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Episode details

World Service,04 Jul 2026,61 mins

The return of Chief Long Wolf and The Statue of Liberty's facelift

The History Hour

Available for over a year

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service. Our guest is Jan English from the American Museum and Gardens in Bath in the UK. We start with the moment the remains of a Native American chief were returned to the US, more than a century after his death in England in 1892. Next we head to 1959 when Hawaii was brought into the United States of America as the 50th state with the passing of the Hawaiian Admission Act. And we go back to the 1940s, when a Mexican American launched the US's first radio service in Spanish. We fast forward to the 1980s, when the Statue of Liberty was showing her age and was given a multi-million-dollar facelift. To the story of Rosa Parks who made civil rights history in 1955, when she refused to give up her seat on the bus, despite segregation laws discriminating against black people. This story contains outdated language. Finally, the creative vision behind West Germany's 1990 World Cup shirt which became a design classic and is now one of the most sought-after by kit collectors around the world. Contributors: Mary Black Feather Condon - Chief Long Wolf’s great‑granddaughter. John Waihe'e - Former governor of Hawaii. Jan English - American Museum and Gardens Collections and Public Engagement Director. Guillermo Nicolas - Raoul Cortez's grandson. Peter Dessauer - Architect who oversaw the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. Rosa Parks - Civil rights activist. Ina Franzmann - Designer of West Germany’s 1990 football shirt. (Photo: The Statue of Liberty surrounded by scaffolding during its restoration. Credit: Terry Disney/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

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