Season 12

An officer aboard a Soviet submarine refuses to fire a nuclear torpedo during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

German POWs reveal inner thoughts about the Third Reich, including military secrets that helped the Allies win World War II.

Forensic and scientific analysis help determine how 57 Irish immigrants died less than two months after arriving in Pennsylvania to work on the railroad.

Scientists say some of the 49,000 year-old Neanderthal bones discovered in El Sidrón, Spain, bear signs of cannibalism.

New scientific research provides insights into how King Tutankhamen was buried, why his tomb remained intact and how he died.

Bones of the Buddha is a 2013 television documentary produced by Icon Films and commissioned by WNET/THIRTEEN and ARTE France for the National Geographic Channels. It concerns a controversial Buddhist reliquary from the Piprahwa Stupa in Uttar Pradesh, India. It was released in May, 2013, and was broadcast in July 2013 in the US on PBS as part of the Secrets of the Dead series.