When Peter Friedman’s friends Tom Joslin and Mark Massi died, he accepted an extraordinary inheritance: 40 hours of tape documenting the couple’s bout with AIDS. His film, Silverlake Life: The View From Here will be watchable online through Feb. 22, 2009. Watch now.
An infrastructure megaproject, Boston’s Big Dig carved out new highway tunnels/routes to ease downtown traffic congestion. The project was greenlit in 1982, but construction didn’t start until 1991. On December 31, 2007, and costing over 14.6 billion dollars, the Dig was finally done. Read/watch more…
How is the star film composer of Hollywood’s Golden Years virtually unknown to moviegoers today? The name Franz Waxman doesn’t usually ring a bell, but the movies he worked on—“Philadelphia Story”, “Rebecca”, more…are classics. Read more about this composer’s life and work.
On December 30, 1924: Astronomer Edwin Hubble announced he believed he had confirmed the existence of other galaxies, through his research examining the Andromeda system. Read more about Hubble from WNET and WGBH:
Hubble’s Law
Hubble’s Work
Hubble’s Bio
“Cinema’s Exiles” takes an in-depth look at the hundreds of film professionals who fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood in the 1930s, and examines their impact on wartime Tinseltown. The film premieres Jan. 1 at 9:30 pm. Read more….
The camp of Tule Lake, in Newell, California was named part of the National Parks system on December 5, 2008. Tule Lake was one of sites of Japanese Internment Camps during WWII. Read more about Tule Lake and the history of the camp’s survivors.
The second bridge to span the East River (after the Brooklyn Bridge), the Williamsburg bridge started operations on December 19, 1903. At the time of construction, the Bridge was the longest suspension bridge on earth. Watch a clip from the actual opening in 1903…
“Trash to Treasure” puts viewers in a festive mood with more than twenty incredible tales of valuable treasures rescued from rubbish heaps, roadsides, dumpsters, and demolition sites. Watch all appraisals from this episode. (Originally aired: 01/15/2008).
Produced for WGBH and the BBC in 1992, this 5-hour history of computers is watchable online. It covers the birth of computing in Babbage’s difference engine, all the way through the growth of artificial intelligence and global networks.
On December 15, 2001, Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa reopened its doors to tourists after a team of experts spent 11 years and $27 million to keep it from tilting so much it might fall over.
