Around 3,600 years ago, reliefs in Egyptian tombs and temples depict pharaohs and warriors proudly riding into battle on horse-drawn chariots. Some historians claim that the chariot launched a technological and strategic revolution, and was the secret weapon behind Egypt’s greatest era of conquest known as the New Kingdom. But was the Egyptian chariot really a revolutionary design? How decisive a role did it play in the bloody battles of the ancient world? In Building Pharaoh’s Chariot, a team of archaeologists, engineers, woodworkers, and horse trainers join forces to build and test two highly accurate replicas of Egyptian royal chariots. They discover astonishingly advanced features, including spoked wheels, springs, shock absorbers, anti-roll bars, and even a convex shaped rear mirror, leading one of them to compare the level of design to the engineering standards of 1930’s-era Buicks! By driving the pair of replicas to their limits in the desert outside Cairo, NOVA’s experts test the claim that the chariot marks a crucial turning point in ancient military history.
Producers: PBS Distribution
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NOVA: Who Killed Lindbergh’s Baby
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh-Lucky Lindy-became the most famous human being on earth. But on the evening of March 1, 1932 Lucky Lindy’s luck ran out. Bold kidnappers snatched his baby son, Charlie, from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey while everyone in the house was awake. Negotiations with the kidnappers stretched out for weeks, but little Charlie never came back. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell. A German immigrant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was executed for the crime. But was he really guilty? And could there be other kidnappers that were never caught?
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NOVA: Secrets of Stonehenge
Every year, a million visitors are drawn to the Salisbury Plain, in southern England, to gaze upon a mysterious circle of stones. Who built Stonehenge? What was its purpose? A new generation of researchers is tackling these questions, finding important clues in the landscape surrounding Stonehenge -one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric structures in the world. The story of Stonehenge is being rewritten.