In October 1897, the renowned Arctic explorer Robert Peary returned to New York from his latest Greenland expedition. At the request of anthropologist Franz Boas, he brought with him five polar Eskimos for study at the American Museum of Natural History.

The harrowing stories vets remember about the horrors and desperation they each experienced during the Battle of the Bulge are almost too much to bear. They were fortunate to have survived. And their words are a reminder of just how gruesome war is. Ed Stewart, Sergeant in the 84th Infantry, describes the sound of artillery fire.

In 1886, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show played to over one million people in New York City. Behind the extravaganza was one man -- a meager plainsman turned international celebrity and frontier hero, whose meteoric rise to fame was made possible only by his genius, and his hucksterism. His name was William Cody, better known to the world as Buffalo Bill.

His exploits on the American frontier inspired dozens of dime novels. But the stories told in these wildly popular books belie the complexities of the real Kit Carson, whose life embodies the contradictions in the story of the American West.

On February 1, 1913, more than 150,000 people eagerly rushed to Grand Central Terminal to gaze at New York City's newest landmark. A marvel of engineering, architecture, and vision, the new Beaux Arts structure on 42nd street housed an underground electric train station that would revolutionize the way people traveled and transform midtown Manhattan.

A preview of Oswald's Ghost, a film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 that left a psychic wound on America that is with us still today. Few Americans then or now accept that a lone, inconsequential gunman could bring down a president and alter history. In that breach, a culture of conspiracy has arisen that points to sinister forces at work in the shadows.

Find out how Alexander Hamilton producer Muffie Meyer and her team recreated 18th century New York City with computer generated imagery and effects.

Partisan politics were a part of public life from the republic's earliest years.

Elizabeth Hamilton, who outlived her husband by five decades, defends his reputation.

Perhaps one of Hamilton's most farsighted contributions to the new U.S. economy was the creation of a central bank.

Hamilton's opposition to slavery stemmed from his hatred of seeing human potential wasted.

Who was Alexander Hamilton? Those who knew him describe his many qualities.

One of the most controversial men of his age, Alexander Hamilton was a gifted statesman brought down by the fatal flaws of stubbornness, extreme candor, and arrogance.

In 1978 over 900 people led by Rev. Jim Jones died in the largest mass murder-suicide in history, at Jonestown, Guyana. The story is told by survivors, Temple defectors, relatives, and journalists.

New Orleans: the utterly original American city that lies at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi and at the beating heart of the great American experiment. The crowded streets of New Orleans have always been a laboratory where the social forces that characterize American life play out in dramatic and, at times, disastrous fashion.

The international race to develop biological weapons during the 20th century, the challenges scientists faced, and the moral dilemmas posed by their eventual success.

The 1982 recession during the Reagan Administration resulted in high interest rates, homelessness, and unemployment. "We are really in trouble," Reagan confided to his diary.

After Kennedy was nominated for the Presidency, "no one was sure what Johnson would do if Kennedy offered it to him."

President Nixon tried to demonstrate that most Americans supported him with his "Silent Majority" speech in November 1969. "To you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans," Nixon said, "I ask for your support, for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris."

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall found gold near the fork of the American and Sacramento Rivers, and unleashed a massive migration from around the world to what had been a forgotten backwater. With head-spinning speed, these gold-seekers created one of the most extraordinary societies in history -- hard-driving, overwhelmingly male, often brutal.