This is the story of the most daring black ops raid in recent history. The inside account of operation Neptune Spear: how US Navy Seals brought to an end the hunt for the most wanted man in the world, and took down the mastermind of 9/11: Osama Bin Laden

Niall Ferguson examines China's ascendancy, and asks what the future holds for the world's most populous country and its relationship with the rest of the world.

Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of illuminated manuscripts that were custom-made for kings, and explores the medieval world they reveal.

Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of illuminated manuscripts that were custom-made for kings, and explores the medieval world they reveal.

Dr Janina Ramirez unlocks the secrets of illuminated manuscripts that were custom-made for kings, and explores the medieval world they reveal.

In "The Ever-Expanding Universe," Hour 2 of the two-part special "Hunting the Edge of Space," NOVA investigates a battery of high-tech telescopes that is joining the Hubble Space Telescope on its quest to unlock the secrets of our universe, a cosmos almost incomprehensible in its size, age, and violence. Far beyond our solar system, we are now discovering exoplanets orbiting other suns, and beyond our galaxy, another hundred billion galaxies, such as Andromeda, Sombrero, and Whirlpool, each harboring hundreds of billions of stars. We've detected supermassive black holes, spinning violently at the very centers of galaxies, including our own. We've witnessed supernovas: exploding stars, millions of light-years away, spewing out superheated gas at 600,000 miles per hour. And deep inside clouds of gas and dust, billowing trillions of miles high, we can glimpse new stars being born. Now, the latest telescopes are revealing the invisible mysteries of space that we are only just beginning to understand: dark matter, the hidden scaffolding our entire cosmos is built on; and dark energy, a powerful and invisible force that is pushing our universe apart.

Follow the incredible journeys made in the 1940s by explorer Sir Wildred Thesiger, through the famously scorching Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula.

In 1861 one month after President Abraham Lincoln took office shots rang out at Charleston's Fort Sumter signalling the start of the US Civil War.

Art and Copy reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertisers of our time. People who've profoundly impacted our culture, yet are virtually unknown outside their industry.

2500 years ago in northern India, Prince Siddhartha left his palace where he had spent 29 years indulging in pleasures. He was determined to comprehend the nature of human suffering.

In this two-part documentary, viewers are taken on an exclusive tour behind the forbidding walls of the tiniest state on earth.

In this CNBC Original, Maria Bartiromo takes viewers Inside The Mind of Google for a rare look at the world’s most powerful technology company and its crown jewel, the Google Internet search engine. This is the fascinating story of how two grad students, in barely a decade, took a one-time research project and turned it into a global technology powerhouse - changing the way we interact with information, the Internet, and each other. See how Google came to dominate the search industry and turn it into a profit machine… and see where it’s taking its next step… and how the company plans to address arguably the biggest controversy in today’s digital age: privacy.

This first episode is an overview of what gold is and where it comes from, followed by gold's importance in the ancient world including Egypt, Incan Empire and the ancient Greeks and Romans. It covers the first minting of coins in Rome and the rise of various other currencies. Also covers interesting characters such as Crassus (where the term crass comes from).

This episode covers the European lust for gold which led them to South America and the Spanish slaughter of the natives for their gold. Also covered is what the Europeans wanted the gold for, which was to trade with the East for spices and textiles. Interestingly, the favour was not returned with very little of the gold returning to Europe from the East. This episode also covers the rise of using gold as the basis for currencies and economies and the institution of the Gold Standard which was an agreement that the price of gold would be set to a certain amount of Pounds. This was the basis of the world's economy until the 1960s, in one form or another.

In the Nineteenth Century, prospectors struck gold in California, Australia and South Africa. With fabulous new supplies, gold became the standard by which everything else was measured. But would this golden age last?

Queen Elizabeth I restored her people's faith in the monarchy and led her nation to its greatest period of prosperity and accomplishment. The daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth studiously avoided involvement in the intrigues after Henry's death, assuming the throne only after the death of her sister Mary. But once in power, she used her education, innate shrewdness and diplomatic skill to lead her nation to glory. This documentary revisits the life of this fabled monarch through the commentary of Elizabethan experts and period art, artifacts and accounts. Discover how she stabilized the economy, won the love and support of her people, and played an endless string of royal suitors to her political advantage. From her childhood away from the court to the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the emergence of England as the world's pre-eminent power, this is the fascinating story of Elizabeth I.

In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackletons Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition headed for the South Pole and disaster. SHACKLETONS CAPTAIN reveals the truth behind the spectacular rescue and shows how one mans extra-ordinary skills and unsung heroism made it possible: Frank Worsley, Captain of the expedition ship, Endurance. Worsley was faced with seemingly insurmountable odds when the Endurance became trapped in the pack ice off the coast of Antarctica. The ship was slowly crushed, forcing Worsley and his crew to abandon ship. They spent the next ten months living on the ice floe before rowing three life boats to a desolate rock called Elephant Island. The men were facing slow starvation in the freezing cold and with no rescue in sight Worsley, Shackleton and four crew were forced to risk everything by sailing one of the tiny life boats eight hundred miles across the Southern Ocean to the small island of South Georgia where they hoped to find help at a Norwegian whaling station. Twenty eight lives were in the balance as master sailor Frank Worsley navigated in the worst conditions imaginable; rogue waves, ice bergs and a hurricane in a journey modern sailors consider to be one of the greatest sailing voyages of all time. Worsley, Shackleton and four crew survived storms, freezing cold and the mountainous seas before finally reaching the barren coastline of South Georgia. Hurricane winds forced them to land at a beach on the opposite side of the island to where the whaling station lay and Worsley had to call on his extraordinary skills a second time; he had no map of the island with which to navigate their route across the mountainous interior. Without any alpine equipment, totally inadequate clothing and almost no food or water Worsley, Shackleton and Tom Crean set off to cross the mountains and glaciers to the whaling station and help where they organized a rescue party. After nearly two years on the ice not a single man had perished. The expedition was a disaster, the rescue story one of the greatest in history. An important discovery sheds new light on events surrounding the expedition. While researching for the biography of Frank Worsley; Shackletons Captain, the author, John Thomson, discovered personal letters, photos, lecture notes and a diary in the house where Worsley died. This material informed an insider-perspective on events surrounding the expedition and the critical role played by Worsley., The book Shackletons Captain; recounts the life of an extraordinary man and now the film brings Worsleys story to life. Based on the book 'Shackleton's Captain' by John Thomson.

A documentary that reveals the inner workings of the world's most powerful intelligence organisation.

A look at Vladimir Putin's rise from humble beginnings to brutal dictatorship, and his emergence as one of the gravest threats to America's security.

A man by the name of James Files confesses to being the one who fired the fatal head shot at President Kennedy.

As the Earth's average temperature rises each year, experts warn that we are nearing a fatal tipping point - two degrees celsius above the norm - that will set into motion a cascade of natural disasters that will devastate the world.

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in August 1997 shocked the world, and gave rise to a series of mysterious and sinister conspiracy theories. This documentary searches for the truth.

Detective Colin McLaren details his reasons for how Princess Diana was killed. He also exposes a cover-up by the French police who hid facts about the car accident, such as the details of the driver and his car that slammed into Diana's car seconds before it slammed into the tunnel wall. McLaren goes on to prove worrying aspects of the accident, and disproves many of the conspiracy theories associated with the tragedy. (Part 1 of 2)

Detective Colin McLaren details his reasons for how Princess Diana was killed. He also exposes a cover-up by the French police who hid facts about the car accident, such as the details of the driver and his car that slammed into Diana's car seconds before it slammed into the tunnel wall. McLaren goes on to prove worrying aspects of the accident, and disproves many of the conspiracy theories associated with the tragedy. (Part 2 of 2)

A look at the various conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Today, modern soldiers are equipped with all the latest battlefield technology. But what cutting edge weapons and defenses were the ancient warriors armed with? Could ancient warriors have had an early version of the machine gun, centuries before we ever imagined they could? Could the ancient Saxons have been armed with "super swords" made with steel as strong as any metal made today? And is it possible that the ancient Greeks invented an early version of a bullet proof vest during the time of Alexander the Great? We reveal how the fully equipped soldiers of today compare to the seemingly impossible warrior tech of the ancient world.

Powerful automated stone-cutting devices, incredible power drills capable of cutting through even the hardest granite, fire engines that can respond to and extinguish a fire anywhere in a city; even precise surgery tools so fine they are used on the human eye. These tools are not from the modern world, but are in fact thousands of years old. Most would be lost to time and not again for centuries. How was the ancient world able to create such incredible power tools? Why were they lost, and could there be even more advanced ancient power tools waiting to be discovered?

A mega factory is a modern invention--wrong--the ancients were the first to build these thousands of years ago. What was the incredible 16 wheel Roman automated factory in the south of France which could feed 12,500 people a day? How did the ancient Egyptians produce hundreds of vehicles of war every month? How did the Romans forge enough iron to equip an army, and mine enough gold to keep an economy afloat? With today's technology, this would be achievable, but how did the ancients do this thousands of years ago? We reveal the impossible ingenuity and techniques that made it possible for the ancients to have "Mega Factories" of their own.

Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, these are some of the most ingenious minds in history. But many of their accomplishments would never have been possible without some of the geniuses of the ancient world. The fact is that most of our modern world is possible because of the incredible minds that lived thousands of years ago. We show the amazing genius of Archimedes, who managed to make water flow uphill and pull a ship up a beach single handed! Meet Philon the genius behind the world's first robot, and Ctesibius who was experimenting with pneumatics centuries before anyone else. As impossible as it sounds, Heron of Alexandria invented the world's first steam engine, as well as automatic doors and vending machines! You'd be surprised to find out just how much of today's technology would be impossible without these "Ancient Einsteins."

We think of weapons of mass destruction as a modern concept, but the ancients also created fearsome weapons of their own, some even more destructive than we can create today. Centuries before the widespread discovery of gunpowder, one ancient genius managed to build a cannon that could fire a projectile using the power of steam! We reveal an ancient troop ship mightier than an aircraft carrier, and death rays that could burn enemy ships. How were the ancients capable of creating seemingly impossible warfare technologies thousands of years before modern times?

A massive monument carved out of solid rock, a monster-sized super-dome that defies the laws of gravity. These awe inspiring feats of engineering defy explanation, yet they are not modern--they were actually built thousands of years ago. The Great Pyramid was the tallest structure on earth for over 4,000 years! But what techniques, materials and tools could ancient engineers have used to build it? Stonehenge is one of the most mysterious structures ever built, but could the secret to its construction ever be revealed? Abu Simbel is ancient Egypt's greatest monument which even eclipses today's Mount Rushmore. How did the ancient engineers make the seemingly impossible possible?

How did the Ancients move impossibly huge objects? Why did the Roman forces at the siege of Masada decide to shift an entire mountain by hand? We reveal the ancient technology that allowed the Egyptians to move a 1,000 ton obelisk, and show how the Romans moved even heavier objects at the temples at Baalbek. As well as moving stone and earth, the ancients needed to move mountains of water, using technology we still find impressive today. Who were the most successful Mega Movers of the ancient world and how were they able to make the impossible...possible?

Dan Snow explores the ups and downs of a climactic century in naval and British history.

Documentary on the main principles of Sun Tzu (aka Sunzi) "Art of War" illustrated with examples from the second world war, the Vietnam war and the American civil war.

This documentary examines our planet's complex infrastructure and life-support systems and shows how humans are vulnerable to attacks from a variety of threats--be it man-made or extraterrestrial.

Examining the interpretations by ancient peoples of celestial phenomena as bad omens, and the impact that the perceived omens may have had on history.

Examining strange shapes of the universe, such as the "Eye of God", the hexagon on Saturn, and the "face" on the moon.

Examining apocalyptic visions of the future.

In search of alien worlds, from ancient Greek philosophers to the discoveries made possible with the Kepler project.

Clash of the cavemen.

This powerful documentary tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe\'s art treasures during the Third Reich and the Second World War. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But art professionals and ordinary heroes, from truck drivers to department store clerks, fought to safeguard, rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures. Today, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war.

On the afternoon of April 29th 1992, the Los Angeles Riots erupted. This documentary revisits the riots through television and radio reports, home videos and police footage.

A documentary about Ben Bradlee, the iconic editor of The Washington Post.

An investigation into the origins of our love/hate relationship with technology.

In his final major interview as President of the United States, Barack Obama reflects on the legacy of his presidency.

In America, sometimes being a hero means breaking the rules. From the beginning, superheroes like The Hulk, Black Panther, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Wolverine and The X-Men have challenged authority and fought for outsiders, in battles that reflect the country's most profound real-world divisions and struggles.

Tony Robinson untangles the tale of the Seuso Treasure, considered to be one of the world's most significant treasure troves.

A documentary that examines the common household hazards of typical modern residences in 1950s Britain.

A look back at what happened in New York City the night the power went out on 13th July 1977, plunging seven million people into darkness.

An unflinching look at the rise and fall of Joe McCarthy - one of the most infamous political figures in US history.