Skip to main content

179 Free History Documentaries You Can Watch Right Now

Email share
PBS history documentaries

Is your child tired of your attempts to teach them history in your newly-founded home school? Are you looking for quality content while you master the art of social distancing? Might you be striving to emerge from this quarantine with more knowledge than you had before?

Whatever your reason, KLRN is here for you. With our list of 179 of the best history documentaries, we can take you on trips through time. You can feed your hunger for knowledge by learning about the history of the prestigious James Beard Awards, or visit other planets with documentaries about space travel.

Watch by clicking the link below or make it even easier by downloading the free PBS Video app and you can watch on your Roku, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV Stick or your phone or tablet. We are proud to be a place where you can spend hours upon hours watching and enriching your minds.

(Become a KLRN member to watch our FULL library of content. When you do more to support us, we can do more to support our community! www.klrn.org/support)

Africa

Firestone and the Warlord

Lost Boys of Sudan

Ancient

After Stonehenge

Cleopatra's Lost Tomb

Decoding the Great Pyramid

Egypt's Darkest Hour

Lost Ships of Rome

The Nero Files

Nero's Sunken City

The Real Trojan Horse

The Silver Pharaoh

Architecture

Grand Coulee Dam

Hollywood's Architect

Paul Revere Williams

The Big Picture

Blank on Blank

History Detectives

Niall Ferguson's Networld

The Origin of Everything

California

Beach Culture

Before the Dodgers

Bootlegger Tunnels: A Journey Through LA's Prohibition Lore

Borderlands

Building the Metropolis

Coded Geographies

Descanso Gardens

Desert Fantasy

Discovering the Universe

Dream Factory

Fantasyland

Ghost Town

Griffith Park: The Untold Story

Pacific Rim

Reshaping L.A.

Shindana Toy Company: Changing the American Doll Industry

Three Views of Manzanar: Adams, Lange, Miyatake

Venice

Wild L.A.

Wild West

Yosemite

Capitalism

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

American Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos

The Business of Disaster

The Facebook Dilemma

The Gilded Age

Money, Power and Wall Street

The Secret History of the Credit Card

Civil Rights

The Fight

First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty

Memories of the March

Underground Railroad: The William Still Story

Disasters

The Big Burn

Ebola in Congo

Fire in Paradise

Early America

Ben Franklin's Bones

Jamestown's Dark Winter

Secrets of Spanish Florida

East Asia

Battle for Hong Kong

China's Terracotta Warriors

Myanmar's Killing Fields

On the President's Orders

The Tank Man

Food

Jacques Pépin: The Art of Craft

James Beard: America's First Foodie

LA Foodways

The Poison Squad

Great Britain

Arthur's Lost Kingdom

The Queen's Garden

Resurrecting Richard III

Health

The Age of AIDS

Chasing Heroin

Flint's Deadly Water

Outbreak

Right to Fail

The Holocaust

Escape from Auschwitz

The Last Survivors

The Last Laugh

Memory of the Camps

Shtetl

Immigration

Immigration Battle

Targeting El Paso

Marcos Doesn't Live Here Anymore

North Korea's Deadly Dictator

Separated: Children at the Border

Zero Tolerance

Justice

American Patriot

The Gang Crackdown

Last Days of Solitary

Life on Parole

A More or Less Perfect Union

The Mueller Investigation

Out of Gitmo/Forever Prison

Second Chance Kids

Supreme Revenge

The Trial of Ratko Mladia

Latin America

Drug Lord: The Legend of Shorty

Into the Amazon

Teotihuacan's Lost Kings

Middle East

Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia

Children of Syria

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia

For Sama

Losing Iraq

Mosul/Inside Yemen

Netanyahu at War

Saudi Arabia Uncovered

Our Man in Tehran

Music

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World

Myths

Monstrum

Vampire Legend

Politics

Anti-Abortion Crusaders

The Abortion Divide

America's Great Divide: From Obama to Trump

Bannon's War

Emma Goldman

Gunned Down

Hillary's Class

McCain

Secrets, Politics and Torture

Trump's Road to the White House

Trump's Takeover

Trump's Trade War

United States of Secrets

Waco: The Inside Story

War on the EPA

Poverty

Left Behind America

Poverty, Politics and Profit

Poor Kids

Prehistory

First Face of America

Great Human Odyssey

Making North America Human

Making North America: Life

Making North America: Origins

Race

The Chinese Exclusion Act

The Eugenics Crusade

Roads to Memphis

Separate and Unequal

Tell Them We Are Rising

Two American Families

Religion

Bones of the Buddha

From Jesus to Christ

God in America

The Mormons

Secrets of the Vatican

Renaissance

Building the Great Cathedrals

Decoding da Vinci

The Mona Lisa Mystery

Russia

Putin's Revenge

Putin's Way

Science

Apollo's Daring Mission

Chasing the Moon

Forgotten Genius

Leonardo, the Man Who Saved Science

Sealab

The Secret of Tuxedo Park

Sports

Ken Burns' Baseball

League of Denial: The NFL's Corruption Crisis

Terrorism

American Terrorist

The Bombing of Wall Street

Confronting ISIS

The Man Who Knew

My Brother's Bomber

The Rise of ISIS

The Secret History of ISIS

Terror in Europe

Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald

War and Revolution

Bush's War

Carthage's Lost Warriors

Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story

Ground War

The Hunt for Nazi Scientists

Hallowed Grounds

The Man Who Saved the World

The Mine Wars

Obama at War

Slave Ship Mutiny

The War of 1812

World War Speed

Wild West

Annie Oakley

The Klondike Gold Rush