August 24th, 79 A.D. was a day like any other day in the ancient roman town of Herculaneum, citizens met in the town square, discussed a little Italian politics, talked business over lavish lunches. Herculaneum was a booming sea side town at the height of the Roman Empire, trade was good and the future looked bright little did this towns residences know that the clock was ticking, their beautiful
Great Military Blunders is a six part documentary series which was originally aired in 2000, the series itself provides a fascinating examination of the key factors which lead to some of the greatest military disasters in history. In war we typically find that defeat stems from mistakes which include making bad plans or not seeing good ones through, a lack of understanding with regards to your
In the beginning the universe was a bit of a let down really, after the big bang nothing else really happened for millions of years. The big bang was not really the moment of creation, the real moment of creation came 100 million years later and it was a magical, metaphysical moment known as the cosmic dawn, the moment of first light when stars began to form. These first star formations were fu
We like to think that humans are special, and we are but we are not one of a kind. The past thirty to frothy thousand years in human history have been really unique in the sense that we are alone on our planet. Earlier than this and there were always different types of humans around, those that we met and mixed with. Thanks to well preserved DNA we now know that there were at least four other d
It shouldn't have happened that Homo sapiens, our species, managed to survive and overcome the odd which have been against us for over 200,000 years. We are not indestructible and there are many evolutionary dead ends but our ancestors managed to not only survive, but also to spread into every corner of the globe. It was only our ancestors who managed to spread and colonise some of the most dif
In this three part documentary series we see Scottish actor David Hayman set off on a journey to better understand the state in which the Scotch whiskey industry is currently in and how it's world dominance is becoming threatened. In the first episode we see Hayman meet up with coopers and coppersmiths whilst also enrolling in a distilling course in Campbeltown. He is schooled in the alchemy of
The BBC and physicist Brian Cox have teamed up once again in order to bring us Forces of Nature, a four part television documentary series which beautifully combines some of the most amazing sights on Earth with calm and methodical narration by the man himself Professor Cox, all to uncover the underlying forces of nature. Episode 1: The Universe in a Snowflake The opening episode of this ser
Out of all of the seven continents on Earth, none reveal our planets spectacular story through time quite as well as Australia does. In this four part documentary series we are taken on an incredible time traveling adventure, starting out at our planets birth we move forward in time stopping off at key moments or events which helped bring rise to humanity as we know it. Host and scientist Richa
The story of the Iceman is an ancient murder mystery, it involves Europe's oldest natural mummy, known to us today as Otzi. He was a man who was stalked, attacked and left to die alone more than 5,000 years ago. Thanks to the formation of some glacial ice Otzi was preserved and later discovered in remarkable condition. Due to the quality of his remains scientists, historians, and archeologists