Explore the story behind the first terrorist attack in the U.S., a mostly-forgotten 1920 bombing in the nation’s financial center that left 38 dead – a crime that remains unsolved…

In the fall of 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his country’s most valuable military secret — a revolutionary radar component — to a Wall Street tycoon, Alfred Lee…

Meet the titans and barons of the glittering late 19th century, whose materialistic extravagance contrasted harshly with the poverty of the struggling workers who challenged them. The vast disparities between…

The remarkable story of President Theodore Roosevelt’s journey with legendary Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon into the heart of the South American rainforest to chart an unexplored tributary of the Amazon.

Chart the ways in which the bloodiest battle in American history, and the ensuing peace, forever changed a president and a nation. In the fall of 1918, the deadly flu…

Chart America’s entry into the conflict, examining the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required if America was to play a central role in the Great War. In…

Part 3 of 3. In the fall of 1918: a major American offensive that could bring a swift end to the war, a lost U.S. battalion surrounded by German forces,…

Part 2 of 3. America’s entry into World War I is recalled, including the breathtaking speed of mobilization and the profound transformations required for America to play a central role…

A riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.

Part 1 of 3. President Woodrow Wilson vowed to keep the U.S. out of World War I after hostilities erupted in Europe in August 1914. It was a promise he…

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a former soldier deeply influenced by literature and ideas of the radical right, killed 168, and injured 675 others.

She set out to save a species…us. An intimate portrait of the woman whose groundbreaking books revolutionized our relationship to the natural world.

The dramatic story of the country’s first subway.

An account of an incident at a Titan II missile complex in Damascus, Ark., in 1980 that almost caused the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead 600…

A group of working-class boys from the University of Washington, in the United States, surprise a nation when they capture the gold medal in rowing at the 1936 Summer Olympic…

View the intense battle in intimate detail in this vivid narrative of combat and survival in the first major military clash of the Cold War.

In the 1950s and early ’60s, a small band of high-altitude pioneers exposed themselves to the extreme forces of the space age long before NASA’s acclaimed Mercury 7 would make…

The story of nine working-class young men from the University of Washington who took the rowing world and America by storm when they captured the gold medal at the 1936…

The story of small people going up against very big forces for a better nation. In the first two decades of the 20th century, coal miners and coal companies in…

Though their exploits were romanticized, the Barrow gang was believed responsible for at least 23 murders, including two policemen, as well as numerous robberies and kidnappings. Discover the true story…

First responders, journalists, shop owners, those inside the pressure-packed control center of Con Edison on West End Avenue, and other New Yorkers tell about what happened when the lights went…

By the dawn of the 19th century, the most deadly killer in human history, tuberculosis, had killed one in seven of all the people who had ever lived. Throughout the…

In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City’s Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and New…

In 1959, at the very height of the Cold War, with American schoolchildren practicing duck-and-cover drills, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the man who Americans feared could incinerate them in a…

Recalling 1964, a pivotal year in U.S. history. While the Beatles captured the imaginations of the nation’s youth, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, unveiled his vision…

The Amish practice of shunning those who leave their faith is explored through the experiences of individuals who have left their communities. Also: faithful Amish men and women share the…

Led by physicist Robert Noyce, Fairchild Semiconductor began as a start-up company whose radical innovations would help make the United States a leader in both space exploration and the personal…

A broadcast that struck fear into an already anxious nation, Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast was the most famous alien invasion that never happened.

An absorbing life story of a farm boy who rose from obscurity to become the most influential American innovator of the 20th century, Henry Ford offers an incisive look at…

See how the activities of the five principals intersect and affect the anti-slavery movement.

Examine the forces leading to war and to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Featuring the men and women who lived and worked at Grand Coulee in the wake of the Great Depression and the Native people whose lives were changed alongside historians and…

A profile of Gen. George Armstrong Custer (1839-76), nicknamed “the boy general” for his Civil War exploits, who died with many other members of the 7th Cavalry while battling the…

The story behind a courageous band of civil rights activists called Freedom Riders who in 1961 challenged segregation in the American South.

In 1969, homosexuality was illegal in almost every state… but that was about to change. The Stonewall riots marked a major turning point in the modern gay civil rights movement….

It was the deadliest workplace accident in New York City’s history. A dropped match on the 8th floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory sparked a fire that killed over a…

The little-known story of the American effort to relieve starvation in the new Soviet Russia in 1921, The Great Famine is a documentary about the worst natural disaster in Europe…

In 1881, 25 men led by Adolphus Greely set sail from Newfoundland to Lady Franklin Bay in the high Arctic, where they planned to collect a wealth of scientific data…

What drove a company of American soldiers — ordinary young men from around the country — to commit the worst atrocity in American military history? American Experience focuses on the…

Dolley Madison lived through the two wars that established the U.S., was friends with the first 12 Presidents, and watched America evolve from a struggling young republic to the first…