Episodes

In 79 AD, the people of Herculaneum, a seaside town in Italy's Bay of Naples, watched in horror as Mt. Vesuvius erupted, hurling a boiling, churning column of gas and ash 10 miles into the sky toward the neighboring city of Pompeii. It was only a matter of time before Vesuvius would unleash its fury on Herculaneum, killing its citizens in an even more spectacular and gruesome way.

Today, the ubiquitous Bible is largely taken for granted. But for the original English translators of the religious text, their work was a dangerous pursuit involving subversion, intrigue, imprisonment, and death.

Deep in the jungle of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific are the rusting remains of a World War II-era fighter plane. Research confirms that the plane is the doomed Wildcat flown by James "Pug" Southerland in WWII. Now, examine every dramatic moment of the legendary showdown between 30-year-old Southerland in his Wildcat, and Saburo Sakai, 25, in his Mitsubishi Zero.

On September 11, 1978, Bulgarian emigre, writer and broadcast journalist Georgi Markov died. Three days before, while waiting for a bus, Markov felt a sudden sting in the back of his thigh. Markov was soon hospitalized. After his death, an investigation ruled Markov had been poisoned: a pellet containing ricin had been covertly shot into his leg. How had this political murder been executed?

On the last night of an Atlantic voyage, the Andrea Doria luxury liner was broadsided by the 13,000-ton Stockholm in an accident that imperiled more than 1,700 passengers and crew. With the world watching in horror during one of the first televised tragedies, the Andrea Doria sank, sparking a ferocious debate over fault that remains to this day and ended the era of luxury cruise liners.

In 1789, more than 200 female thieves, prostitutes and con-artists were rounded up from London's prisons and shipped off to an Australian penal colony aboard the leaky vessel, Lady Juliana. But once aboard, the women turned banishment into opportunity, transforming their ship into a floating brothel on a journey that ended with the women as the founding mothers of Australia.

Dive into the world of the Mafia through expert insight provided by Joseph D. Pistone, the real life Donnie Brasco. In 1981, three Mafia captains were murdered by Massino in a power play for control of the Bananno family. Over the next 20 years the FBI would use undercover testimony and accounting forensics to eventually topple Massino's Mafia career.

At the end of World War II, undercover Allied agents engaged in a desperate race against one another to capture the elite of Germany's scientific community in an effort to gain a major advantage in the looming Cold War and Space Race. "The Hunt for Nazi Scientists" examines this crucial pursuit through eye-witness accounts of these daring missions.

After unearthing evidence of a culture of ancient warrior women in the Russian steppes, Dr. Jeannine Davis-Kimball follows a trail of artifacts to a remote village in Western Mongolia, where her quest for a living link to a long-imagined tribe ends with a startling discovery.

The Allied invasion of Nazi-controlled France on June 6, 1944, looms larger in our collective conscience than perhaps any other single battle. Explore the back story of the “Longest Day,” using the invasion itself as a narrative spine, and recounting, in remarkable detail, the long-term planning and ingenious execution that led to the Allied victory.

In a central part of Turin Cathedral is an elaborate, baroque shrine housing one of the Catholic Church’s most precious and controversial artifacts: a 15-foot-long piece of cloth known as the Turin Shroud. Could it actually be stained with the blood of Jesus Christ? Experts debate the origin of a prized religious relic.

In 1918, a flu pandemic ripped through the global population with such speed and virulence that by the end of the following year an estimated 40 million people would be dead. Where did this particular flu strain come from, and what made it so deadly? 85 years later, virologists and epidemiologists the world over are still hunting down the answers to those two critical questions.

The infamous "Bridge on the River Kwai," and remnants of railway (abandoned in 1945), do stand today, but the Thai and Burmese jungles have consumed much of their remains. Just how did a team of Allied POWs in such poor condition and confronted with so many obstacles manage to build the railway? And how did their Allied brethren ultimately achieve its demolition?

In the spring of 1943, Allied forces to begin preparations for a top secret Allied raid. Each aircraft carried a top-secret weapon -- a newly-invented bouncing bomb -- designed to shatter Germany's major dams.

In March of 1912, a team of seasoned Antarctic explorers perished on their way back from the South Pole. Was it possible the explorers were blind-sided by conditions they could never have anticipated?