The BEST episodes of Secrets of the Dead
Every episode of Secrets of the Dead ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Secrets of the Dead!
Sometimes the truth gets carried to the grave. The techniques of modern forensic science are used to investigate a historical mystery to find proof of what really happened.
#2 - Blackbeard's Lost Ship
Season 8 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/22/2009
Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard, was the most notorious pirate of his day. At the height of his rein, he commanded a fleet of four ships and a crew of 400 men. They were ruthless seafaring raiders who terrorizing vessels in American waters. In 1718, Blackbeard even blockaded the city of Charleston, crippling its economy. Eventually he was caught and beheaded by a posse from the Royal Navy. Now, 300 years later, a marine archaeology team believe they have found his sunken flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, off the North Carolina coast. The remains of the shipwreck are helping solve the most enduring mystery surrounding the infamous pirate captain – did he accidentally run his ship aground, or was it a deliberate plot to betray his crew and cheat them out of their share of the plunder?
#3 - The Woman in the Iron Coffin
Season 16 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/3/2018
Follow a team of forensic experts as they investigate the preserved remains of a young African American woman from 19th century New York and reveal the little-known story of early America’s free black communities.
#4 - Lady Sapiens
Season 19 - Episode 2 - Aired 10/27/2021
Incredible scientific investigations from across the globe are helping piece together the untold story of prehistoric women. The latest research separates fact from fiction and sheds new light on our ancient foremothers.
#5 - The Nero Files
Season 16 - Episode 6 - Aired 2/20/2019
Take a closer look at the life and legend of Nero, the infamous Roman emperor, as a forensic profiler attempts to find out what history may have gotten wrong about his alleged tyranny.
#6 - King Arthur's Lost Kingdom
Season 17 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/27/2019
Description Archaeological evidence suggests that the legend of King Arthur began in a 5th-century trading village following the departure of the Romans.
#7 - Egypt’s Darkest Hour
Season 17 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/3/2019
The discovery of a rare mass grave with the bones of nearly 60 people outside Luxor sends archaeologists on a quest to find out who the remains belong to, why they were buried the way they were and what was happening in ancient Egypt that would have led to a mass burial. Could the collapse of the empire’s Old Kingdom provide any clues?
#8 - World War Speed
Season 17 - Episode 5 - Aired 6/25/2019
Stories about drug use by Hitler and German forces during World War II have been widely told. What’s less well known is the Allied commanders’ embraced pharmacological “force enhancers” as well. By 1941, rumors about Nazi soldiers using a “super-drug” identified as the methamphetamine Pervitin were confirmed, and Allied commanders launched their own classified program to find the perfect war-fighting drug. During the war, one in three Allied soldiers were incapacitated without a physical scratch on them. Modern weapons and warfare proved so terrifying that almost as many men were shredded by combat fatigue and shell shock — now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — as by bullets and shrapnel. Allied commanders believed Benzedrine, an amphetamine similar to Pervitin, was the answer, hoping the amphetamine would defeat not just the need for sleep, but anxiety and fear among troops. How this drug affected the course of World War II is an ongoing controversy.
#9 - Galileo’s Moon
Season 18 - Episode 1 - Aired 7/2/2019
When it was published in 1610, Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger) set in motion a scientific revolution. Using observations he made of both the earth’s moon and Jupiter’s moons, Galileo proved earth is not the center of the universe. Five hundred and fifty copies of the original treatise were originally printed and roughly 150 are known to exist today. When an original copy with Galileo’s signature and seemingly original watercolor paintings of the phases of the moon believed to be done by Galileo himself came on the market in 2005, Sidereus Nuncius caused a worldwide sensation 400 years after its creation… and again in 2012 when it was proved a fake.
#10 - Lost Ships of Rome
Season 11 - Episode 1 - Aired 11/16/2010
In 2009 a team of marine archeologists carrying out a sonar survey of the seabed around the remote Italian island of Ventotene made an astonishing discovery. The wrecks of five ancient Roman ships were found in pristine condition, each one fully laden with exotic goods. Remarkably, much of the cargo remained exactly as the ancient Roman crews had loaded it.
#11 - Bombing Auschwitz
Season 18 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/21/2020
On December 3, 1944, The Washington Post published an editorial on the atrocities in Auschwitz with the headline “Genocide,” marking the first time the word appeared in a national newspaper.
#12 - Building Notre Dame
Season 18 - Episode 3 - Aired 4/28/2020
People often assume they're simply decorative but the gargoyles are vital to the structure of Notre Dame, serving as part of the water drainage system. Still in use today, when the drainage system was built in the Middle Ages, it led to significant architectural advancements for the cathedral.
#13 - Viking Warrior Queen
Season 18 - Episode 4 - Aired 7/7/2020
A team of archaeologists examine one of the most significant Viking graves ever found and test the DNA of the remains of the female warrior buried inside, rewriting our understanding of Viking society.
#14 - Abandoning the Titanic
Season 17 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/4/2020
The sinking of RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912 is one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. Mainstream retellings of the tragedy often overlook that the “unsinkable” Titanic was not alone when it sank. A mystery ship was spotted within view of the sinking ship, but instead of sailing closer to aid the drowning passengers, the mystery ship seemingly ignored a fusillade of rockets and signals and sailed away. American and British inquiries accused the SS Californian and its captain, Stanley Lord, of abandoning the Titanic. Decades later, the discovery of Titanic’s wreck exonerated Lord and the Californian’s role in the disaster, re-opening accounts that implicate another ship. In Secrets of the Dead: Abandoning the Titanic, join a team of investigators as they search for the identity of the mystery ship that turned away from the Titanic in its darkest hour, abandoning thousands of lives to the icy waters and their untimely demise.
#15 - Gangster's Gold
Season 18 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/18/2020
Join three groups of treasure hunters, armed with modern technology and newly uncovered clues, as they set out to find the lost treasure of notorious Prohibition-era gangster Dutch Schultz and solve an 85-year-old mystery.
#16 - Magellan's Crossing
Season 19 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/20/2021
500 years ago, Ferdinand Magellan and his crew set sail to gain control of the global spice trade. What resulted was the first circumnavigation of the earth, laying the groundwork for colonization and globalization still felt today.
#17 - JFK & LBJ: A Time For Greatness
Season 14 - Episode 2 - Aired 8/4/2015
For many, President Lyndon B. Johnson is chiefly remembered for escalating the United States military involvement in Vietnam. But his legacy is much more than his role in the Vietnam War. In fact, Johnson engineered the passing of two of the most important laws Congress ever approved: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of President Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965, JFK & LBJ: A Time for Greatness airing nationally, Tuesday, August 4, 2015 from 9-10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), examines how Johnson meticulously worked behind the scenes to outwit the Southern segregationists who were determined to maintain the racial divide. He cajoled, flattered, wheeled and dealed, using all the tricks he had learned as a long-serving Senator, to ultimately transform America. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, JFK & LBJ is from the team that produced JFK: OnePM Central Standard Time which aired on PBS in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. The dramatic events are told through rare archival footage and reenactments with actor Mark Murphey as Johnson and Dené Hill as Geraldine Whittington, who Johnson hired, the first African American secretary to the President.
#18 - Hannibal in the Alps
Season 17 - Episode 2 - Aired 4/10/2018
Hannibal, one of history’s most famous generals, achieved what the Romans thought to be impossible. With a vast army of 30,000 troops, 15,000 horses and 37 war elephants, he crossed the mighty Alps in only 16 days to launch an attack on Rome from the north. For more than 2,000 years, nobody has been able to prove which of the four possible routes Hannibal took across the Alps, and no physical evidence of Hannibal’s army has ever been found…until now.
#19 - Scanning the Pyramids
Season 17 - Episode 1 - Aired 1/24/2018
The only one of the seven wonders of the world still standing, the Great Pyramid of Khufu has fascinated people for centuries. Tracing the origin of the legends of secret chambers hidden in the heart of the pyramid, Scanning the Pyramids will show what lies within, solving a 4,500-year-old mystery, by following the first scientific mission in 30 years to be authorized by the Egyptian government to examine the pyramids of Egypt.
#20 - Leonardo: The Man Who Saved Science
Season 16 - Episode 4 - Aired 4/5/2017
Leonardo da Vinci is well known for his inventions as well as his art. New evidence shows that many of his ideas were realized long before he sketched them out in his notebooks-some even 1,700 years before him! Of these “inventions” Leonardo never affirmed that his projects came from his original ideas. The film features drawings of his most famous ideas and inventions some of which trace their original creation to ancient Greece while others were a product of the scientific inventions of golden age of Islamic learning. This knowledge seemed to be lost in Europe during the Dark Ages until the Renaissance when Leonardo recovered it.
#21 - Nero’s Sunken City
Season 16 - Episode 3 - Aired 3/29/2017
Nero’s Sunken City Baiae... An ancient Roman city lost to the same volcanoes that entombed Pompeii. But unlike Pompeii, Baiae sits under water, in the Bay of Naples. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the city was an escape for Rome's rich and powerful elite, a place where they were free of the social restrictions of Roman society
#22 - Van Gogh's Ear
Season 16 - Episode 2 - Aired 12/14/2016
The night when Vincent van Gogh cut his own ear defines his turbulent life and art. Generations have theorized about what really happened on December 23, 1888, in the French town of Arles, but no one has been clear on the details-until now.
#23 - Graveyard of the Giant Beasts
Season 15 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/2/2016
Sixty-five million years ago, a giant meteor hit the earth causing a global catastrophe that destroyed an estimated three quarters of the plants and animal species on the planet, including the mighty dinosaurs. Little was known about the survivors who lived in this post-apocalyptic world until a mining operation in Cerrejon, Northern Colombia — excavating coal cut from deep within the earth’s crust — exposed an important layer in the earth’s geological history laid down more than 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
#24 - After Stonehenge
Season 16 - Episode 1 - Aired 10/26/2016
Researchers working in secret inside a quarry study the charred remains of an English settlement that dates back 3,000 years.
