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MUSEUM SECRETS
- Saturday 26 May 2012 at 7:00PM
- National Geographic Channel
DESCRIPTION
Come with us to the world's greatest museums to uncover secrets dark and strange.
Discover a crumbling parchment that reveals the true story behind the fall of the Knights Templar. Perform a forensic examination on an Egyptian mummy to solve the murder of a mighty Pharaoh. Find out how the golden statue of a naked woman exposed the sex scandal of a real-life New York Gossip Girl.
In every episode, Museum Secrets travels to one extraordinary museum: the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, London's Natural History Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Within the walls of each museum, we reveal the stories of 6 irreplaceable treasures: the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the golden mask of King Tut, and many more. Museum Secrets probes familiar legends and assumptions, using cutting edge research and technology to investigate the unknown.
Our stories take us beyond the public galleries, into hidden places visitors are rarely allowed to see: a vast storeroom where millions of once-living creatures float in formaldehyde, a noisy workshop where curators in hard-hats piece bones together into skeletons of colossal dinosaurs. When a story moves outside the museum, we follow: into the Louvre's courtyard to recreate a fatal jousting accident, and down into a 50 meter hole in the Egyptian desert to stand inside the tomb of Ramesses the Great.
Along the way, we meet renowned scientists and historians who hunt for clues to baffling mysteries: Were early Britons cannibals? Were 12th Century Islamic pottery vessels early hand grenades? Who broke into the Vatican to deface a masterpiece with hate filled graffiti? Through hands-on experiments, our experts reveal answers for the first time anywhere.
Our most gripping tales are told with the help of those who have a deep personal connection to underlying historical events: At the Louvre we meet the heir to the throne of Napoleon who defends his ancestor's legacy. In London's Natural History Museum, we meet a survivor of the Blitz who is determined to discover why a bomb secreted onto Hitler's plane, failed to explode. At the Metropolitan Museum, we meet a woman who can't look at a certain statue without remembering how it caused her grandfather's brutal murder.
Museum Secrets combines surprising revelations about things we all recognize with amazing revelations about things we've never seen before.
EPISODE GUIDE
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Museum Secrets: The ROMWe unwrap a tiny mummy to find out how an Egyptian baby died 2000 years ago.
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Museum Secrets: Natural History MuseumWe examine a skull to discover if prehistoric Britains were cannibals, then pull a killer shark from a pool of formaldehyde to find out how it helped swimmers win Olympic gold. We dare a curator to handle a famous gem said to kill all who touch it, then enter a once top-secret room where WWII spymasters created a bomb that came within a hair's-breadth of killing Hitler. We view the remains of Barbary Lions to find out why they spent their lives in the Tower of London, then consider a perfectly preserved specimen of a Dodo, to discover whether the flightless bird’s extinction was really as inevitable as we have been led to believe.
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Museum Secrets: The LouvreMuseum Secrets chases the brazen thief who stole the Mona Lisa to find out how she was recovered and how she became so famous.
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Museum Secrets: Vatican MuseumsMuseum Secrets takes viewers behind the scenes to discover the secrets of the Vatican Museum.
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Museum Secrets: Egyptian MuseumWe search for the lost tomb of Ramesses the Great, then, guided by a mummy's head wounds, we recreate the last moments of an ancient king to discover if he was a brave man or a coward.
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Museum Secrets: The METWe examine the armor of Henry VIII to discover how he got so fat and crazy, then enter New York high-society to reveal how a nude sculpture led to a brutal murder. Inside a vast Egyptian temple (enclosed within the museum's walls) we search a secret chamber to discover why the temple's statues celebrate the foreign emperor who conquered the land of the Pharaohs. We touch the Holy Grail (or maybe not) to discover what gives religious relics their power, then discover how a museum curator invented modern body armor. And finally, in a lab equipped with the latest NASA technology, we discover how museum scientists use art to solve mysteries of the past and present.
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Museum Secrets: State Hermitage MuseumAncient mummies sport tattoos, Peter the Great pickles dead babies, technology improves Catherine the Great’s sex life, reexamined evidence reveals who really killed Rasputin, curators hide treasures from Hitler, and Stalin’s least favourite painting sells for a million dollars.
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Museum Secrets: National Archeological Museum of AthensGreek ships ram invaders, a dodgy archeologist discovers a golden mask, Alexander the Great sports armour made of cloth, Plato gets high, daredevils descend into a labyrinth, and an ancient gadget predicts the future.
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Museum Secrets: American Museum of Natural HistoryAfrican wildlife becomes nature’s nobility, horseshoe crab blood saves human lives, a dinosaur embryo solves a murder mystery, knots in string speak for a dead civilization, spacecraft catches a comet’s tail, and a cryogenic ark preserves the blueprint of life on Earth.
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Museum Secrets: Imperial War MuseumChurchill risks his life in the Blitz, a housewife-spy survives Nazi torture, a physicist silences the Kaiser’s artillery, a volunteer cold warrior faces radioactive fallout, top guns defeat Saddam Hussein, and 21st Century soldiers become invisible.
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Museum Secrets: National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico CityAncient athletes kick a severed head, human sacrifices float to the afterlife, crystal skulls channel the dead, hubris sinks a city, and a peasant dress brings down an empire.
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Museum Secrets: The Pergamon and Neues Museums, BerlinVikings break unbreakable swords, ancient architecture fuels Hitler’s power, a golden hat foretells the future, Queen Nefertiti becomes a superstar.
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Museum Secrets: The Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaInbreeding kills a royal family, silver transmutes into gold, a knight’s armour explodes, falconry inspires a scientific revolution, a dance craze changes history, and a priceless treasure disappears.
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Museum Secrets: Topkapi Palace Museum, IstanbulMuslim invaders besiege a Christian fortress, assassins plot to poison a Sultan, a Harem slave rises to rule an empire, Columbus’ lost map is found, an ancient robot comes to life, and bitter enemies sign the world’s first peace treaty.
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