On August 15th, 1914, the Panama Canal opened, connecting the world's two largest oceans and signaling America's emergence as a global superpower.
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In 1910, the Pennsylvania Railroad successfully accomplished the enormous engineering feat of building tunnels under New York City's Hudson and East Rivers, connecting the railroad to New York and New England, knitting together the entire eastern half of the United States. The tunnels terminated in what was one of the greatest architectural achievements of its time, Pennsylvania Station. Penn Station covered nearly eight acres, extended two city blocks, and housed one of the largest public spaces in the world. But just 53 years after the station’s opening, the monumental building that was supposed to last forever, to herald and represent the American Empire, was slated to be destroyed.
In the 50s and 60s, deep in the American countryside at the foot of the Catskills, a small wooden house with a barn behind it was home to the first clandestine network of cross-dressers. Diane and Kate are now 80 years old. At the time, they were men and part of this secret organization. Today, they relate this forgotten but essential chapter of the early days of trans-identity. It is a story full of noise and fury, rich in extraordinary characters, including the famous Susanna, who had the courage to create this refuge that came to be known as Casa Susanna.
The film interweaves the personal accounts of polio survivors with the story of an ardent crusader who tirelessly fought on their behalf while scientists raced to eradicate this dreaded disease. Based in part on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky, Features interviews with historians, scientists, polio survivors, and the only surviving scientist from the core research team that developed the Salk vaccine, Julius Youngner.
In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, during what has become known as the Gilded Age, the population of the United States doubled in the span of a single generation. As national wealth expanded, two classes rose simultaneously, separated by a gulf of experience and circumstance that was unprecedented in American life. These disparities sparked passionate and violent debate over questions still being asked in our own times: How is wealth best distributed, and by what process? Does government exist to protect private property or provide balm to the inevitable casualties of a churning industrial system? The outcome of these disputes was both uncertain and momentous, and marked by a passionate vitriol and level of violence that would shock the conscience of many Americans today.
Actor Dustin Hoffman narrates this decade-spanning documentary that highlights the contributions of Jewish Americans to the most American sport of them all: baseball. Highlights include a rare interview with legendary pitcher Sandy Koufax.
In 1988, after two terms in office, Ronald Reagan left the White House one of the most popular presidents of the twentieth century -- and one of the most controversial. A failed actor, Reagan became a passionate ideologue who preached a simple gospel of lower taxes, less government, and anti-communism.
Arguably one of the most fateful and resonant events of the last half millennium, the Pilgrims journey west across the Atlantic in the early 17th century is a seminal, if often misunderstood episode of American and world history. The Pilgrims explores the forces, circumstances, personalities and events that converged to exile the English group in Holland and eventually propel their crossing to the New World; a story universally familiar in broad outline, but almost entirely unfamiliar to a general audience in its rich and compelling historical actuality. Includes the real history of the "first thanksgiving".
Filmed over five years in Kansas City, this documentary follows four transgender kids – beginning at ages 4, 7, 12, and 15 – as they redefine “coming of age.” These kids and their families show us the intimate realities of how gender is re-shaping the family next door in a unique and unprecedented chronicle of growing up transgender in the heartland.
He was a farmer, a businessman, an unknown politician who suddenly found himself president. Of all the men who had held the highest office, Harry Truman was the least prepared, but would prove to be a surprise.
The remarkable story of Earl Silas Tupper, an ambitious but reclusive small-town inventor, and Brownie Wise, the self-taught sales-woman who built him an empire out of bowls that burped. Brownie was an intuitive marketing genius who trained a small army of Tupperware Ladies to put on Tupperware parties in living rooms across America in the 1950s. She rewarded her sales force with minks and modern appliances at extravagant annual jubilees which the company filmed. her saleswomen earned thousands, even millions, selling Tupperware. And the experience changed their lives.
Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today.
The life of President James Garfield, including his rise to power and the aftermath of his assassination.
A documentary that explores the range of experiences lived by transgender Americans.
The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995 is the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. This documentary explores how a series of deadly encounters between American citizens and federal law enforcement—including the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco—led to it.
Doomed attempt to get to California in 1846. More than just a riveting tale of death, endurance and survival. The Donner Party's nightmarish journey penetrated to the very heart of the American Dream at a crucial phase of the nation's "manifest destiny." Touching some of the most powerful social, economic and political currents of the time, this extraordinary narrative remains one of the most compelling and enduring episodes to come out of the West.
An account of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the subsequent effort to rebuild.
One of the most popular rockers of the 1950s and early 60s, Fats Domino and his record sales were rivaled then only by Elvis Presley. With his boogie-woogie piano playing rooted in blues, rhythm & blues, and jazz, he became one of the inventors, along with Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, of rock ‘n’ roll, a revolutionary genre that united young black and white audiences.
The Triangle Fire chronicles the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killing one hundred and forty-eight young women and forever changed the relationship between labor and industry in the United States.
In the mid 1800s, New York City was one of the most crowded places on earth. The congested streets and pokey transportation system were a source of constant complaint. On March 24, 1900, ground was broken for the Big Apple's subway; the Interborough Rapid Transit Line opened four years later, running more than 26 miles of underground track at the speed of 35 miles per hour. Soon thousands in the city were "doing the subway."
On August 8, 1908, at a racetrack outside Paris, Wilbur Wright executed what was, for him, a routine flight: a smooth take-off banking into a couple of tight circles, ending in a perfect landing. The flight took less than two minutes, but it left spectators awestruck. While the combined talents of Wilbur and Orville Wright had produced the first plane capable of controlled flight , their distrust of others had almost cost them the credit for their invention. Now, having proved to the public that they had mastered the sky, the reserved brothers from the small town of Dayton, Ohio, became world celebrities.
