Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Now the Witness History Podcasts from the BBC World Service with me Julian Bedford.

This podcast is a rebroadcast. Today I'm taking you back to August 1954 when the President of Brazil took his own life rather

than quit his post.

Demonstrators from the streets of Rio de Janeiro, symbolic of unrest throughout Brazil that followed the news of Rio de Janeiro symbolic of unrest throughout Brazil that followed

the news of President Vargas's suicide.

Jettulio Vargas was one of Brazil's most influential leaders but although he'd been in power for much to the previous 25 years and overseen an industrial

revolution, by 1954 the country was saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars of

overseas debt and inflation was high.

Worse, Vargas had been accused of involvement in the attempted assassination of a political

opponent.

The odds were stacked against the man who many believe created the modern Brazil.

The spilling of his own blood by his own hand has plunged a country into turmoil.

Police friends and family rallied to his side. Among them his then 11 year old granddaughter

Selina Vargas de Amaral Pischoto.

We were at home the day before there was going to be a minister's reunion and we had to go.

So we took the boat to meet my grandfather.

My mother was very close to Jutulu and they went directly to the Palaiso Dukatich.

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