The Lampedusa disaster and cat cafes

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service. We hear about the sinking of a migrant boat off Lampedusa in 2013 which was one of the Mediterranean’s worst shipwrecks. Also, we find out about Wally Hendrickson, the US physicist who volunteered to be dropped into the front line of the Vietnam War to remove fuel rods from a reactor. Plus, the opening of the world's first cat cafe in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1998.

Contributors: Amnasager Araya who survived the Lampedusa tragedy after being rescued by Vito Fiorino. Annalisa Camilli, correspondent for Internazionale magazine. Wally Hendrickson who removed the fuel rods from the reactor in Vietnam. André Turcat, the French pilot of Concorde’s maiden flight. The star of the telenovela, Kassandra, Coraima Torres, and Tony Paez who distributed the show. Tracy Chang, founder of the first cat cafe in Taiwan.

(Photo: A woman on a boat heading for Lampedusa. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Life Less Ordinary is the podcast from the BBC World Service,
0:04.0	bringing you extraordinary personal stories from around the globe.
0:08.0	Search for Lives Less Ordinary, wherever you get your BBC Podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson
0:25.7	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:28.8	Coming up this week the amazing story of the American scientist dropped into Vietnam to prevent nuclear
0:34.8	devastation in the final days of war. I knew that the heat-seeking missiles they shot
0:40.7	would be the end of us and I just puckered up and flew on in.
0:47.0	Plus the TV soap opera that helped keep peace in Bosnia, the world's first cat cafe, and the maiden flight of the world's first
0:55.0	supersonic passenger jet Concord.
0:57.1	Like a paper dart, she looks now, black smoke streaming out from the four Rolls Royce jet engines under the wings.
1:05.9	That's coming up later in the podcast.
1:08.4	But we're going to begin by focusing on one of the worst migrant drownings at sea.
1:13.0	The whole question of mass migration, particularly into Europe,
1:16.0	has become extremely sensitive in the politics of many countries.
1:20.0	While the debate at government level might be about how many asylum seekers, refugees, or migrants
1:25.1	any country can accommodate, the harsh reality is that thousands of people continue to attempt
1:30.4	dangerous sea crossings. On the 3rd of October 2013 a fishing boat taking 500 people from Libya sank 800 meters off the coast of Lampedusa. George Kraver has heard from one of the survivors and the man who rescued him.
1:52.2	At that moment what can he expect to hear?
1:55.0	It was wailing.
1:57.0	Everyone was crying.
1:59.0	I firmly believe that fate wanted us to remain there that night.
2:07.0	It's the 3rd of October 2013 and we're just off the coast of Lampedusa,
	...

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