort of said to him, mate, what are you doing here? Why are you getting treated like this? A couple of hours later, I got a knock on the door from his bodyguards and basically said to me, Sadi wants to see you in his room. And I thought, oh mate, that could be the end of my life. I could be dead here, had a chat with him and he just said, mate, it's the first time someone's really spoke to me so honestly and openly.
45:54And from there, we just become really good mates. The new signing was not a true athlete, but he was working hard to improve. His dream was to play football. You know, fair play to him because he didn't have to do nothing. He's a billionaire. I mean, he wasn't good enough to play. Sometimes in training, things get heated. And if you're in someone's way and you get kicked, you get kicked, but you move on. And he accepted that. He didn't want to be treated any differently, but the players weren't stupid. They weren't going to double foot him or anything like that because the bodyguards were waiting in the car parks.
46:27You know, for him, I think it was the freedom of being out of Libya and being able to enjoy his life as a normal person. A normal person with absolutely unlimited money. Yeah, well, that makes it a lot easier, doesn't it? Where Saadi made the biggest impression was off the pitch, with an extraordinary lifestyle bankrolled by his family. he called me one day and um he goes do you want to go shopping i was like yeah okay then anyway we end up at the airport and he's like oh i thought we'd go to milan today and do some shopping there we get on his private jet and we fly to milan we ended up staying one of his friends had a birthday party and at that birthday party i met my wife the way he did things was kind of i don't know if i was to buy a pair of trainers for someone and just gift it to them he did that with like with crazy amounts of money and it was always cash like he always had his guy there that had a suitcase like locked to his arm it's just like full of cash we had our last game before the christmas break and we were playing in arezzo and he says to me after the game we'll go to milan for a couple of nights out we had 10 days off after that so we ended up flying to milan we have a night out and the next morning he says to me let's go to the bahamas i said man can't go to the Bahamas, I've only got the clothes that I've got on me.
47:44And he says, don't worry, we buy everything there. And that was the type of person he was. He came to my wedding. That was an event in itself, because even some of our wedding pictures, you can see the security cards in the background. You wouldn't know any different because they're just dressed like they're at a wedding, but they're security guards. They're holding guns. He ended up paying for my honeymoon and everything as a wedding gift for us. But whilst Saidi was training with the side, he hadn't had a chance to play. That would change in a huge gain in 2004 when Perugia went up against Juventus, a team in which the Gaddafi family owned shares and who were heavily favoured to win the tie.
48:22They had some percentage in Juventus, so for him it was a very big match. Perugia went ahead 1-0 before Juventus had a player sent off. Then Jay Bothroyd picked up an injury, giving the manager the perfect opportunity to bring on Sadie. It went like that. I got injured and obviously I came off and he came on. With Saadi on the field, Perugia hung on to their slim lead and came away with a famous win. It meant a lot to him that he'd come on for that match and obviously it meant a lot to him that we won as well and being a part of it. As a footballer for him, he will treasure that moment forever as a footballer, not as Saadi Gaddafi, as a footballer of Perugia.
49:00That cameo was Saadi's only ever game for Perugia, though one that came with a great bonus for his teammates. When you make your debut, normally, you take the whole team out for a meal. Sadi made his debut. He wanted to buy everyone a Mercedes, everyone at the club, an A-class. Sadi's dream of being a professional hadn't quite been realised, but it was as close as he was going to come. He stuck around for a while with other clubs in Italy and played one more competitive game, but ultimately returned to Libya in 2007. The fortunes of the Gaddafi family rapidly reversed in 2011 when the regime was toppled in the Arab Spring after a bitter civil war.
49:39Where the Libyan rebellion began and when they thought they'd roll out their revolution across the rest of the country. The full scale of the family's corruption and human rights abuses in Libya were being put under an international spotlight and a BBC Panorama investigation in 2011 found evidence that during the fighting Saadi himself may have been responsible for an order to gun down hundreds of protesters. Did Saadi Gaddafi give the order to shoot? When he came that day, he didn't give the order to shoot. He said to give them one more day and then if nothing changes, fire on them. Paul Kenyon, the reporter, spoke to Saadi himself, who denied the allegations.
50:18They started attacking the Katiba and the police stations, and then they took the weapons, so then I have to leave, you know, because it's very unsafe. For those who had played with him, what was now coming out in the news was a very far cry from the Saadi they had known. They were footballers, teammates who had taken him at face value. I don't know the full story. Like a lot of us don't know the full story. I only know him as a person and how he was to me. For me, he was a friend. For me, he wasn't a dictator. For me, he wasn't all of that that was held in regards to his family name. But now the world was seeing Saadi in a very different light.
50:55as the son of a brutal dictator, part of a regime with a horrific record. You know, but when you look back now, obviously, and you know about it, and you know where that money's coming from and stuff, yeah, of course, it's not nice, you know, it's not nice to read about it, you know, to know that things were happening to his people, and then obviously he's there flaunting the cash and all this kind of stuff. And looking back now, in hindsight, yes, of course, you know, if you said that to us back then, of course we wouldn't have accepted nothing, but we didn't know any different. For both Jay and Jelko, playing with Sadi remains a unique and memorable chapter of their careers.
51:30Very, very surreal, you know. These kind of things, they just don't happen. Not many people would experience these kind of things and it was definitely the most surreal experience I've had in my life. Jay Bothroyd and Jelko Kalach, former Perugia teammates, were speaking to Robert Nicholson in that Whistledown production for the BBC World Service. Now, a little earlier, we delved into the world of the Thunderbirds, a puppet-driven TV show aimed at big kids of all ages. Our final story from the past this week is firmly aimed at the younger ones. It's 70 years since Miffy was created. The Little Rabbit has gone on to prove extremely popular with young children around the globe.
52:12Here's Josephine McDermott, who's been listening to the Dutch author Dick Bruner from the BBC Archive. Miffy the Rabbit was drawn in black outlines with two dots for eyes and a sideways X for a mouth. A small palette of bright colours was used and this distinctive style went on to feature in 32 books, translated into more than 50 languages. That means there's a good chance you've seen or read a Miffy book. But did you know that when they were first released in 1955, there was this reaction. I remember when I went with my books to library or to whatever there was, mothers and children came to me.
52:54The mothers didn't like it at all. Why was that? You'll hear Dick Bruner reading to children in 1971 in a BBC television programme. But first, he describes how soon after he was born in Utrecht in the Netherlands in 1927, he developed a love of drawing. It has always been my hobby, even as a very little child. My mother told me that, and I always had the idea I wanted to do something in art. In the time when I grew up, you had Picasso and Leger and Henri Matisse, and I think he inspired me most in that time. When I became older, my father wanted me to become a publisher like he was, of course.
53:39So he sent me to England and to France just to learn publishing. They understood very well that the commercial side of it, that was nothing for me. I didn't understand that at all. I worked in the family firm as a designer just to do the covers for the books that my father published.
54:03My books, they are starting as a toy for the children. and they are throwing them and eating them or whatever. And one day they're going to read them. But when I saw my very first books in the hands of children, I thought, they're too big. They are too big for the very small hands. So I reduced it. And at the same time, I thought I would try to find the most simple shape. So I think, why shouldn't I make it square? I've always used the primary colors, you know. I've always thought, yes, the grass is green. I must make that green and the sky is blue and the sun is yellow and I work like that. And when I started them in the 50s, I remember when I went with my books to library or to whatever there was, mothers and children came to me.
54:52The mothers didn't like it at all. They always said, oh, those colors, they are much too modern and you can't do that blue and green together and so on. And let's go home because we have much nicer books at home. But the children, right from the beginning, they liked it. They always said, oh, that's nice, that's nice blue and nice green and that's nice yellow. Mithy was playing in the garden. All at once she heard a loud buzzing noise in the sky. What could it be? I found most children's books were very complicated, especially for the very, very small ones. And when I saw that, I thought I would like to make a book just for the children.
55:33And no jokes for the parents, you know, over their heads, because your public is two, three or four or five, six years old. It is their books. Miffy looked up and saw a bright red aeroplane. Sitting in the cockpit was Miffy's uncle, Bob. So how did Dick go about writing and designing his new kind of children's book? First of all, I try to think of the story, of course. You try to find the little story. and I very often do that really on my bicycle when I'm on a cycle around. And when I have the story in my head that I think it has a beginning and an end, I try to make 12 sketches because there are 12 drawings in my books.
56:16And I try again and I try again. It takes me a long time, a really long time. Altogether, a book takes me about two or three months, you know. Soon they were home with Miss Rabbit. They had butter toast for tea. I like having a pilot for an uncle, said Miffy. Come again soon. That was the story of Miffy, Ghost Flying. Do you like Miffy? Yes. They're good drawings and also young babies and children who are ill. You can have them in bed with you and they don't get mucked up and you can't lose them because they're colourful. And one other thing. because they're not the colour of the blanket or the bedspread.
56:58No, that's right. That's very right. That's very true. When I think now I have the drawings that are really important for the book I'm doing, I'm going to do it very nicely with a brush and postal paint. I never do it with a pen or a felt pen or whatever it may be, so that takes me a lot of time, but I do it very, very quietly. But at that state, I'm feeling what I'm doing. I mean, I feel that, oh yes, when she's looking like that, her head must a little bit be more, a little bit to the left or to the right or whatever. Things like that. I always show my work, when it's really finished, first of all to my wife.
57:41And that's just like an exam for me. I mean, I'm very nervous and I make coffee and so for her. And she's looking at the book. And she's very honest. She is not an artist or something like that, but she is very much interested. And yes, we've been married all the years I've been making children books. Have you ever seen a rabbit in an airplane? No. No. Because rabbits live in barrels. Yes. And also they're frightened of you. Yes. Because they're frightened that you might kill them and eat you. Yes. That age group from zero till six years is so honest to you, so I want to be that to them also. They're very nice drawings and it looks like rabbits.
58:28Like rabbits, yes. But they wouldn't jump out of the book, would they? No, no. Because they're not sloppy. They're not sloppy, no.
58:40My mother can't stand rabbits because they go to the toilet in the corner of the playroom. Yes, right. When I just started, most of the stories were quite simple. I mean, they were very close to home. Miffy's going to school. Miffy's, you see Miffy's house. Miffy's going to the seaside and things like that. but maybe because I'm growing older now myself I'm more thinking about I must show them for instance that at school you have not only white children but also brown children and even black children and so on so then I think yes Miffy that belongs to the children it is really their they take them to bed and so on and their little rabbit So I think via Miffy, I could show them a little bit about things like that, that there are more colors in the world than white, for instance.
59:43Something that I found out in my books is that the childhood, the very, very early childhood, becomes for me now, because I'm getting older and older, it's becoming more and more important. But I think back, I don't remember when I was 12 years old or 10 years old, But some things, when I was much younger than that, I think, yes, that's something that I've carried all my years, yes. That was Josephine McDermott, who went through BBC archives of Dick Bruner, the creator of the Miffy stories. He died in 2017, aged 89. Today, more than$300 million is spent on Miffy merchandise globally each year.
1:00:25You can find more stories like this in our collection of childhood history on our website. Just go to bbc.com slash witness history. We'll be back with more first-hand stories from the past for you next week. So until then, this is Max Pearson from all of us here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. From the pioneers. We weren't going to ask mission. We're just going to do it. And the celebrations. You feel you have, you win. I feel it. I was first. I was first. We were so proud of ourselves, and Cameron was proud of us too. I still cannot believe it. It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible.
1:01:06To the humiliations. I did cry most of the half. Oh man, I'm failing. I'm failing this sport that I love. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. It's not just about the sport. It's about all the other things that people with disabilities learn from each other. For nine minutes, you become a fan in the stands as we take you back in time to examine memorable moments from all over the world. There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting Witness.
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1:01:45If there was a big red button that would just demolish the internet, I would smash that button with my forehead. From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work, your politics, your everyday life. and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
From the publisher
Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.
Our guest is Darja Dankina, who's a palaeontologist from the Natures Research Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania.
We start with the discovery of the largest dinosaur ever, uncovered by a shepherd on a ranch in Argentina in 2012.
Then, we hear from the daughter of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, who created children's show Thunderbirds in 1965.
Plus, the impeachment of US President Clinton in 1999.
How an American historical document typed out on a university computer in 1971 played a vital role in the digital revolution of electronic books.
Also, Colonel Gaddafi’s son being signed to Italy’s top football league in 2003.
Finally, we use BBC archive to hear how children's book character Miffy was created in 1955. In the programme Dick Bruna reads from Miffy Goes Flying with permission from Mercis Publishing bv.
Contributors:
Dr Diego Pol - palaeontologist who lead the dig for the Patagotitan. Darja Dankina - palaeontologist from the Natures Research Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania. Dee Anderson - daughter of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Joe Lockhart - Bill Clinton’s former press secretary. Greg Newby - Project Gutenberg’s CEO and director. Jay Bothroyd and Zeljko Kalac - former Perugia players. Dick Bruna - Dutch author and illustrator.
(Photo: The Patagotitan. Credit: JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)