The Dutch Golden Age saw map-making reach a fever pitch of creative and commercial ambition. This was the era of the first ever Atlases - elaborate, lavish and beautiful. This was the great age of discovery and marked an unprecedented opportunity for mapmakers who sought to record and categorise the newly acquired knowledge of the world. Rising above the many mapmakers in this period was Gerard Mercator, inventor of the Mercator projection, who changed mapmaking forever when he published his collection of world maps in 1598 and coined the term 'Atlas'. The programme looks at some of the largest and most elaborate maps ever produced, from the vast maps on the floor of the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, to the 24 volume atlas covering just the Netherlands, to the largest Atlas in the world, The Klencke Atlas. It was made for Charles II to mark his restoration in 1660. But whilst being one of the British Libraries most important items, it is also one of its most fragile so hardly ever opened. This is a unique opportunity to see inside this enormous and lavish work, and see the world through the eyes of a King.

Follows the epic operation to secure, raise, and salvage the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which ran aground and tragically capsized off the coast of Italy on January 13th 2012, killing 32 people. The wreck stretches the length of three football fields, weighs 45,000 tons, and lies half submerged on the site of a protected reef, with a 160-foot-long hole in its hull. Moving it from its precarious perch on the edge of an underwater cliff will be a huge technical and logistical challenge. Joins a team of more than 500 divers and engineers working around the clock as they attempt the biggest ship recovery project in history.

Since Caesar's days, Germanic warriors and Roman legionaries had often met in battle. Rome's power seemed invincible. But then, in the year 9 AD, the Germans mounted a rebellion.

The Roman army turns its attention to an island of rich resources, powerful tribes and druids, and advanced military equipment - Britain. This episode tells the story of the Celts' last stand against the Roman army - a revolt led by another great leader, the warrior queen Boudicca.

On July 4, 2012, scientists at the giant atom smashing facility at CERN announced the discovery of a subatomic particle that seems like a tantalizingly close match to the elusive Higgs Boson, thought to be responsible for giving all the stuff in the universe its mass. Since it was first proposed nearly fifty years ago, the Higgs has been the holy grail of particle physicists: finding it completes the 'standard model" that underlies all of modern particle physics. Now CERN's scientists are preparing for the Large Hadron Collider's second act, when they restart the history-making collider, running at higher energy--hoping to find the next great discovery that will change what we know about the particles and forces that make up our universe.

Francisco de Orellana failed to find El Dorado, but discovered the Amazon. Early in 1541, a rumor swept Quito that beyond the mountains, there lay a land richer than Mexico, or even Peru - a land of gold. The ruler of this land was so rich that he covered himself with gold dust every day and washed it off every evening. He was "the golden man", El Dorado. They had tree goals: to find La Canela, the land of cinnamon: to assess new lands for colonization; and to find El Dorado. On march 1541, They marched eastwards with more that 200 Spanish troops and thousands of native servants.