Harriet Tubman

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Animated Hero Classics
1st June 1996 Season 2 Episode 3

Harriet Tubman has never known what it means to be free. Having been born and raised into slavery, she works hard and does as she is told. However, she longs to be free and hopes to escape to the "promise land." After hearing about an "underground railroad" and learning of a Quaker woman up the river who helps slaves "get on," Harriet tells her father she is escaping. He fears for he life and tells her there isn't really an underground railroad, but she is determined to go. Once at the Quaker woman's home, Harriet learns that the Underground Railroad is a route guided by "conductors" to the North. She goes forward and makes it to the main station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Once there, she is surprised to learn of the many different routes slaves are able to take to freedom. Hearing of her sister and family's proceeding sale, Harriet vows she will never be free until her family is free. Against the stationmaster's warnings, she heads South. Harriet continues to go back and forth from the North to the South and becomes known as the "Moses of her people" with a reward posted for her for $40,000. Harriet is able to successfully rescue her entire family, as well as 300 slaves on 17 dangerous missions to the Confederate South.

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Season 2 · Episode 4

The Wright Brothers

Two bicycle repairmen embark on their dream to fly. With no formal training as either scientists or engineers, they study Lilienthal's diagrams for his glider and learn from experience the keys to controlled flight. As young boys, Wilbur and Orville Wright are full of ideas, enthusiasm and dreams. Above their bicycle repair shop they discover how birds are able to balance by tilting their wings - wing warping. They want to make a glider to do the same thing. "You have a dream, you should do it," their father encourages them. After writing to the "center of knowledge for flight'" Octave Chanute, they learn the best place to glide is Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They tell Chanute about wing warping and make him promise not to tell anyone until they can perfect it. Their first attempts are unsuccessful, however, as they realize that Lilienthal's figures were incorrect. Wilbur and Orville begin experimenting with the figures. Meanwhile, others are beginning to take flight, but only in the beginning stages. Finally, Wilbur and Orville manage a controlled flight. All they need to do is add an engine. Chanute lets the wing-warping idea slip when he is challenged, but the Wright brothers are not worried - the rest of the world doesn't know how it works. After a 59 second flight, Wilbur and Orville take Santos-Durmont, the French flyer, up on his challenge to show the world they can fly in France and on August 8,1908 the Wright brothers demonstrate to the world the power of controlled flight.

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