Back to 1995

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week’s Witness History episodes, all about events which happened in 1995.

First, we hear how Microsoft launched Windows 95 after a $300 million marketing campaign.

Our expert guest is Dr Lisa McGerty – Chief Executive of the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

Next, after 17 years terrorising America, we hear about the hunt for the Unabomber.

Plus, the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo metro, carried out by members of a doomsday cult.

Finally, how China exerted its influence over Tibetan Buddhism’s leadership.

Contributors:

Sarah Leary – project manager for Microsoft.

Dr Lisa McGerty – Chief Executive of the Centre for Computing History.

Carmine Gallo – police officer.

Dr Kathleen Puckett – FBI agent.

Atsushi Asakahara – metro passenger.

Arjia Rinpoche – senior Tibetan Lama.

(Photo: People lined up by US Microsoft Windows 95 exhibit. Credit: Forrest Anderson/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson,
0:09.7	the past brought to life by those who were there. This week, we're going back 30 years to hear stories from 1995,
0:17.7	including the murder of the Italian fashion air Murizio Gucci.
0:21.8	The person who killed Maurizoguchi had also shot the dormant of his building in the arm.
0:26.4	If it had been done by professionals and was organized crime,
0:29.8	the killer would have never left an eyewitness alive.
0:32.7	Plus the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
0:36.2	China's controversial role in choosing Tibet's
0:38.6	Pansion Lama and the hunt for the Unabomber in America. He picked up in a men's bathroom,
0:44.8	a red hair on the floor, fixed it to the tape on the device he left there so that they would
0:50.6	think the guy has red hair. That's all coming up in the podcast.
0:54.4	But first, 1995 has gone down in history as one of the key years in the development of
1:00.1	personal computing.
1:01.8	And that's in large part because it was the year that saw the launch of what was at the time
1:06.1	the latest iteration of the Microsoft operating system, Windows 95. The new software was designed
1:13.1	to be more user-friendly, easier to understand, and aimed at ordinary people, not professional
1:18.2	programmers. Connecting to the internet was also more straightforward. Here's Jane Wilkinson.
1:23.6	Recognise this?
1:24.6	Well, for millions of people, that was the distinctive Recognise this?
1:35.5	Well, for millions of people, that was the distinctive sound of Windows 95 starting up on their home computer.
1:41.3	And this is the story about how that revolutionary technology was launched around the world.
1:49.5	There was literally this concept of midnight madness, where people were lining up in the hours leading up to the strike of midnight on August 24, 1995, so they could be the first
	...

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