September 11 : "Why the Towers Fell" - Nova PBS

For most people the image of the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers on September 11, 2001, was not only a scene of unforgettable horror, it was a moment of unimaginable consequence. Within days, NOVA began following a blue ribbon team of forensic engineers as they began searching for clues that would tell them why the towers fell.



This moving and informative documentary features interviews with survivors and rescue personnel who recount the buildings' last moments and their harrowing journeys to safety, interweaving these stories with the insights of some of the leading structural engineers in the world to explain exactly what happened on that fateful day.
Why the Towers Fell takes viewers through the process by which the investigative team came to understand the how's and why's of one of America's greatest tragedies. From a detailed examination of the building's original design to the relentless process of combing scrap steel yards and Ground Zero itself for evidence, this was one of the most extensive and difficult disaster investigations ever undertaken. The team tested building materials, calculated the role of the jet fuel in the fire, estimated the speed of the aircraft and the damage to the building's core, and they analyzed the effectiveness of the escape and fire protection systems. The conclusions they reached will certainly influence the building of future skyscrapers for years to come.

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Death Ray - Conspiracy Theory

Jesse Ventura and his team of investigators are on a mission to examine some of the most frightening and mysterious conspiracy allegations of our time. They review evidence and meet with experts and eyewitnesses to learn more about such topics as the time travel, reptilian and Death Ray conspiraicy theories. "This is my personal journey," Ventura says, "to prove that there is more to these stories than you know about." 

A death-ray weapon that can vaporize targets and entire cities from miles away is investigated.

 

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Wall Street - Conspiracy Theory

Jesse goes inside the secret billionaire’s boy’s club to find out what caused the financial meltdown and how the group allegedly continues to manipulate and control the stock market and oil, gold and silver prices. From Wall Street to Washington, the governor barges in on the rich and powerful to demands answers.

 

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Time Travel - Conspiracy Theory

Jesse Ventura and his team of investigators are on a mission to examine some of the most frightening and mysterious conspiracy allegations of our time. They review evidence and meet with experts and eyewitnesses to learn more about such topics as the time travel, reptilian and Death Ray conspiraicy theories. "This is my personal journey," Ventura says, "to prove that there is more to these stories than you know about." 

Journeying through time is the stuff of fantasy, but somehow has been beyond our grasp or has it? Jesse tracks down a mysterious man who claims to have visited many iconic moments in American history and influenced the course of history in doing so! Could our government be hiding the secret to time travel, and possibly even using it as a weapon? And what can we do should the technology fall into the wrong hands or has it already?

 

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Conspiracy Theory : Skinwalker

Jesse and his team explore various corporations that are filling the void left by NASA and continuing space research and technology under private enterprise - some of which may be used to weaponize space. Jesse's leads focus him on billionaire aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow who purchased Utah's mysterious "Skinwalker Ranch" - a site with a long history of claims of paranormal activity, specifically UFOs, leading to rumors that Bigelow is reverse engineering his own alien technology. While Tyrell and Shawn have an unexplained encounter near the ranch, Ventura seeks answers from Bigelow himself.

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The Holographic Universe

The holographic universe is an idea presented in the book “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot. It explores the metaphysic implications that underline quantum mechanics supersymmetry and suggests the idea that the universe is a hologram.

After examining the work of physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram, both of whom independently arrived at holographic theories or models of the universe, the book argues that a holographic model could possibly explain supersymmetry and also various paranormal and anomalous phenomena, and provide a basis for mystical experience.

 

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Treasures of the World - Theft of the Mona Lisa & Guernica: Testimony of War (1999)

Theft of the Mona Lisa:

On August 21st, 1911, someone stole the most famous painting in the world from the Louvre. In the investigation that followed, police combed every inch of the famous museum, and some rather unusual suspects were called into question. But the mystery of the lady's disappearance would remain unsolved for two years. As the story unfolds, so does a greater appreciation of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece.

Guernica: Testimony of War:

Pablo Picasso was reluctant to mix art and politics. But in 1937, atrocities perpetrated by Franco on the small Basque village of Guernica during Spain's civil war changed all that. Picasso's Guernica is one of this century's most unsettling indictments of war. Revealing photographs of the work in progress lend insight into Picasso's creative process and his struggle between artistic merit and political imagery, as circumstances transform the stark canvas into a flag of freedom and democracy.

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Secrets of the Dead - Murder at Stonehenge

In SECRETS OF THE DEAD: "Murder at Stonehenge," archeologists and forensic experts dig up ominous information about the strange ancient ruins and what role they might have played in early English culture. Studying a male skeleton discovered at Stonehenge in 1923, scientists determine that the man died not from natural causes -- as was previously believed -- but from intentional beheading. Bone studies, carbon dating, facial reconstruction, analyses of the wound's angle and the skeleton's damaged vertebrae, a study of Roman-style executions, and comparisons with other human remains: These are the tools employed as the researchers attempt to find out who the man was, when he was murdered, and why. Was he a pagan in a newly Christian world? A cattle thief? A ritual sacrifice? Murder at Stonehenge travels 2,000 years back in time to illuminate the beginnings of modern Britain.

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Secrets Of The Dead - The Great Fire of Rome

Archaeologist Andrea Carandini provides the most convincing evidence to corroborate the implication of Tacitus -- that Nero circumvented the senate by burning Rome so he could build his palace. Carandini, who has been digging in Rome for twenty years, has examined the ancient layers of ash left behind by the fire. "Everything was destroyed," he says. "There was not one single house standing." Specifically, Carandini explains that fire destroyed the portion of the Forum where the senators lived and worked. "All these houses were destroyed, so the aristocracy didn't have a proper place to live," he says. The open mall in the middle of the Forum remained, but it became a sort of shopping mall, a commercial center "built on the top of aristocratic Rome ... so it's the end, in a way, of the power of the aristocracy in Rome."

Not everyone agrees that Nero is to blame. Art historian Eric Varner says "It seems unlikely that Nero would have started the great fire of AD 64, because it destroyed his palace, the Domus Transitoria ... a huge, villa-like complex that stretched from the Palatine to the Esqualine." Historian Henry Hurst feels the fire most likely began as an accident. As many as 100 minor fires broke out in Rome every day, so it's quite feasible that such a fire evolved into the one that leveled the city. Accounts of Nero's reaction to news of the fire portray him as rushing back to the city from Antium and personally joining in with the efforts of the fire brigades, in stark contrast to the image conjured by Tacitus.

A large portion of ancient Rome consisted of slums: poorly built and maintained timber-framed tenements. Tacitus claims that the only explanation for how the fire spread from these kindling hovels to the sturdy stone houses of the senators is arson. Yet modern technology seems to prove otherwise. Inside a fire chamber, fire specialists created a replica of an aristocrat's home in the hope of determining whether such an abode could have been set ablaze by a small, wood-fueled fire. After a small flame was lit in a corner of the replica, the fire spread to the furniture and soon had consumed the miniature home. Temperatures rose to 1,100 degrees and part of the ceiling collapsed before the fire was extinguished for safety purposes. The re-creation suggests that the fire could easily have spread from the tenements to the stone homes in the Forum.


Recent excavations have provided further evidence to corroborate the notion that this great fire was raging by the time it spread to the Forum. Twenty feet below the surface of Rome, archaeologist Clementina Panella discovered the remains of nails that had fallen off roofs and melted. She found a charred gate and part of its surrounding masonry that had collapsed from the force of the fire. A large number of coins found in the Forum -- the apparent pocket change of hapless victims of the flames -- suggest that the fire moved in quickly, leaving little time for pedestrians to flee the area.

Tacitus states that the fire was driven by a southeasterly wind. He describes the fire as moving both south up the Aventine Hill and north up the Palatine, implying that this apparently unnatural pattern was due to arson. Today we know that the larger a fire becomes, the more updraft it creates -- breezes that interfere with prevailing winds and allow the fire to spread out in search of oxygen, especially up a hill like the Palatine.

Certainly, it's hard to know whether to trust the allegations in the writings of Tacitus. What about the explanation offered by Nero, that the Christians were to blame? At least one scholar believes Nero was on the mark. Professor Gerhard Baudy of the University of Konstanz in Germany has spent 15 years studying ancient apocalyptic prophecies. He has learned that in the poor districts of Rome, Christians were circulating vengeful texts predicting that a raging inferno would reduce the city to ashes. "In all of these oracles, the destruction of Rome by fire is prophesied," Baudy explains. "That is the constant theme: Rome must burn. This was the long-desired objective of all the people who felt subjugated by Rome."


Moreover, the Book of Revelation, written a mere 30 years later, seems to equate evil with Rome. The Whore of Babylon, the source of this evil according to Revelations, is described as having seven heads. "The seven heads are seven mountains," Revelations says. Rome, of course, is famously known as the city of seven hills. What's more, an ancient Egyptian prophecy that would have been well known in the Christian quarters of Rome foretold the fall of the great evil city on the day that the dog star, Sirius, rises. In 64 A.D., Sirius rose on July 19, the very day the great fire of Rome began. Baudy believes that, bearing this prophetic date in mind, some of the Christians, maltreated and embittered, may have started the fire -- or perhaps lit additional fires, adding fuel to the larger conflagration -- in hopes of realizing their prophecies.

Regardless, over 200 years would pass before the Christians escaped the kind of persecution they endured under Nero. In the meantime, Nero's reign soon crumbled. Four years after the fire, as the senate and the army turned against him, Nero was forced to flee Rome. Aided by a secretary, he stabbed himself to death with an iron blade.

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Secrets Of The Dead - Bombing Nazi Dams

Spring rains had swelled the water dammed up in Germany's Ruhr valley, and on May 16, 1943, Operation Chastise was about to begin. Taking off from an air base in England, nineteen Lancaster bombers manned by 133 airmen from Squadron 617 of the Royal Air Force were on a mission to destroy several of the Nazi's major hydroelectric dams. The Ruhr region was an important industrial center for Germany, and the demolition of these dams was expected to create widespread destruction, cut off the supply of water for industrial purposes, and halt work in coal mines and factories. Each Lancaster in Squadron 617 was outfitted with a strange new weapon -- a bouncing bomb that, when dropped precisely on target, would skip across the water and slam into the wall of an enemy dam.

The commander of Squadron 617, 24-year-old Guy Gibson, had already completed 170 sorties by the time he was chosen to lead the mission. Operation Chastise was so top-secret that Gibson was at first told nothing of the task that lay before him, other than that he needed to train his pilots rigorously in the art of low level flying. Eventually, the pilots simulated the nighttime conditions under which they would fly into the Ruhr by fixing blue Perspex plastic into their cockpits and wearing amber-tinted goggles.

In his autobiography, Gibson recalled that their training was hampered by communication problems. The radio-telephone headsets they used were ineffective, resulting in chaos during a dress rehearsal for their bomb run. "Aircraft went astray, some nearly collided, others went home browned off," he wrote. The communication snafus were solved when the entire squadron was outfitted with better equipment. Yet problems persisted. During another dress rehearsal, "six out of twelve aircraft were very seriously damaged by the great columns of water sent up when their mines splashed in." Gibson concluded that the pilots had been flying too low.

The difficulty of their training only hinted at the danger that would confront Squadron 617 in Germany. "The gunners had seen us coming," Gibson wrote. "They could see us coming with our spotlights on for over two miles away." Before the planes even reached the dams, one aircraft hit cables and crashed and two more were shot down. In 1944, Gibson acknowledged how precarious flying just 60 feet over enemy territory could be. "I said quickly to Pulford, under my breath, 'Better leave the throttles open now and stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit.' As I glanced at him I thought he looked a little glum on hearing this."

At the Möhne dam, Gibson managed to drop his bomb unscathed, although it missed the dam. Another pilot, Hopgood, followed, but his plane was hit by flak and exploded shortly after his bomb also fell off the mark. The next plane fell prey to German anti-aircraft fire, but the bombs of the fourth and fifth Lancasters scored hits, smashing apart the middle of the dam. Gibson and four other planes then flew on to the Eder, where two bomb hits created a thirty-foot-wide hole in the dam.

Unlike the others, the Sorpe dam was constructed of earth, as opposed to masonry. Joe McCarthy's Lancaster made nine aborted runs before finally dropping his bomb. Though McCarthy and another plane scored direct hits on the crest of the Sorpe, the dam withstood the attack. The damage caused to the crest of the dam, however, required the Germans to empty its reservoir halfway and make repairs.

Although eight of the nineteen bombing crews did not return, the mission was considered a success. Four of six targets were hit; two were destroyed. One hundred and thirty million gallons of water flooded the German countryside after the destruction of the Möhne. The Eder had held back 202,000,000 tons of water, and significant flooding took place in the wake of its bombing. Miles of factories and houses were destroyed and the Germans incurred thousands of casualties. News of the operation boosted Allied morale at a time when hopes for victory were bleak.

The pilots of the RAF's 617 Squadron crept across Germany just 60 feet above the ground, delivering an experimental weapon with astounding precision. How did these brave airmen pull off such a feat? When Barnes Wallis -- who developed the bomb that broke the German dams -- presented his design to Royal Air Force officials, he was laughed at. How did he convince the air force that his weapon was powerful enough to destroy a dam and clever enough to outmaneuver the underwater nets protecting these dams from traditional torpedo attacks?

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Secrets Of The Dead - Death at Jamestown

As they set sail from London to the distant shores of America in December 1606, the men and boys onboard the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery surely expected the best from their adventure. They'd establish a British settlement, find gold and silver, a passage to the Orient, and, perhaps, the lost colony of Roanoke. The explorers, funded by a group of London entrepreneurs called the Virginia Company, could not have anticipated the fate that actually awaited most of them: drought, hunger, illness, and death.

Their journey started off as badly as it ended. The three ships were stranded for weeks off the British coast, and food supplies dwindled. Over the course of the voyage, dozens died. But 104 colonists -- many gentlemen of privilege, but also artisans, craftsmen, and laborers -- survived to reach the shores of Virginia. On May 13, 1607, they decided to make landfall on the swampy ground of what was then a peninsula (and now an island) along the James River, some 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Within a month the settlers had constructed a triangle-shaped wooden fort, for protection against the Spanish, who did not want the British to establish any kind of foothold in the New World.

The settlers of the new colony -- named Jamestown -- were immediately besieged by attacks from Algonquian natives, rampant disease, and internal political strife. In their first winter, more than half of the colonists perished from famine and illness. Eventually, more colonists and new supplies were brought from Britain, and, despite a fire that wiped out the original fort, the settlement found some stability under the leadership of Captain John Smith. Smith, with the help of Pocohontas, daughter of the Algonquian chief Powhatan, managed to broker an uneasy peace with the natives before leaving the colony and returning to England in September 1609. 

The following winter, disaster once again struck Jamestown. Only 60 of 500 colonists survived the period, now known as "the starving time." Historians have never determined exactly why so many perished, although disease, famine (spurred by the worst drought in 800 years, as climate records indicate), and Indian attacks took their toll. On June 7, 1610, Jamestown's residents abandoned the hapless town, but the next day their ships were met by a convoy led by the new governor of Virginia, Thomas West, Lord De La Ware, who ordered the settlers back to the colony.
In 1612, John Rolfe -- who would later marry Pocohontas -- began to grow tobacco, finally giving the colony a cash crop and hope for survival. The first representative government in the New World was convened in Jamestown in July 1619, the same year that African slaves -- then indentured servants -- were first brought to America. Jamestown was the capital of Virginia until 1698, when its statehouse burned down. The following year, the capital moved to Williamsburg, and Jamestown began its slow decay. 

 

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