Secrets of the Dead

Theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre

In the summer of 1911, the relatively obscure Mona Lisa portrait was stolen from a Renaissance gallery in The Louvre Museum. The scandal soon made the Leonardo da Vinci painting a household name. A handyman Vincenzo Peruggia committed the crime, removing the wooden panel portrait from its frame and escaping in broad daylight the following day when the museum was closed.

Theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre

1m 45s

  • The Herculaneum Scrolls: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    The Herculaneum Scrolls

    S21 E6 - 55m 15s

    Making headlines around the world, Brent Seales and his team of computer scientists set out on a mission to read the 2,000-year-old carbonized scrolls found in the remains of a villa in Herculaneum. Mt. Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 AD transformed the papyri, fusing together the layers of the scrolls and making them impossible to read. Can particle physics and AI finally reveal what the scrolls say?

  • Mozart's Sister: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Mozart's Sister

    S21 E5 - 55m 15s

    Maria Anna Mozart was a musical prodigy just like her younger brother Wolfgang. Although the children toured Europe together, once Maria Anna came of age, she was left behind while her brother became a star. But controversial new evidence suggests she may have contributed to her brother’s earliest works while a global search for her compositions continues.

  • Returning to Babylon: asset-mezzanine-16x9

    Returning to Babylon

    S21 E4 - 54m 45s

    A moving story of a people reclaiming their cultural heritage after an occupying force tried to erase it. Priceless artifacts from the Assyrian Empire were destroyed during the Isis occupation of Mosul. Now, a team of archaeologists is dedicated to finding pieces that survived. One possible discovery: the location of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

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