Trailer | Taken Hostage
Revisit the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, through stories of those whose ordeal riveted the world.
Jimmy Carter
President Jimmy Carter confronted one of the most significant challenges of his presidency during the Iran hostage crisis.
The Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlav, the last Shah of Iran consolidated power after a CIA-backed coup in 1953 overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
Barry Rosen
Barry Rosen was the press attaché at the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis. He first visited Iran in 1967 on a two-year Peace Corps mission and fell in love with the country and pursued graduate studies in Iranian language and culture.
Hilary Brown
Hilary Brown was the first female foreign correspondent at ABC News. Her coverage included first-hand reports on the fall of Saigon, the Rwandan genocide, and the Iranian Revolution.
Snapshot: America in the 1970s
From Jimmy Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech to the Hostage Crisis, here's a look at each year from 1970 to 1979.
San Francisco’s Bubonic Plague Cover-up
As rumor spread of bubonic plague in San Francisco, newspapers couldn't agree if it was a nationwide threat or a plot to destroy the economy. Sound familiar?
Ng Poon Chew
Ng Poon Chew was a writer, a publisher and an advocate for Chinese American civil rights. He established the first Chinese language daily newspaper in America, the Chung Sai Yat Po. This newspaper was a vital resource for the Chinese community during the plague outbreak in San Francisco.
The Chinese Six Companies
On May 28, 1900, San Francisco policemen formed a perimeter around Chinatown, and set about building an eight-foot high wall around the district using cement blocks and barbed wire. Officials diagnosed bubonic plague in the neighborhood and wanted to quarantine the nearly 20,000 residents. As tensions flared, an influential group of merchants known as the Chinese Six Companies sprang into action.
The War on Rats
In 1900, the first case of bubonic plague to ever be confirmed in North America was diagnosed in San Francisco.
Scientists did not understand how the disease was transmitted but had long theorized that rats played a role.
Rupert Blue
In 1901, Rupert Blue launched a public health campaign that ended a deadly bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco.
Dr. Joseph Kinyoun
Dr. Joseph Kinyoun created the Hygienic Laboratory, the nation’s first federal laboratory of medical bacteriology which later became the National Institutes of Health.
Trailer | Plague at the Golden Gate
Follow the gripping story of the race against time to save San Francisco and the nation from an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900.
The Asian American and Pacific Islander History
American Experience celebrates The Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Experience.
Big Dams of the American West
After the St. Francis Dam disaster of 1928, engineers applied lessons learned to expansive dam projects in the American West.
Owens Valley Paiute
The Native inhabitants—the Paiute people of the Owens Valley territory in what is now the State of California built sophisticated irrigation canals to channel water runoff from the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Chapter 1 | Flood in the Desert
Explore the 1928 dam collapse, the second deadliest disaster in California history.
William Mulholland
In 1922, to meet the growing water needs of Los Angeles, William Mulholland began building the St. Francis Dam to create a reservoir for the Los Angeles–Owens River aqueduct.
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