Smithsonian Channel Documentaries

  • Premiered: Jan 1970
  • Episodes: 265
  • Followers: 3
  • Running
  • Smithsonian Channel
  • Sunday at 21
  • Documentary

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Season 2020
2020x31 Season finale
100 Missions: Surviving Vietnam 2020
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 01, 2020
During the Vietnam War, US Air Force pilots who flew 100 combat missions could go home. The tension built relentlessly as they survived each sortie. This is the story of the survivors and the fallen.
2020x1
The Hunt for Escobar's Hippos
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 04, 2020
Notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's regime ended in a hail of bullets. Somewhat bizarelly, he left behind a private zoo with African hippos. They escaped and are multiplying, wreaking havoc in Colombia.
2020x1
Battle of Little Bighorn
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 13, 2020
The Battle of Little Bighorn lasted nearly 24 hours on June 25, 1876, but the stage had been set decades earlier as settlers, prospectors, and business people began encroaching on Native .. show full overview
2020x3
Jaguarland
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 15, 2020
Filmed in the largest contiguous wetland in the world, this area of the Pantanal contains numerous jaguars who hunt caiman and capybara and are up to twice the weight of jaguars elsewhere.
2020x4
Brazil's Emerald Oasis
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 15, 2020
An astonishing range of wildlife is attracted to the Pantanal's Rebel Lake - including 600-pound tapirs, jaguars, graceful spoonbills, and hundreds of caimans.
2020x2
Hannibal's March on Rome
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 20, 2020
Even 2,000 years after his death, General Hannibal's battle strategies are still studied today. But of all his military feats, perhaps his greatest was leading his massive Carthaginian .. show full overview
2020x3
Mystery of the Lost Pyramid
Episode overview
Air date
Jan 27, 2020
Fifteen miles south of Cairo lies the site of a royal graveyard...and an ancient crime scene. When archaeologists discovered a 4,000-year-old burial chamber there, still sealed with a .. show full overview
2020x7
Epic Migrations: Mexico
Episode overview
Air date
Mar 05, 2020
Mexico is home to over 20,000 species - about 12 per cent of the planet's life-forms, the fifth most biodiverse country in the world. With unprecedented access to its most spectacular .. show full overview
2020x21
Into the Puma Triangle
Episode overview
Air date
Mar 11, 2020
For years, wildlife filmmaker Casey Anderson has tracked mountain lions by his home in Montana, but always from a distance. That all changes when he's invited by a Chilean filmmaker to .. show full overview
2020x18
Humboldt: Epic Explorer
Episode overview
Air date
Mar 25, 2020
More than 200 years ago, a scientist named Alexander von Humboldt embarked on a perilous five-year journey through the Venezuelan jungles and Andean Mountains of South America. At the .. show full overview
2020x8
Dung Dynasty
Episode overview
Air date
Apr 05, 2020
During the rainy season in Africa, a herd of buffalo can create thousands of pounds of waste in a day, which would be an environmental disaster if not for the dung beetle. These .. show full overview
2020x9
Race to Victory: WWII Europe
Episode overview
Air date
May 04, 2020
For six years, Hitler had an iron grip on Europe. At its peak, Nazi Germany controlled more territory than the Roman Empire, but in 1945, the Third Reich found itself headed for a .. show full overview
2020x30 Season finale
Covid: Our Lockdown in Shanghai
Episode overview
Air date
May 15, 2020
Reveals the challenges, tensions and sometimes life-affirming moments among the residents. Scenes of handling stress and developing coping mechanisms turn to surprising moments of .. show full overview
2020x10
D-Day and the Dambusters
Episode overview
Air date
Jun 11, 2020
On June 6, 1944, British, American and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of Normandy as part of largest amphibious assault in military history: D-Day. Lesser known is the role played .. show full overview
2020x11
Hunt for the Lost Superfleet
Episode overview
Air date
Jun 15, 2020
The Battle of the Falklands, between a Royal Navy task force and five German cruisers, was one of the most dramatic and bloodiest sea conflicts of World War I. When the smoke cleared, .. show full overview
2020x12
World's Most Dangerous Shark
Episode overview
Air date
Jul 08, 2020
Oceanic whitetips are best known as the shark responsible for the carnage that followed the 1945 sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Today, humans have all but wiped them out and the .. show full overview
2020x13
Shark Ganglands
Episode overview
Air date
Jul 15, 2020
Ascension Island, a remote Mid-Atlantic outpost famous for its big game fishing, is under siege. Tiger sharks, hammerheads, even great whites, lured here every year by the bountiful .. show full overview
2020x14
Madagascar: Africa's Galapagos
Episode overview
Air date
Jul 22, 2020
On May 9, 1836, Charles Darwin sailed past the island of Madagascar, on his way to the Galapagos islands. If he'd decided to stop, he would have been astonished by the natural wonders on .. show full overview
2020x15
Monkeys of Bioko
Episode overview
Air date
Jul 28, 2020
Roughly 20 miles off the coast of west Africa, sits a volcanic relic now completely blanketed in equatorial rainforest: the island of Bioko. It's home to some very rare species, .. show full overview
2020x16
Iceland's Fire and Ice
Episode overview
Air date
Aug 12, 2020
Iceland is an island on fire, with 30 active volcanoes generating a third of the world's land-based lava. Across the small country, steam hisses, water erupts, and magma spews. But there .. show full overview
2020x17
She the People: Votes for Women
Episode overview
Air date
Aug 17, 2020
Today, it seems incredible that just a century ago, American women had no voice in democracy. Just as remarkable is that it took over 70 years of campaigns, marches, hunger strikes, and .. show full overview
2020x19
V-Day: Volcanic Planet
Episode overview
Air date
Aug 24, 2020
What would happen if all of the world’s volcanoes erupted on a single day? Today, some 40 volcanoes are currently erupting, and more than a thousand sleeping giants could awake anytime. .. show full overview
2020x24
Into the Wild Tibet
Episode overview
Air date
Sep 02, 2020
The Tibetan Plateau is known as `the roof of the world'. Its terrain and weather are unforgiving. As this documentary reveals, outsiders seldom see this area of Qinghai - inhabited by Tibetan wolves, blue sheep, and snow leopards.
2020x28
America's Wild Border: Northern Exposure
Episode overview
Air date
Sep 24, 2020
America’s northern border with Canada encompasses a remarkable range of habitats and weather extremes, from desert to tundra, grassland to rainforest, ocean to lake. They are home to .. show full overview
2020x20
Walk Against Fear: James Meredith
Episode overview
Air date
Sep 30, 2020
James Meredith was a civil rights hero unlike any other. He took on the University of Mississippi and the state's governor to desegregate the school, a fight that triggered the largest .. show full overview
2020x22
Aboard Air Force One
Episode overview
Air date
Nov 02, 2020
Air Force One is a marvel of military engineering. For more than half a century, the presidential fleet of armed jumbo jets has served as a flying fortress for America's .. show full overview
2020x29 Season finale
Breaking the Sound Barrier
Episode overview
Air date
Nov 11, 2020
On October 14, 1947, Captain Chuck Yeager accomplished what many thought was impossible: he broke the sound barrier and in doing so, changed aviation history forever. Behind this .. show full overview
2020x23
COVID: Race Against the Virus
Episode overview
Air date
Nov 22, 2020
It typically takes 10 years for a new vaccine to go through animal and human trials to test whether it's safe and effective, and then bring it to market. COVID-19 afforded no such .. show full overview
2020x27
The Blitz: Days That Changed WWII
Episode overview
Air date
Dec 27, 2020
The Blitz--Germany's incessant, aerial onslaught on London and surrounding cities--was designed to eliminate the English motherland. Instead, it served as a defining moment for Britain .. show full overview
2020x27
Survival of the Snow Leopard
Episode overview
Air date
Dec 30, 2020
In the central mountains of the Tibetan Plateau lies a secret valley that's hidden from the outside world. It is home to more snow leopards than anywhere else on the planet, including a .. show full overview

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