For nearly half a century, Russian emigrant Emma Goldman was the most controversial woman in America, taunting the mainstream with her fervent attacks on government, big business, and war.

The first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart was one of America's first celebrities. After only a few years as a pilot she became the best-known female flier in America, not only for her daring and determination but also for her striking looks and outspoken personality. Three weeks before her 40th birthday Earhart disappeared over the Pacific Ocean, and her story became legend.

Watch Chapter 1 of Amelia Earhart.

In August 1969, nearly half a million people gathered at a farm in upstate New York to hear music. What happened over the next three days, however, was far more than a concert.

Valerie Hoard married William Anders in 1955. In 1968, Bill Anders was one of three astronauts aboard the Apollo 8.

Go behind the scenes with the production team to get a sneak peak of Chasing the Moon, a film by Robert Stone coming to PBS this Summer.

With other engineers, Frances “Poppy” Northcutt plotted return-to-Earth trajectories for Apollo 8. Northcutt’s team also troubleshot the Apollo 13 oxygen tank explosion emergency. She worked in the Space Program for five years.

In the 1930s, Wernher Von Braun’s rocket work was supported by the Nazi regime. At the end of WWII, the United States government enlisted von Braun’s expertise.. During the Cold War, his rocket work became valuable to America’s new space program.

Who the hell is Diane Nash?

In June 1964, at the beginning of Freedom Summer, about 100 doctors, nurses and social workers traveled to Mississippi to provide medical care to civil rights workers and local community who couldn't receive adequate medical care in the segregated South. These caregivers were known as the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR), and they became the medical arm for the civil rights movement.

In 1969 off the California coast, a US Navy crane carefully lowered a massive tubular structure into the waters. An audacious feat of engineering — a pressurized underwater habitat, designed for an elite group of divers to spend days or even months at a stretch living and working on the ocean floor. The little-known story of the daring program that tested the limits of human endurance.

Watch chapter 1 of Sealab.

A daunting story of shipwreck, starvation, mutiny and cannibalism amongst a group left abandoned in the high arctic.

An American astronaut and an aquanaut, Scott Carpenter was part of Project Mercury and operated the Aurora 7 spacecraft, which orbited the earth three times. He also joined U.S. Navy’s SEALAB project and stayed underwater for a record of 30 days.

George Bond studied the bodily effects of deep sea diving and shepherded the development of saturation diving. A doctor and a navy officer, he spearheaded Sealab I, II and III.

In 1969, humanity paused and looked skyward to witness the impossible. Fifty years later, pause once again. CHASING THE MOON premieres across three nights, beginning July 8 on PBS.

Surviving the Dust Bowl is the remarkable story of the determined people who clung to their homes and way of life, enduring drought, dust, disease — even death — for nearly a decade.

The history of the Everglades is a dramatic yet little known story of humanity’s attempt to conquer nature.

Plume, an arrangement of feather as ornament, especially the prized plume from wading birds in the Everglades surpassed the price of gold. The mass killing of these birds soon led to anti-plume campaign by the Florida Audubon Society, with support from the Florida Federation of Women’s Clubs and resulted in grassroots conservation movement.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas advocated for conservation and joined the movement to make the Everglades a national park. In 1947, she published The Everglades: River of Grass and forever redefined the region as essential not only to wildlife, but to people.