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I Was There

I Was There

A trip back in time, placing host Theo Wilson -- the grandson of a Tuskegee Airman with a passion for history -- at the center of some of the world's most impactful events, to deconstruct how they truly unfolded. Through original archival material, expert testimony and dramatic re-creations using CGI technology to place Wilson in the scene, the series features perspectives on some of the most pivotal moments in history. Wilson is a fly on the wall as he breaks down the barrier between the audience and the action to revisit a series of critical historical events, disasters, triumphs and true stories to learn unexpected facts in an engaging, fast-moving, and often unpredictable way.
1 seasonDocumentary, HistoryTV-14
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Season 112 of 12 Episodes

  • Theo Wilson finds himself aboard the world's most luxurious airship, the Hindenburg, where he must solve the mystery of what leads to its fiery fall from the sky.

  • Theo Wilson time-travels back to 1889 to the bucolic river shores of Johnstown, Pa., where the biggest flood in U.S. history is about to be unleashed.

  • Theo Wilson time-travels to Russia on April 26, 1986, as workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant are in the throes of a disaster that will put the lives of millions of Soviet citizens and Europeans in jeopardy.

  • Theo Wilson travels back in time to Salem, Mass., in 1692, where the village is self-destructing over allegations of witchcraft among dozens of its citizens.

  • Theo Wilson time-travels to the mid-1800s, where he finds Jesse James; Wilson separates myth from reality in Jesse's career and charts how a thirst for fame, riches and revenge led James toward his fated murder by a member of his own gang.

  • Theo Wilson finds himself in the lair of America's first famous serial killer, H.H. Holmes; Theo follows Holmes' dark road from con man to the owner of a fiendishly engineered murder castle.

  • Theo Wilson time travels to 1865 and immerses himself in the events that lead John Wilkes Booth to hatch a plan to kill President Abraham Lincoln.

  • With an audience of 2.5 million school children, the Challenger exploded in the sky, taking the lives of seven astronauts; with red flags and multiple chances to stop it, exploring why the Challenger ever took off.

  • How John Lewis led the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday.

  • Al Capone and a turf war triggered by American thirst for liquor turns into the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which was a bloody execution in a garage in downtown Chicago in 1929.

  • Theo Wilson travels back in time to April 19, 1995, when Oklahoma City is rocked by a two-ton fertilizer bomb shortly after 9 a.m.; Theo investigates the layers of this complicated story.

  • Theo Wilson time-travels to the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, where the underdog Russian army is about to pull off a victory that will turn the tide of the war in favor of Allied forces.
I Was There

More about I Was There

A trip back in time, placing host Theo Wilson -- the grandson of a Tuskegee Airman with a passion for history -- at the center of some of the world's most impactful events, to deconstruct how they truly unfolded. Through original archival material, expert testimony and dramatic re-creations using CGI technology to place Wilson in the scene, the series features perspectives on some of the most pivotal moments in history. Wilson is a fly on the wall as he breaks down the barrier between the audience and the action to revisit a series of critical historical events, disasters, triumphs and true stories to learn unexpected facts in an engaging, fast-moving, and often unpredictable way.

Starring

Theo Wilson

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