The BEST episodes of NOVA season 23

#1 - Flood!

Season 23 - Episode 7 - Aired 3/26/1996

The Great Flood of 1993 leaves a wake of destruction across the Midwest. Can rivers ever be contained?

#2 - Lost City of Arabia

Season 23 - Episode 12 - Aired 10/8/1996

Helped by remote sensing, an expedition searches Oman's vast al-Khali desert for the lost city of Ubar.

#3 - The Day the Earth Shook

Season 23 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/16/1996

On the same date in January one year apart, Earthquakes of almost identical power shook Northridge, California (1994) and Kobe, Japan (1995). NOVA probes why almost 100 times more people died in Japan than in the United States and what scientists have learned from the twin calamities.

#4 - War Machines of Tomorrow

Season 23 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/20/1996

NOVA travels to the testing ranges and training grounds for a leaner, meaner and more effective United States military force that can fight and win on almost any battlefield in the world. One innovation in the works: super-accurate "brilliant" weapons, designed as successors to the smart munitions used in the Gulf War.

#5 - Shark Attack

Season 23 - Episode 16 - Aired 11/19/1996

Sharks are known as the "perfect predators," but sometimes they slip up and attack the wrong prey—people.

#6 - Secrets of Making Money

Season 23 - Episode 14 - Aired 10/22/1996

With a radically redesigned bill, the U.S. Treasury fights back against a new breed of counterfeiters.

#7 - Three Men and a Balloon

Season 23 - Episode 13 - Aired 10/15/1996

One of the final aeronautics challenges left in the world today does not involve the use of a plane, a rocket, or even an engine. No one has yet been able to circumnavigate the earth in a balloon. Any team attempting the feat would have to fly higher than most planes ever fly and would need a passenger capsule that could both offer protection from extreme cold and carry the proper navigation and life support equipment. Depending on the powerful jet stream to propel them, crew members would have to plot their course carefully and plan their schedule to coincide with the most advantageous winds. Even landing would be a risky venture. This program follows a team of three adventurers as they attempt to make just such a journey.

#8 - The Bombing of America

Season 23 - Episode 10 - Aired 4/16/1996

Bombing is on the rise across the United States. But science is fighting back. Hidden within the chaos of a crime scene lie clues that can solve the case. Can science help stop the "Bombing of America"?

#9 - Warriors of the Amazon

Season 23 - Episode 9 - Aired 4/9/1996

Explore the unique culture of the Yanomami, an isolated tribe living deep in the Amazonian rainforest.

#10 - Dr. Spock the Baby Doc

Season 23 - Episode 8 - Aired 4/2/1996

NOVA profiles Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose best-selling baby and child care guide revolutionized the way Americans raise their children. At ninety-something, Dr. Spock continues to mix a lively interest in babies with his long-standing activism for world peace, on the theory that war is potentially more dangerous to children than accidents or illness.

#11 - Kidnapped by UFOs?

Season 23 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/27/1996

Carl Sagan and other scientists investigate claims that people have been visited or abducted by aliens.

#12 - Ebola: The Plague Fighters

Season 23 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/6/1996

AKA Inside an Outbreak The Ebola filovirus causes a very deadly and highly contagious disease. Outbreaks thus far have been limited due to the implementation of strict isolation, sterilization, and waste disposal procedures; the remoteness of areas in which the outbreaks appeared; and the fact that the virus kills so quickly that many of its victims die before it can be transmitted. Most recently, the Ebola virus struck in the city of Kikwit in Zaire, Africa, in early 1995 and killed almost 250 people before it was contained. Medical experts and relief workers went to work quickly to locate victims, to provide educational and prevention services to neighbors and families, and to research the Ebola virus. This NOVA program follows the medical researchers and doctors as they work to prevent the virus from wiping out an entire community and to locate where the virus originated.

#13 - B-29 Frozen in Time

Season 23 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/30/1996

Travel on a perilous mission to repair and refly a rare B-29 bomber stranded on a Greenland icecap for almost 50 years.Gleaming like a jewel this well preserved bomber from World War II rests on the Arctic tundra where it was abandoned when it crash landed in 1947. This plane has long been a legend and now facing incredible hardship a team of adventurers struggle to bring the frozen warbird back to life.NOVA follows bold pilot Darryl Greenamyer and his team on two expeditions to revive Kee Bird and make it fly again in one of the most isolated and harshest environments on Earth. Despite severe weather illness and difficulties with the shuttle plane in 1994 Greenamyer returns in May 1995 with a larger crew a more reliable shuttle plane and a new plan to bring Kee Bird back to life and back home.

#14 - Terror in the Mine Fields

Season 23 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/9/1996

#15 - Odyssey of Life: The Ultimate Journey

Season 23 - Episode 17 - Aired 11/24/1996

NOVA explores the links between our individual development and the evolution of life itself.

#16 - Odyssey of Life: The Unknown World

Season 23 - Episode 18 - Aired 11/25/1996

This program reveals some of the billions of practically invisible organisms that live on, in, and around us.

#17 - Einstein Revealed

Season 23 - Episode 11 - Aired 10/1/1996

This two-hour program chronicles Albert Einstein's life and scientific achievements from his birth in 1879 to his death in 1955. The first hour follows Einstein in his quest to understand the nature of light. Graphics depict some of Einstein's famous thought experiments, including his eventual understanding of the interplay between the speed of light and time and his development of the special theory of relativity. The program also goes into great depth about Einstein's personal life, including his romance with and marriage to fellow student Mileva Maric and the death of his father. The second hour unfolds with Einstein preoccupied with finding a theory that accounts for gravitation and determining what orders the universe. Einstein addresses gravitation in the universe with his general theory of relativity. This is confirmed experimentally in 1919 when a solar eclipse reveals stars in positions that could best be explained by his theory: that gravity causes light to bend.

#18 - Odyssey of Life: The Photographer's Secrets

Season 23 - Episode 19 - Aired 11/26/1996

Lennart Nilsson, the famed photographer behind the spectacular glimpse into the mysteries of life before birth in Nova's "Miracle of Life" and "Ultimate Journey", shares some of his secret state-of-the-art microphotography techniques.

#19 - Top Gun Over Moscow

Season 23 - Episode 15 - Aired 11/12/1996

Flights in Russia's powerful fighter jets are for sale to foreign travelers. So is the Russian Air Force still in the game?

#20 - Cracking the Ice Age

Season 23 - Episode 20 - Aired 12/31/1996

Did the crash of continents that produced the Himalayan Mountains also trigger the Ice Age?