Smithsonian Channel Documentaries

See how Africa's top predators, from lions to sharks to crocs, all bow to one king, the coast's ever-changing climate.

In the pantheon of predators, it's one of the greatest discoveries since the T-Rex: a snake 48 feet long, weighing in at 2,500 pounds. Uncovered from a treasure trove of fossils in a Colombian coal mine, this serpent is revealing a lost world of giant creatures. Travel back to the period following the extinction of dinosaurs and encounter this monster predator.

April 4, 1968. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is gunned down on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. It was all caught on film, tape and audio. So why have we seen so little of it? The well-known photograph of Dr. King's aides pointing toward the direction of the gunfire is iconic, but tells only part of the story. For the first time, a remarkable collection of recently rediscovered footage has been chronologically reassembled. The resulting documentary allows us to revisit the tumultuous events surrounding one of the most shocking assassinations in America and relive history through the voices of the era.

Relatively few people know that along with authoring the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson also compiled his own text, drawn carefully from passages extracted out of the New Testament, that he titled "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth." The book, which focused on the ethical teachings of Jesus, was a private undertaking for Jefferson and never made public in his lifetime. Now, experts at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History are meticulously conserving this fragile volume, page by brittle page. Along the way, they discover subtle hidden clues to Jefferson himself.

Lucian Freud, the controversial grandson of Sigmund Freud, has been called one of the greatest painters of the 20th century. His extraordinary portraits - of children, lovers, gangsters, supermodels, even the Queen of England - pushed the boundaries of art and broke world records at auction. They also enraged sitters and ended friendships. The royal photographer for The Times of London was so incensed by Freud's picture of the Queen that he said Freud should be thrown from the Tower of London. Freud, who died last summer, was notoriously elusive. Shortly before his death, however, he gave his full backing to this documentary. The film includes the only known footage of him painting on what turned out to be the last day he ever worked. Written by Smithsonian Channel

Author Tim Maltin presents evidence that the seed for the Titanic accident was sown by a bizarre weather condition.

On May 2, 2011 Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 bombings, was killed by American special forces, marking an end to the longest, most expensive manhunt in American history. Witness the 20-year search for the most wanted man on Earth, as counter-terrorism experts in the White House, the CIA, and the FBI divulge their firsthand accounts. This inside story reveals the presidential frustrations, missed opportunities, and vicious turf wars that tainted the operation right up until the night Navy SEALs ended Bin Laden's reign of terror.

It's an incredible story of treasures saved, and hope restored. In the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a cultural recovery project is born. The Smithsonian Institution, in collaboration with the Haitian government, embark on a mission to restore thousands of damaged artworks gathered from the ruins of public museums, private galleries, and toppled cathedrals. Follow the volunteer art conservators as they work tirelessly, and carefully, not only to salvage these tarnished historic relics, but to save Haiti's identity as well.

Before Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, there was the "Fairchild Eight," a team of young geniuses who discovered an everlasting treasure in the sands of Palo Alto. Travel back to the 1950s and witness the dawn of the electronics revolution, as told by the forefathers who built Silicon Valley from the ground up. This innovative film, by the writer of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, reveals how determination, jealousy, and the sheer joy of making the impossible possible drove these men to build the future and reinvent the American Dream.

In the untamed and uncompromising wilds of southwestern Africa, a remarkable and resourceful array of life exists. Here, animals, insects, birds, plants, and reptiles not only survive but thrive in one of our planet's toughest environments. How do they do it? That question sends naturalist Nick Baker on a thousand-mile trek across Namibia, from the arid Salt Pan of Etosha to the 55-million-year-old Namib Desert to the inhospitable Skeleton Coast. Join him on his journey and discover an extraordinary world crafted by millions of years of evolution.