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Tales of tragedy and survival....

Madhur Tankha

ILL-FATED: Space shuttle Challanger

NEW DELHI: Revisiting history's biggest and most tragic disasters is National Geographic Channel's brand new series, "Nat Geo Investigates: Seconds from Disaster", premiering on May 14.

Investigating the reasons that triggered each calamity through a second-by-second analysis of the critical chain of events, this ten-part series will unravel whether an iceberg was the real reason behind the sinking of the Titanic. It will also explore how a carefully planned rescue attempt went so terribly wrong leading to the Munich Olympic massacre besides getting to the bottom of other tragedies. The series will be aired from Monday to Friday.

Speaking about the series, National Geographic Channel (India) vice-president (Marketing) Rajesh Sheshadri says that from the sinking of the Titanic and the Munich Olympic massacre to the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, the series promises to make viewers re-think about the accepted reasons behind these tragedies. Haunting eyewitness accounts, computer-generated images and cutting-edge experiments will help bring the Titanic back to life to retrace its final moments in the episode "Titanic" that goes on the air on May 14. Using an experiment that mimics the condition of the Titanic as it scraped the iceberg, experts find new evidence to finally conclude what brought the "unsinkable" ship down in the middle of the icy Atlantic.

Experts' testimonies, eyewitness accounts and family members' interviews

will be shown in "Munich Olympic Massacre" that will be aired on May 15.

Besides showcasing how terrorists broke into the 1972 Olympic Village, this one-hour episode will also get to investigate how the police's rescue plot went so terribly wrong.

"Superstore Collapse" shown on May 16 will highlight the unimaginable stories of survivors trapped for two weeks beneath thousands of tonnes of steel, concrete and rubble. With its combination of extraordinary survivor struggles, news footage and computer re-creations, this episode provides the ultimate story of survival amid destruction and despair. Everything from conspiracy theories to possible faulty mechanics and human error will be thoroughly investigated to find out what brought a 1954 flight down into the Mediterranean Sea in "Comet Air Crash" that airs on May 17. Finding out what went wrong at NASA that led to the shuttle suddenly getting engulfed in flames and breaking apart in the sky is "Space Shuttle Challenger" to be aired on May 18.

Other episodes in the series are "Tornado Outbreak" (May 21); "Aircraft Carrier Explosion" (May 22); "Eruption on Montserrat" (May 23); "Chicago Air Crash" (May 24); and "Texas Oil Explosion" (May 25).

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