The Smithsonian Network Movies

China, as we know it today, would not exist without the Han Dynasty. About two millenniums ago, its emperors ruled for over 400 years, and yet, few...

We go behind the scenes and into the minds of artists as they capture, commemorate, and, at times, condemn our presidents.

It lasted only one day on a small piece of land, but the impact the Battle of Waterloo had on history is massive and far-reaching. This is the...

In the far reaches of the North, wolf and bear come head to head. Winter has been long. The melting ice reveal scattered carcasses in the Swamp: a...

In 1960, a lone assassin planned a deadly attempt on the life of President-Elect John F Kennedy. With a Buick packed with dynamite, nothing was going...

Herman Melville's epic ocean adventure "Moby Dick" is an American masterpiece. But was this stirring tale of violence and revenge simply an allegory,...

Enter the harsh and unforgiving Kalahari and follow a lion pride attempt to save their threatened bloodline.

Before he wrote the book that revolutionized the way people understood evolution, a young Charles Darwin found himself, by chance, on a strange sea...

Ascension Island, a remote Mid-Atlantic outpost famous for its big game fishing, is under siege. Tiger sharks, hammerheads, even great whites, lured...

Spend three years in China's remote and inhospitable Tibetan Plateau, home to nearly all the world's snow leopards.

20 years after the TV Mini-Series "Tales of the Serengeti", our crew reunites to truly explore the Serengeti, with no fiction. We almost didn't...

In China's Valley of the Kings, there stands a tall, carved stone. It honors the resting place of a woman named Wu Zetian, who rose from concubine to...

Honeybees are in crisis – but there is hope. Biologists are studying the estimated 20.000 bee species in the world to look for viable...

A high-tech autopsy on a Nile crocodile unlocks secrets behind its hunting prowess.

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...

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...

The history of the people and the planes that first broke the speed barrier in 1947 and the impact it has had on aviation and how we fly today.

Brazil's massive Pantanal is a land of extreme contrasts, ruled by dramatic cycles of torrential rain and arid heat. At the peak of the dry season,...

The drama documentary tells the real life story of Samurai woman Takeko Nakano who in 1868 fights for her clans' independence in a final battle that...