Modern Marvels

Engineering disasters highlighted include a coal mine in China, a crane collapse in Milwaukee, ground water contaminated with gasoline additives, and the hazards of radiation. Also profiled are the environmental disasters that plagued the Salton Sea in California and the Aral Sea in Asia.

This program explains how some of the more popular candies are made starting with the raw ingredients through the production process. It all starts with chocolate then move on to red hots, jelly beans, salt water taffy licorice and some special candies just for adults.

The background into the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, two Boeing 737 crashes, a nuclear disaster near Los Angeles, and an oil storage facility.

Technology from the 1980s is remembered, including early cell phones and CD players; the Sony Walkman; and personal computers. Also: comments by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak; and a tour of the Computer History Museum in California.

Global problems require global solutions. Modern Marvels: Renewable Energy, a one-hour History Channel documentary, shows how the combined forces of wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, wave and tidal power are ready to move the world beyond oil, coal and other 19th Century technologies.

The story behind BP's Texas City oil refinery explosion in 2005, the 2001 crash of an American Airlines flight, and the Skylab space station.