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English
Description
How will the White House fall in a post-apocalyptic world? The greatest homes and monuments to the world's leaders are under attack from nature. This documentary looks at how long architecture and construction materials will last before disintegrating. Buildings include Grant’s Tomb, the White House, the United Nations, Monticello, Versailles, and the Forbidden Palace. Hunter’s Point Naval Base in San Francisco offers a glimpse of future decay...
43) Man and Beast
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English
Description
During the Ice Age, people and wolves formed a partnership that shaped the future of humanity. With the help of man's new best friend, we domesticated more animals, sowing the first seeds of farming and civilization. This film looks at how our relationships to other species helped us to survive in the natural world. Horses increased our military strength and speed; camels enabled us to cross deserts; and the silk worm led to the Silk Road, which also...
44) Nuclear Winter
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English
Description
Carl Sagan and other Cold War scientists once feared that a nuclear war could plunge the world into a deadly ice age. Three decades later, does this theory still resonate?
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From irrigating a farmer's crops to part of a nuclear fission process, it is nature's most precious elixir—so powerful it can carve our landscape, yet so nurturing it can spawn life and support its intricate matrix. Water can exist in three separate forms at the same temperature. Learn about water's chemical properties and uses on this episode of Modern Marvels.
46) Silver Supernova
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English
Description
At critical moments in history, our second place metal was the most important metal on Earth. Big History reveals how silver's place in our minds was determined by the heat of exploding stars, and how this one metal saved democracy.
48) Man and Metals
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English
Description
Approximately 5,000 years ago, humans discovered metal. This documentary provides an overview of how metals shaped world history and civilizations. Bronze and iron empowered the ancient world and allowed Egyptian and Greek empires to expand. Gold drove Spanish conquistadors to pillage the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Potosi silver mines generated an economic revolution in Europe, ushering in the Consumer Age. Steel built infrastructure of the modern...
49) Building Earth
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English
Description
This documentary highlights humanity’s desire to build monuments to the divine, for political power, and to display wealth. Viewers learn about Stonehenge; Great Pyramid; the Roman Aqueduct that pioneered concrete as a construction material; the medieval city of Venice featuring innovative engineering concepts; the Empire State Building and Hoover Dam that rekindled the American Dream during the Great Depression; Las Vegas, the desert city symbolizing...
50) Attacked
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English
Description
Presents eight short profiles of major attacks in history including the Boston Massacre, Pearl Harbor, Kent State, Sarajevo, and the Pentagon.
Author
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Description
This Fleeting World is the smallest book of big history, telling the story of the universe and history of humanity in less than one hundred pages. Prize-winning historian David Christian covers it all in this compact, accessible, and inspiring guide to the history of everything, from stars and empires to cities, the World Wide Web, capitalism, and globalization. David Christian's approach to human history and big history is a call to action, based...
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English
Description
This two part program documents the rise and fall of one of the most remarkable civilizations. From the ancient Olmec and their giant carved stone heads to the magnificent pyramids of the moon and sun at Teotihuacán, the Aztecs were inheritors of thousands years of indigenous culture. Who were the Aztecs and how was their complex civilization created? How did a small army of Spanish conquistadors destroy such a powerful foe and close a chapter on...
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English
Description
The wooden church of Urnes (the stavkirke) stands in the natural setting of Sogn og Fjordane. It was built in the 12th and 13th centuries and is an outstanding example of traditional Scandinavian wooden architecture. It brings together traces of Celtic art, Viking traditions and Romanesque spatial structures.
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English
Description
The seeds of World War II were sown in the dark days of depression following the first world conflict. While the United States chose a course of isolationism, escalating aggression in Europe and Asia threatened world stability. Without warning, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pushed the reluctant nation into war. The bloody conflict would span the globe and trigger political, social and military repercussions that would resonate through the twentieth...
Language
English
Description
This two-part program documents the rise and fall of one of the most remarkable civilizations. From the ancient Olmec and their giant carved stone heads to the magnificent pyramids of the moon and sun at Teotihuacán, the Aztecs were inheritors of thousands years of indigenous culture. Who were the Aztecs and how was their complex civilization created? How did a small army of Spanish conquistadors destroy such a powerful foe and close a chapter on...
Language
English
Description
Wartburg Castle blends superbly into its forest surroundings and is in many ways "the ideal castle." Although it has retained some original sections from the feudal period, the form it acquired during the 19th-century reconstitution gives a good idea of what this fortress might have been at the height of its military and seigniorial power. It was during his exile at Wartburg Castle that Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German.
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English
Description
Famous monk St. Augustine struggles to introduce Christianity to Saxon England; Stuart diarist Samuel Pepys annoys the smartest men in Britain; we witness a daring escape from the Tower of London; and we find that Joan of Arc’s story is quite an unusual one for a teenage girl.