History comes alive on WGBH

Tune in to WGBH 2 and 44 to meet some of the nation’s greatest characters on American Experience, trace the origins of America’s buried treasures on Antiques Roadshow, and solve history’s mysteries with History Detectives.

Stories that define our nation: the Great Depression

The Crash of 1929

In the “Roaring '20s,” while the stock market was rising, there were few critics. It was an era when everyone was trying to get rich. Leaders of Wall Street such as Charles Mitchell, president of the National City Bank (which would become Citibank), stock specialist Michael Meehan, and Jesse Livermore, a Wall Street insider, found new ways to manipulate the stock market and grew incredibly wealthy, helping create the economic boom of that fabulous decade. Their success made them folk heroes of the day. The upward climb of the market seemed limitless.  But in October 1929, the market plunged, taking with it the finances of the Wall Street titans and everyday investors alike.
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Surviving the Dust Bowl

They were called “black blizzards,” dark clouds reaching miles into the sky, churning millions of tons of dirt into torrents of destruction. For 10 years beginning in 1930, dust storms ravaged the parched and overplowed southern plains, turning bountiful wheat fields into desert. Surviving the Dust Bowl is the story of the people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease — even death — for nearly a decade.
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Arthur Miller

In the period immediately following the end of World War II, American theater was transformed by the work of playwright Arthur Miller. Profoundly influenced by the Depression and the war that immediately followed it, Miller tapped into a sense of dissatisfaction and unrest within the greater American psyche. His probing dramas proved to be both the conscience and redemption of the times, allowing people an honest view of the direction the country had taken.
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'32 Ford Roadster

In 1932, although America was in the midst of the Depression, Henry Ford forged ahead, designing a new model ’32 car with the first V8 engine affordable to the masses. History Detectives high-tails it to California to investigate one of the most iconic hot rods of all time.
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Stories that define our nation: war and politics

Two Days in October

Some stayed. Some went. All fought. In October 1967, history turned a corner. In a jungle in Vietnam, a Viet Cong ambush nearly wiped out an American battalion, prompting some in power to question whether the war might be unwinnable. On a campus in Wisconsin, a student protest against the war spiraled out of control, marking the first time that a campus antiwar demonstration had turned violent.
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Nixon's China Game

In February 1972, after a quarter century of mutual antagonism between the United States and China, President Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing for a historic encounter with Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The climax of a secret White House initiative headed by Henry Kissinger, the diplomatic breakthrough shocked both America's allies and its enemies.
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General Lee's farewell address

In the archives of a gentleman's club in this rural town is what is believed to be a signed copy of one of the most famous documents in the history of the Civil War — Confederate General Robert E. Lee's farewell address, "General Order #9," composed at Appomattox, Virginia, upon the surrender of his troops in April 1865. The Beech Island Agricultural Club, a social organization formed by local plantation owners in the 1840s, has owned this copy for almost 120 years.
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FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was found to have been related, by blood or through marriage, to 11 former presidents. The policies and persona of Franklin Roosevelt set the mold for the modern presidency. He was  the most vital figure in the nation, and perhaps the world, during his 13 years in the White House. Engendering both admiration and scorn, FDR exerted unflinching leadership during the most tumultuous period in the nation's history since the Civil War.
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