How We Got Here

Hitler has died and the Nazi regime is crumbling. In the chaos, rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun leads his colleagues on a daring escape out of Germany. If he doesn't make it, the race for outer space will turn out differently.

A chance meeting with Thomas Edison and a visit to a Chicago meatpacking plant give Henry Ford a dream destined to profoundly change the world. If he fails to put his inspiration into action, the United States will not win WWII.

The California Gold Rush is on, and penniless prospector George Hearst goes west to seek his fortune. A hard winter, a mortgaged mule and a hand of poker later allow his son William Randolph Hearst to start his media empire.

In 1844, a small team of Texas Rangers fights for their lives against eighty Comanche warriors. If they can't hold them off using Samuel Colt's revolvers, the US might not become the industrial powerhouse we know.

When Samuel Morse receives an urgent message from afar that his wife is about to die, he races back to be by her side. If he makes it to her sickbed in time, the speed-of-light communication we use today will never exist.

If tradesman Jacob Davis doesn’t survive the California Gold Rush, he will never meet Levi Strauss. The idea for the copper rivet will not be born, and the ultimate triumph of blue jeans will never happen.

It’s September 17, 1862, and the Battle of Antietam rages. Standing right in the thick of the fight is a former schoolteacher with brave purpose, Clara Barton. If she dies, the American Red Cross would not exist.

If future news reporter Bob Woodward doesn't meet the man we'll eventually come to know as "Deep Throat," an imperial presidency will never be brought to its knees. Mark Felt's story is now a key part of US history.

America has plunged into Civil War, and if German immigrant Adolphus Busch dies in a deadly standoff, one of the most familiar American products of all time will never exist.

A telegraph operator is in the throes of a crisis. Trains on the Pennsylvania Railroad have stopped and his boss can’t be found. What Andrew Carnegie does next will either end his career or put him on a path to change the world.

A 24-year-old bookkeeper, John D. Rockefeller, is about to bet every penny he has on a fledgling upstart industry. If the accountant is wrong about the budding oil industry, the era of the automobile might not take off.

Two young frustrated mechanics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, have an idea - to put an engine inside of a bicycle frame. If William Harley and Arthur Davidson give up now, the motorcycle as we know it will never exist.