America’s favorite board game, Monopoly, is a love letter to unbridled capitalism and the impulses that make our free-market society tick. Contrary to the folksy legend spread by Parker Brothers, Monopoly’s origin involves a radical feminist and a community of Quakers in Atlantic City. If not for the determination of an economics professor and impassioned anti-monopolist, the real story behind the creation of the game might never have come to light.
A gang of four would-be robbers plans to steal a fortune in currency hidden aboard the "Flying Scotsman" in a railroad stateroom by cutting through the wall of the adjacent stateroom, but find themselves up against numerous unexpected drawbacks, including interference by their fellow passengers.
Alvin Ailey was a visionary artist who found salvation through dance. Told in his own words and through the creation of a dance inspired by his life, this immersive portrait follows a man who, when confronted by a world that refused to embrace him, determined to build one that would.
During the darkest days of the Depression when construction was started on Grand Coulee Dam, everything about it was described in superlatives. It would be the "Biggest Thing on Earth," the salvation of the common man, a dam and irrigation project that would make the desert bloom, a source of cheap power that would boost an entire region of the country. Of the many public works projects of the New Deal, Grand Coulee Dam loomed largest in America's imagination, promising to fulfill President Franklin Roosevelt's vision for a "planned promised land" where hard-working farm families would finally be free from the drought and dislocation caused by the elements.
A psychiatrist treats a woman who is convinced that she turns into a killer leopard because of a family curse.
Two journalists traverse the Grand Canyon by foot, hoping this 750-mile walk will help them better understand one of America's most revered landscapes and the threats poised to alter it forever.
The wildly disparate yet fatefully entwined stories of assassin James Earl Ray and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support for the civil rights movement or opposition to it, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.
Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.
Fred Martin, a taxi driver who is a reformed convict, is used by the police to go undercover in order to help catch a gang of safe robbers. However things start to go wrong when the police stake out the wrong bank and Fred finds himself alone with the crooks.
An actress and an artist are linked by his brother to deadly smugglers sought by Scotland Yard.
Follow General George Armstrong Custer from his memorable, wild charge at Gettysburg to his lonely, untimely death on the windswept Plains of the West. On June 26, 1876, Custer, a reputation for fearless and often reckless courage ordered his soldiers to drive back a large army of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. By day's end, Custer and nearly a third of his army were dead.
Explore the life of William Randolph Hearst, the pioneering media mogul and inspiration for Orson Welles’ "Citizen Kane." Wielding unprecedented power, Hearst forever transformed the media’s role in American life and politics.
The dramatic story of an unimaginable wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910.
The Sealab project, launched in 1969 off the shore of northern California, was the brainchild of a country doctor turned naval pioneer who dreamed of pushing the limits of ocean exploration like NASA did space exploration. The massive, 300-ton tubular structure was a pressurized underwater habitat, complete with science labs and living quarters for divers who would live and work there on the ocean floor for days or even months at a time. During the height of the Space Race, this daring program also tested the limits of human endurance and revolutionized the way humans explore the ocean.
In the wake of hurricane Katrina, as Americans begin a dialogue about the future of one of the nation's most distinctive cities, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE presents a provocative history of the city that lies at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi. Walled in on almost all sides by water, pressed together by the demands of geography, New Orleans has always been a laboratory where the social forces play out in dramatic and, at times, disastrous fashion.
He was boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn't completely straighten a short straggly tail and an ungainly gait; though he didn't look the part, Seabiscuit was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history. In the 1930s, when Americans longed to escape the grim realities of Depression-era life, four men turned Seabiscuit into a national hero. They were his fabulously wealthy owner Charles Howard, his famously silent and stubborn trainer Tom Smith and the two hard-bitten, gifted jockeys who rode him to glory. By following the paths that brought these four together and in telling the story of Seabiscuit's unlikely career, this film illuminates the precarious economic conditions that defined America in the 1930s and explores the fascinating behind-the-scenes world of thoroughbred racing. Scott Glenn narrates.
Traces the often surprising, endlessly entertaining history of the country's most outrageous playground. Interviews with Las Vegas insiders as well as everyday citizens in search of the American Dream chronicle how Las Vegas transformed itself from remote frontier way station into the Depression-era "Gateway to the Hoover Dam," then into the mid-century gangster metropolis known as "Sin City," and finally into a family vacation destination and the fastest-growing city in the United States.
On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower.
The host of a radio crime show finds himself mixed up with real gangsters after he re-creates a notorious murder on the air. He uses his knowledge of criminology to foil the gang's wicked scheme.
