Episodes

The trouble in Salem began during the cold, dark Massachusetts winter, in January of 1692. Eight young girls began to take ill, beginning with 9-year-old Elizabeth Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams. But theirs was a strange sickness.

In the shadow of Stonehenge, an ancient body has been found — stuffed into a shallow grave with its head separated from its body. Who was this man and how did he die? Using modern science and forensic techniques, archaeologist Mike Pitts attempts to solve this ancient murder mystery.

Three years after setting foot on American shores, 440 of the original 500 Jamestown settlers had died. Why did deadly outbreaks strike just after the ships headed home? And is it a coincidence that the only map of the colony today belongs to Spain? Take a 21st-century look at the eerie the plight of these fated settlers.

In January 1879, one of the worst defeats of the Victorian era befell the British Army at Isandlwana in South Africa. Almost an entire battalion — 1,300 soldiers — were massacred by the Zulu. Now a team of experts has been assembled to tackle the mystery of how a so-called "primitive" tribe of warriors could defeat a highly-trained modern army.

Reconstructing Christ’s final days, this episode traces the history and various incarnations of the tomb through the efforts of an Oxford professor who, with his wife, has been studying the site for 10 years. Is the very rock shelf on which Christ’s body was laid 2,000 years ago within the reach of modern science? Or will we always wonder?

In 1492, Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic in search of gold in the uncharted New World. But his ships brought back something entirely different: syphilis. But if the scourge really did originate in the Americas, what is the explanation for the discovery of a European who was racked with indisputable signs of the disease 150 years before Columbus set sail?