Documentary / Biography

From the firing on Fort Sumter to the iconic battlefields of Manassas/Bull Run and Gettysburg, the mecca of reenacting, find out how far they're willing to go to relive history. Travel back in time with them to document how the Civil War was lived,...

It's a megajob with megachallenges. Yankee Stadium home to the New York Yankees for more than 80 years, and host to 37 World Series is about to be demolished. And there's no room for error when working within feet of a subway system that...

Behind each thrilling film scene there is always a cameraman - unseen by viewers and often exposed to mortal danger. Cameramen Who Dared will take you behind the lens with the incredible documentary filmmakers who will risk their lives to get the perfect shot....

What will Earth look like in 250 million years? With a team of scientists, National Geographic investigates the dynamic process of Colliding Continents, by examining the forces deep below the Earth's surface that are constantly reshaping our world. These powerful forces rip vast land...

What do we really know about the lost city of Atlantis and what happened on the day it died? Legend tells us that the golden civilization became so corrupt and depraved that it was destroyed by the angry gods, but did the city ever...

Project Kodiak is a multipart look at North America's mightiest carnivores, featuring naturalist Casey Anderson and his grizzly bear companion Brutus. Trek to Alaska's Kodiak Island, where Casey gets knee-deep in grizzly life in order to teach Brutus the ways of his wild relatives....

In 1622, the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha sank off the coast of Florida. In her hold, she carried 40 tons of gold and silver and some 70 pounds of emerald contraband. For more than 300 years, men have died trying to find...

National Geographic explores how life for kangaroos in Australian suburbs compares to life in the country. Kicking and hopping its way to domination in some of the toughest terrain in the world, human confrontations, competition with livestock, and traffic hazards are affecting both kangaroo...

With the 2008 Summer Olympics only months away, get an early look at the Beijing Olympic Stadium. Seating 91,000 people and daringly designed with 42,000 tons of steel woven in the shape of a bird's nest, it's one of the most ambitious construction projects...

Stalk the Arctic ice with the fiercest predator, the polar bear, as it prowls one of the most forbidding places on the planet: a hidden kingdom of magnificent creatures. Armed with a keen sense of smell and backed up by 1,700 pounds, fur and...

Plunge into one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the American Civil War as National Geographic goes in search of the truth about the ill-fated Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley. Discover the desperate ingenuity behind the creation of the first submarine ever to sink an...

The tropical rain forests of the world are home to nearly half the animal species on earth an estimated five million different life forms. More than 100 inches of rainfall each year sustain this lush environment, where some of the most fascinating examples of...

In a mere three or four decades, the seeds of a global religion spread across the Roman Empire. In an age with no Internet, no mass media, no planes, trains or fossil fuel, how did it happen? National Geographic investigates the mysterious decades following...

Vladimir Putin, after eight years as President of Russia and four more as Prime Minister, is stubbornly holding onto power. He has announced his intention to return as President and declared his party the winner in parliamentary elections that are widely seen as fraudulent....

Diamonds: to the consumer they symbolize wealth, glamour and undying love. To the diamond hunter, the dealer, and the thief, they represent the potential to make a fortune. National Geographic takes an in-depth look at these international symbols of wealth and their connection to...

National Geographic visits unearthed Roman theaters, medieval streets, and secret tunnels, bringing new light to Florence's lesser-known, dark history. Art detective and National Geographic Fellow Maurizio Seracini reveals history using a thermocamera to reveal long-lost architectural layers in some of the city's most famous...

Tireless worker, exceptional parent, and highly skilled builder, the beaver has earned its reputation as nature's great architect and engineer. For the beaver, dam building is an instinctive and irresistible reaction to the sound of rushing water. Surrounded by the majestic wilderness of the...

Comedian Leslie Nielsen hosts a natural-history comedy about "sea nasties" and reveals that the oceans are full of creatures that sting, shock, poke, and poison. But, during this entertaining and informative look at seemingly terrifying ocean creatures, Nielsen learns that his fears of the...

More than 350 million years ago, a new creature emerged from the water the first amphibian. Today, the awesome traces of their progeny exist on virtually every continent. Join National Geographic in the search for exotic reptiles such as the Komodo dragon, giant tortoise,...

Gold's appeal and value span time and cultures, but there is a little-known secret to the story of gold. Most of the gold mined throughout history remains in circulation today -- even the gold closest to your heart may have dark origins. From the...

It is the greatest escape story in history: how Moses and the Israelites fled from enslavement in Egypt with the parting of the Red Sea. Geo-archaeological evidence shows that a volcanic eruption caused a mega-tsunami and this could have temporarily turned deep water shallow....

In 1985, the haunting picture of an Afghan refugee girl with startling sea-green eyes graced the cover of National Geographic magazine. Now, the search is on to find the nameless woman whose youthful image became a global symbol of wartime dignity, resilience, and survival....

Rebuilding Titanic is a five-part series showcasing a determined team of experts as they bring the Titanic back to life. These experts use 100 year-old methods to rebuild iconic sections of history's most famous ship, including a piece of the steel bow, the anchor,...

In the past decade, researchers working in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula have made a series of startling discoveries, revealing a gaping hole in our understanding of the Maya could it be that what we thought we knew has suddenly turned out to be just half...

The year 2011 gets off to a disturbing start. On New Year's Eve, blackbirds die in Beebe, Arkansas by the thousands. Nearby, fish and more birds perish. Then a wave of unsettling animal deaths seems to sweep the globe. Are the deaths connected? A...

Party Like goes behind the scenes at some of the world's most extravagant parties, past and present, to discover what it takes to put on the biggest, most excessive and most outrageous events ever. What can modern party planners learn from the excesses of...

Some of the world's deadliest creatures are easiest to miss. They are small, they hide in plain sight and they strike without warning. In Brazil, a barber sweeping his shop fails to notice the poisonous, wandering spider climbing up his broomstick and onto his...

The Burmese python, one of the largest, most powerful snakes in the world, has established a breeding population in Florida's Everglades and soon, the snakes will be poised to spread to other areas in the United States. How far will they get? Biologists are...

Just prior to the end of World War II, the German military secretly undertook a massive push to design miracle weapons -- colossal tanks, the world's first guided missiles, and high-speed jets that could attack New York. Now, nearly 60 years later, a team...

National Geographic investigates the science behind severe genetic disorders and the extraordinary people who live with them. Bones: Imagine breaking a rib just by coughing or having an internal organ turning to bone. These are just two of the many life-threatening challenges faced by...

Narrated by Jason Robards, this National Geographic Special takes viewers on a journey to Churchill, Manitoba, where the residents have learned to live with a unique wildlife problem. Each fall the largest, most deadly carnivore in the Arctic migrates through this isolated Canadian village...

Circle the globe with National Geographic on an underwater voyage powered by earth's great ocean currents, the incredible superhighways of marine life. You'll plunge into an alien world where millions of sea creatures, from tiny seahorses to enormous sharks, spend their entire lives adrift,...

The mysterious puma. Only a lucky few have ever seen this magnificent cat that prowls the Andes. For two years, acclaimed natural history filmmaker Hugh Miles lived among Patagonia's pumas, capturing never-before-seen images of this shy, secretive predator. Experience the unprecedented trust formed between...

Share the drama as daring adventurers from 97 countries attempt a seemingly impossible feat to cut through Panama's hostile terrain and join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans! By succeeding, they halve the distance of coast-to-coast water travel but formidable obstacles had to be conquered....

Are we alone? Is anybody out there? Meet the scientists of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, who monitor the radiowaves of deep space for signs of intelligent life. Discover why scientists agree that life as we know it can exist in many places...

High in the cloud forests of Peru is the mountaintop fortress of a lost civilization and an ancient legend of murder. The Chachapoya, or Cloud Warriors who lived over 400 years ago, vanished virtually overnight. For years, anthropologists have been hunting for who or...

It is a bizarre battle in the heart of the Florida Everglades that Mother Nature never intended: American alligator versus Burmese python. On September 26, 2005, a park biologist snapped a photo of a six-foot alligator half inside the belly of a dead 13-foot...

The ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico was home to one of the most powerful and least understood civilizations. The civilization appeared out of nowhere to build some of the largest pyramids in the world, only to mysteriously vanish almost one thousand years later....

Imagine a flu that kills 70 percent of those it infects and has the potential to become as contagious as the common cold. Would a wide spread panic break out? Would martial law have to be imposed? Would the global economy come to a...

A fragment of a pinky bone and a tooth twice the size of today's average molar are the only remnants of a species we now know lived at the same time and place as modern humans - and interbred with them.

Mariana van Zeller journeys to the heart of the American escort industry and uncovers the gritty reality behind the supply and demand of high-end sex work.

With shark attacks increasing worldwide, a team of daring divers sets out to try and dispel myths about sharks. From free diving in bikinis, to releasing urine near great whites, the team will do just about anything to prove sharks aren't the man-eaters they're...

Follow intrepid explorer and filmmaker Shane Reynolds around the world as he searches for the last truly wild places on the planet. Episodes include Big Alaska, Ghosts of Madagascar, The Lost Jungle, Giants of the Sea, and Swamp Beasts.

India proves to be an extraordinarily diverse country, its landscape shared between one-fifth of the world?s human population and its spectacular wildlife. Viewers are invited to celebrate a land of beautiful and varied extremes as we venture 21,000 feet up in the Himalayas to...

Space: the final frontier for an out-of-this-world vacation. Space tourism will literally revolutionize our view of the world, and some of the world's leading scientists and engineers are working at light speed to bust the industry wide open. Through the eyes of space visionaries,...

Meet the Barretts, a small-town Tennessee family responsible for putting guns in the hands of some of the best military snipers on the planet.

Journey into the remote mountain forests of central China where the world's few remaining giant pandas live but now on the edge of extinction. Join a team of heroic scientists committed to saving the species as they scale treacherous slopes and penetrate blinding thickets...

While Bernie Madoff serves time in jail for his massive Ponzi scheme, the U.S. Marshals Service auctions off the contents of his New York homes. Up on the auction block: a $500,000 diamond ring, rare Persian rugs, a 1917 Steinway piano, and thousands of...

They called her the Virgin Queen England's first Queen Elizabeth, a revered ruler in her own lifetime. Yet behind her fame lie many dark secrets, and an unsolved mystery: why didn't the queen marry and provide an heir to the throne? For centuries, rumors...

It started as a crazy dream: Could a jetliner really fly using nothing more than solar energy? National Geographic goes inside the nearly 10-year journey of the engineers who created Solar Impulse HB-SIA, from the first brainstorming session until it took flight. Witness the...