Throughout his career, Houdini (born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) performed three variations on a “Buried Alive” stunt/escape. The first was near Santa Ana, California in 1917, and it almost cost Houdini his life. Houdini was buried, without a casket, in a pit of earth six feet deep.He became exhausted and panicky trying to dig his way to the surface and called for help. When
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945 and the second on August 9, 1945.For six months, the United States had made use of intense strategic fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities. Together with the United Kingdom, and the Republic of China the United States c
Episode 1: Island of Marvels Madagascar, the world’s oldest island, broke off from Africa and India and has been on its own for more than 70 million years. In splendid isolation, it has evolved its very own wildlife – more than 80 per cent of it is found nowhere else. And that wildlife is quite extraordinary. In this episode, we reveal the island’s most bizarre and dramatic places, and the unique
Using Darwin’s own diary and field notes as a travel guide, retrace Darwin’s expedition beyond the Galapagos to uncover the forgotten evidence that inspired his revolutionary work. He wasn’t a mathematician. He wasn’t an inventor. He was just a 20-something guy who liked to poke around in the dirt.Yet, Charles Darwin developed a theory of evolution so significant that it forms the bedrock of b
Our Sun has served Earth well for almost five billion years. It has bathed us with heat and energy and sustained life on our planet. But like people, our home star is mortal.In five billion years, it will stop nurturing its planetary offspring. In this documentary we voyage some five billion years into the future to see how the Sun will eventually end its existence and affect the future of life
In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and a war strategist, concludes that the Vietnam war is based on decades of lies and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world. Hailed as a hero, vilified as a traitor, and ostracized by even his closest colleagues, Ellsberg risks life in prison to stop a war he helped plan.This sto
Martin Shaw takes a fresh look at one of the most famous war stories of them all. The actor, himself a pilot, takes to the skies to retrace the route of the 1943 raid by 617 Squadron which used bouncing bombs to destroy German dams. He sheds new light on the story as he separates the fact from the myth behind this tale of courage and ingenuity.Using the 1955 movie The Dam Busters as a vehicle
Off the coast of France an international team is exploring a hidden battlefield, looking for the secrets of how the greatest naval mission in history unfolded. Buried here is a treasure trove of ships, tanks and potentially unexploded mines, these are the wrecks of D-Day. June 6th 1944, for years Hitler had devastated Europe killing millions and now is the time for the allies to make their mo
From the moment that Allied forces established the first beachhead in Normandy on D-Day, the end of the war in Europe was in sight. But although many soldiers joked about being in ‘Berlin by Christmas’, tenacious German resistance soon brought home the realisation that there were to be no quick victories. It was a nearly a year before the defeat of Nazi Germany was complete and Hitler’s Third