Story of the giant German airship that mysteriously exploded over New Jersey in 1937, killing all onboard. Why did the tragedy occur, and who was responsible?

Avalanches, earthquakes, hurricanes, bombings--all mean human tragedy unless rescuers respond within a moment's notice of disaster. Here are the latest advances in rescue technology, including: a Searchcam system that locates buried victims, and the Jaws of Life that can extricate a person from a crushed car in seconds.

Emergency room medicine has only been a recognized specialty since 1989, and it took close to two millennia to get to this point. We'll examine advances that led to the modern emergency room--from the Byzantine's establishment of the first hospitals around 1050 A.D. to today's telemedicine. the prognosis for its future looks good.

Fire! A blessing and curse to mankind. We'll review efforts to control this force from ancient Rome to today's thermal imaging cameras with special focus on U.S. history. We'll see how major fires in Chicago and San Francisco altered city planning, and relive the disasters at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and Coconut Grove.

From Sherlock Holmes' examination of the physical evidence at a crime scene to today's DNA technology, we review the history of crime detection through the use of forensic science.

Explore collisions that shake our world from the astronomic to the subatomic. Discover breakthroughs that could make the deadly sport of professional auto racing safer, visit a motorcycle crash test facility, and examine two-wheeled accidents.

Delves into the little-known, hugely important, multi-billion-dollar industry of product testing--where wrinkles get ironed out and goods are stripped of marketing and hype to see if they work. Meet product testers who serve as truth squads in an eccentric world of machines devised to "sneeze" at tissue paper and "sleep" on mattresses.