As Feba turns 50 we’re celebrating the anniversary of Britain’s first missionary radio station!

•    1959 – 50 years ago a small British group of supporters of the Far East Broadcasting Company, an American missionary radio station, take up the challenge to broadcast to India from the Seychelles

•    1959 - Also saw the birth of the silicon chip.  Without it computers and the internet wouldn’t exist. This key development inextricably links our ministries today

•    1961 - East Germany erects Berlin Wall

•    1963 – The assassination of JFK; Civil Rights protests in USA; Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech

•    1964 – Feba sends its first missionary family to India

•    1965 – An impoverished and blind Indian lady gives Feba India staff a five rupee note, saying: “Use this to help reach India.” The note is now framed in the UK office reception as a testament to God’s provision

•    1967 – The first heart transplant

•    1968 – Phase one of the Feba Seychelles station project. Studios and offices were built on a mountain-side and the transmitter was sited on the beach.  Engineers erected aerials around a coral reef 4,000 ft offshore

•    1969 - Neil Armstrong walks on the moon

•    1970 - Regular broadcasts begin to India from the Seychelles – Feba is broadcasting six hours a day in nine different languages; Beatles break up

•    1971 – Phase two of the project sees a more extensive aerial system to provide coverage to the Indian Ocean islands, East Africa and the Middle East. Regular broadcasts begin to the Middle East

•    1973 - US pulls out of Vietnam

•    1974 – Off-shore antenna array in the Seychelles is completed and the first 100kW transmitter is installed. Feba also opens an office in Pakistan

•    1975 – Feba is given a production studio in Beirut – just as civil war begins

•    1977 – The Seychelles government is deposed in a coup and replaced by a new one headed by the Prime Minister – France-Albert Rene. Feba is asked to discontinue broadcasting for security reasons, but after 19 days permission is granted to resume normal operations

•    1984-86 – Feba’s Beirut studio is twice destroyed by stray shells. Later two staff members are blindfolded and kidnapped briefly by militia while trying to leave the country

•    1986 – Feba signs up to World by Radio – a group of international Christian radio organisations

•    1989 - End of Cold War means Soviet short wave broadcasting transmitters are available to Feba

•    1992 - Feba Mozambique begins. New studios open in Maputo, Mozambique

•    1993 – Feba begins broadcasting reinvigorated Dari language programmes for Afghanistan

•    1996 - Rapid Internal Links - regular electronic transfer of programmes to the Seychelles begins; Completion of the Bangalore studio refurbishment – a project that took two years

•    1997 - Deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. Special programmes made outside Seychelles for same-day broadcast. Previously programmes were made in advance

•    1998 – Feba supports Power FM – a dynamic new radio ministry for young people in Kampala, Uganda

•    2000 – Going digital in Delhi – testing and shipping of new equipment; Launch of Baraka FM – new Feba station in Mombasa, Kenya

•    2001 - Terrorist attacks on US. Coincidentally, two days after 9/11, Feba launches Turkmen language programmes for Afghanistan region

•    2002 - First portable studio transported in a suitcase is used

•    2003 - Seychelles station is decommissioned and short wave broadcasts are transferred to other stations, many in the former Soviet Union

•    2004 – First ready-to-go Chrysolite suitcase studio produced

•    2008 – Chrysolite training workshops were held for Community FM and disaster response projects; Fidel Castro steps down as Cuban leader after 49 years, outlasting nine US presidents

•    2009 - Feba’s half century!; Feba Zimbabwe’s 25th anniversary; Dalai Lama in exile from Tibet for 50 years