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
It’s almost 100 years since the Titanic sank. We think we know the story but how much do we actually know? Drawing on detailed trial records that describe the sinking, we recreate both the science and human drama of one of history’s greatest stories.
Imagine a country where many people have become convinced that much of what we know about William Shakespeare is wrong. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of one man, a chunk of the population believes in some hugely controversial ideas about Shakespeare and secret codes appearing in his work.The country in question is Norway, church organist Petter Amundsen has persuaded a best selling author to
This one-hour program is divided into five chapters. The Forgotten Maya Temples. In 1774, Spanish explorer Jose Calderon rediscovers the temples of Palenque and the ancient hieroglyphs of the Maya, a people whose culture was decimated by the Spanish conquistadors. A Hidden History. Toiling away in the basement of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, archeologist Tatiana Proskouriakoff discovers that Maya mon
During World War II, there were mounting fears that Hitler was building an atomic bomb. Such a prospect depended on two of the world’s top nuclear scientists: brilliant German physicist Werner Heisenberg, and his Danish mentor, Niels Bohr. In 1941, Heisenberg traveled 200 miles in secret to Copenhagen to meet Bohr. The meeting put both men in immense risk, and had a cataclysmic effect on their re
Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber. Families were held as hostages, st
In broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses a president is murdered, within hours a suspect is arrested, Lee Harvey Oswald but two days later he himself is killed. Since 1963 millions of Americas have been convinced that the presidents assassination was not the work of one man but rather a conspiracy. Can modern forensics and ballistics crack the case? For the first time using state of the
Thousands of years ago, they were used to help frame the world of the ancients, and dictate the guidelines of their societies. Today, they are often the first stories we learn as children, iconic tales where good and evil clash, and humanity and fantasy collide. But what is the reality behind these stories? From the epic tragedy of Medusa, Greek mythology's most infamous female fiend, to Hercules,