Tag archives for History
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In less than four centuries, the little-known cult of Jesus rises from a disparate collection of beliefs that do not even go by the name of Christianity into a dynamic, coherent force that dominates the mighty Roman Empire. This extraordinary story is an epic human drama filled with suspense, political intrigue, brutal religious persecution, and…
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Academics have long believed that this dramatic change of evolutionary pace is the result of discovering how to domesticate plants and animals. Farming allowed us to settle down, which in turn gave us time to think, to create and to invent. That led to the first civilizations and eventually to who we are today. Now,…
KG and Ringy are back again this week in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It’s the site of the bloodiest battle in American History and President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. The boys are digging for “civ” – bullets, buttons and bombs from the Civil War. Their mission: to find artifacts from 1863, the year that put Gettsyburg on the…
Of all the legendary figures in American history, George Washington is in a class by himself. Founding father, Commander of the Continental Army, and America’s first president – his face is as familiar as the dollar bill. Most everyone knows this great man, or thinks they do. But we’re starting to learn that much of…
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Attention, History Nerds! And fans of detective stories! And love stories, and period dramas… And people who enjoy amazing stories with fascinating characters and compelling plot lines….. (And everyone else, too…) If you haven’t checked it out yet, do yourself a favor and visit our brand-new and insanely in-depth Killing Lincoln Conspiracy Interactive! It’s extremely…
Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps one of the most famous—and most mysterious—figures of the Renaissance. Extraordinarily gifted by all accounts, only around 16 of his works have survived the test of time. But armed with new information, a team of scientists is poised to add a new painting to that short list and solve the…
Posted by Whoever said the Mafia is dead has not been to Bensonhurst lately. We are on patrol with retired New York Detective Frank DeMarco. Frank knows these streets like the back-of-his hand. For two decades he hunted and ran surveillance on mobsters living in Bensonhurst. On this day, Frank is going to show my film…
Today we finished shooting at the St. Augustine Gator Farm. It was one of those days when you realize how crazy close we come to death in our jobs! In this episode we explore what we can discover about T. rex’s senses, so we came here to film alligators because crocodilians and birds bracket dinosaurs.…
Will the smell ever go away? That’s how I’m feeling tonight after we filmed the dreaded and forever named chicken experiment. The idea was to visually reveal how the process of decomposition can be slowed down. It all began a few weeks ago when we were still in pre-production in New Zealand. Our amazing fixer,…
George W. Bush: The 9/11 Interview Director/Producer Peter Schnall recently sat down with Polioptics hosts Adam Belmar and Josh King to discuss the extraordinary opportunity of working on this film. Known for living a very private life since leaving office, President Bush has only commented publicly on rare occasions. For Schnall to be able to…
Written by Martin Pupp (Associate Producer) To start the filming of this episode we’ve decided to begin at Kalkriese, site of the famous Varus Battle where the Germans slaughtered three entire Roman Legions in 9 AD. It may seem odd to start an episode about the powerful Roman army at the site of one of…
The Shroud of Turin, an alleged relic of the burial of Jesus after his crucifixion, is to miracle-researchers what the Zapruder film is to JFK assassination conspiracy-buffs. The herringbone linen sheet, 14 feet three inches by three feet seven inches, contains a faint image that some believe is the frontal and dorsal impression of Jesus’ body made after…
Shortly after the news of Osama bin Laden’s death broke on Sunday evening, a boisterous crowd of college students spontaneously gathered outside the gates of the White House. As this local TV news video shows, the revelers brandished flags, chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and even did a creaky, off-key rendition of the National Anthem. “We killed…
Comparisons to Hitler are a tricky and even dangerous thing, since the sheer enormity of the Nazi dictator’s crimes against humanity—in particular, his effort to exterminate an entire group of people, the Jews—and the virulence of his hatred tend to diminish even the most monstrous evil done by others. Yet there’s an inescapable, almost unsettling…
A recently-aired documentary on the National Geographic Channel, Finding Atlantis detailed Hartford University professor Richard Freund’s claim that the lost city was located in what is now a national park north of Cadiz, Spain. This garnered news headlines around the world and caused a major spike in seaches for “lost+city+Atlantis” on the Web, as this Google Insights chart reveals. But…
Thanks to the multi-billion-dollar box office achieved by director James Cameron’s 2009 fantasy epic Avatar, Hollywood studios are now totally in love with 3-D technology. It’s a win for theater chains, too, because they can charge premium prices for tickets to 3-D flicks, at least until the novelty wears off. Not everybody, of course, likes…
The recent political upheaval in Egypt exposed the sad condition of what was once one of the world’s great Empires. Pervasive corruption, mismanagement and a lack of investment has crippled the Egyptian economy. Unemployment is so high that the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Dominque Straus-Kahn warned in early February that Egypt’s joblessness was a ticking “time bomb.” In…
More than 2,000 years after her death, Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, remains one of the most famous and fabled women in history. Almost forgotten, however, is Ptolemy XV Caesar, AKA Caesarion, her son fathered by Julius Caesar, who was groomed for greatness that was never to be. Caesarion, whose name means “little Caesar,”…
If the surviving artistic depictions of her are accurate, Queen Nefertiti–whose name means “a beautiful woman has come”– was the Angelina Jolie of the ancient world, one of the most glamorous females who ever graced the planet. Even today, people are so beguiled by her beauty that the famous bust of Nefertiti, which was discovered by…
Thanks to classic Hollywood horror films such as The Mummy’s Curse, most of us probably are familiar with the notion that disturbing the tomb of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh will unleash some potentially very bad vibes. Preposterous as that might seem to we modern, science-oriented folks, we have a hard time dismissing by a string of incidents…
Since the discovery of his tomb in the 1920s, the 14th Century BC Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun–AKA King Tut–often has been depicted as a sickly, physically frail child, more of a figurehead than a monarch. The “Boy King,” as comedian Steve Martin labeled him in a late 1970s satirical song, even poked good-natured fun at his premature demise…
In 1912, in the library of Nobile Collegio Mondragone, a Jesuit college near Rome, an American rare book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich discovered what may be the strangest and most puzzling book ever created. It consisted the book consists of 234 pages fashioned from animal skin, written in longhand in a bizarre, incomprehensible script, and illustrated…
While we tend to remember Isaac Newton primarily for his contributions to theoretical physics, the late 17th-early-18th Century scientist and mathematician spent a lot of time delving into the shadowy supernatural, from alchemy to apocalyptic predictions. But as detailed in an coming program, “Secrets of the Dark Arts,” which airs at 9 p.m. on January 24, a…
These days, we’re all totally into our smart phones and tablet PCs, and their multiplicity of ingenious apps. But apparently, the 2nd Century BC Greeks had handheld gadgets, too. One intriguing example of Hellenic mobile technology remains: the Antikythera Mechanism, found slightly more than a century ago in the wreck of a Roman ship off the…
Today, when we think of lighter-than-air dirigibles, we think of ungainly blimps emblazoned with corporate logos that float over football stadiums. But back in 1933, when the USS Macon was commissioned by the U.S. Navy, they were called airships, and their enormous size inspired not amusement, but awe. The Macon was among the mightiest of…
