As the nation’s factories and shipyards ramped up production for the war, the demand for labor exploded. Millions of women and minorities entered the workforce for the first time, finding a path to prosperity and opportunity.
But as Americans joined in common purpose, strife and challenges hit the home front.
In 1943, half a million coal miners in West Vir ... Show More
Sep 2023
Salem Witch Trials | An Evil Hand | 1
<p>In January 1692, two young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts began behaving strangely. They screamed, barked like dogs, and writhed on the floor. A doctor concluded that the girls had been bewitched.</p><p>Under pressure from their elders, including Reverend Samuel Parris, ... Show More
38m 22s
Sep 2023
Salem Witch Trials | The Devil Against Us | 2
<p>By the first week of March 1692, three Salem women had been jailed for witchcraft, and accusations continued to spread. Authorities publicly questioned people suspected of witchcraft, turning legal proceedings into dramatic spectacles. Witnesses cried out in pain, stamped thei ... Show More
42m 3s
Oct 2023
Salem Witch Trials | Specter of Injustice | 3
<p>In May 1692, William Phips, the new royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, sailed into Boston Harbor and was immediately faced with an unprecedented crisis. The colony was in the throes of a full-blown witchcraft panic. Dozens of accused witches had been jailed, new a ... Show More
37m 10s
Jan 2022
USS Indianapolis: Disaster at Sea | Abandon Ship | 1
<p>In the final weeks of World War II, the Navy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Philippine Sea. The nine hundred survivors found themselves stranded in the middle of the open ocean, many without rafts or life vests, w ... Show More
42m 28s
Nov 2022
The Battle of the Tollense Valley
<p>More than 3,000 years ago, two armies met in a titanic Bronze Age battle along a river in northern Germany. We don’t know why they fought or who won, but thanks to stunning archaeological discoveries, we know how they died, where they come from, and what their lives were like. ... Show More
40m 28s
Jan 2021
Agriculture and Complex Societies in the Americas, 4000-1500 BC
<p>Agriculture was invented in no fewer than three, and probably four, places in the Americas. It went along with sedentary living and complex societies, but in complicated ways: fishing villages along the Andean coast grew into the cities of Norte Chico, but hunter-gatherers pro ... Show More
47m 22s
Jan 2021
The Americas from Foraging to Agriculture, 10,000 BC-4000 BC
<p>The initial migrations to the Americas get most of the attention, but people didn't stop living there in the aftermath of those first movements of peoples; they spread out over the Great Plains and the forests of the eastern United States, south into the deserts and jungles of ... Show More
47m 18s
Sep 2023
Hurricane Katrina | We Were Here | 4
<p>At long last, the government’s rescue effort kicks into high gear and buses arrive to evacuate people from New Orleans. But it’s too late for many residents, who died in their homes waiting to be rescued. Thousands of people’s lives are shattered, and the damage to the city is ... Show More
43m 31s