This MGM Passing Parade series short recounts how English chemist John Walker invented the wooden friction match during the 1820s.
Social & External
The people behind it
John Nesbitt
Narrator (voice)
Paul Langton
John Walker (uncredited)
Jacqueline White
Mrs. John Walker (uncredited)
Since the invention of the automobile, women have distinguished themselves by their daring: the history of women in motor sport.
At the turn of the century, Lodz, Poland, was a quick-paced manufacturing center for textiles, replete with cutthroat industrialists and unsafe working conditions. Three young friends, a Pole, a Jew, and a German, pool their money together to build a factory.
In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
Rudolf Diesel, one of history’s greatest inventors, vanished into thin air on the eve of World War I. His revolutionary invention, the Diesel engine, was highly sought after by global industries and political figures around the world. It had the power to threaten empires and change the fate of nations, turning him and his technology into both a prized asset and a potential threat.
In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.
For those who heart history and the great city of Chicago, this film will take you through time with a small child and his nervous babysitter. Feel the intensity of the Great Chicago Fire and splendor of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Explore the sights of bustling Maxwell Street in the 1950s and peer down from an I-beam of the Sears Tower in the 1970s. Relive Chicago sports victories and cheer on President Obama during his Grant Park victory speech.
Historical short showing how Eli Whitney (best known for the invention of the cotton gin) played a significant role in the introduction of mass production techniques to the USA in the late 18th century.
This MGM Passing Parade series short tells the story of Julian Poydras, whose encounter with a girl at Mardi Gras had a profound effect on his later life.
The insatiably curious and headstrong inventor Leonardo da Vinci leaves Italy to join the French court, where he can experiment freely, inventing flying contraptions, incredible machines, and study the human body. There, joined in his adventure by the audacious princess Marguerite, Leonardo will uncover the answer to the ultimate question – "What is the meaning of it all?"
In 1895, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade constructs and flies India's first unmanned plane, despite having the odds stacked against him.
This John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short highlights the film preservation efforts of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Several scenes from early newsreels are shown.
Parallel stories: 18th century Harrison builds the marine chronometer for safe navigation at sea; 20th century Gould is obsessed with restoring it.
True story of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, inspired by his mother.
While on holiday in Rhodes, Athenian war hero Darios becomes involved in two different plots to overthrow the tyrannical king, one from Rhodian patriots and the other from sinister Phoenician agents.
A portrait of the inventor of the letterpress, who was a key figure in the history of mankind, but also an enthusiastic inventor, a daring businessman, a tenacious troublemaker: the life of Johannes Gutenberg (circa 1400-68).
This Passing Parade series short chronicles the political life of Francisco Madero, who tried to bring democracy and land reform to Mexico.
In this John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short, a look is taken at the problems of film preservation efforts in the 1930s and early 1940s.
Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.
This MGM John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series short tells the story of how a Mauser pistol used on the battlefield by Germans during WWII makes its way into the hands of an American gangster.
The saga of the Normandie is recounted from her life as a luxury liner, the horrific fire that nearly destroyed her, and her resuscitation to join in the war effort. A John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short.
Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.
Jane Austen is about to turn 40, but she still hasn't found her ideal man. When Jane is approached by her niece Fanny and asked to help select the perfect husband for the young girl, the aging spinster begins to wonder why it is that she never found a man to share her own life with.
Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.
The O'Leary brothers -- honest Jack and roguish Dion -- become powerful figures, and eventually rivals, in Chicago on the eve of its Great Fire.
In 1859, idealist John Wickliff Shawnessey, a resident of Raintree County, Indiana, is distracted from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither by Susanna Drake, a rich New Orleans girl. This love triangle is further complicated by the American Civil War, and dark family history.
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.
During World War I, a group of British miners are recruited to tunnel underneath no man's land and set bombs from below the German front in hopes of breaking the deadly stalemate of the Battle of Messines.
In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver steals Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London. It was the first (and remains the only) theft in the Gallery’s history. What happens next becomes the stuff of legend.
The story of Ray-Ray McElrathbey, a freshman football player for Clemson University, who secretly raised his younger brother on campus after his home life became too unsteady.
Captain Ralls fights Dutch shipping magnate Mayrant Sidneye for the woman he loves, Angelique Desaix, and for a fortune in gold aboard the Red Witch.
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh struggles to finance and design an airplane that will make his New York to Paris flight the first solo transatlantic crossing.
In 1961, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle played for the New York Yankees. One, Mantle, was universally loved, while the other, Maris, was universally hated. Both men started off with a bang, and both were nearing Babe Ruth's 60 home run record. Which man would reach it?
An amateur historian defies the academic establishment in her efforts to find King Richard III's remains, which were lost for over 500 years.
Discover the game-changing partnership between a then undiscovered Michael Jordan and Nike's fledgling basketball division which revolutionized the world of sports and culture with the Air Jordan brand.
When a plane crash claims the lives of members of the Marshall University football team and some of its fans, the team's new coach and his surviving players try to keep the football program alive.
The life story of New Zealander Burt Munro, who spent years building a 1920 Indian motorcycle—a bike which helped him set the land-speed world record at Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in 1967.
A psychological, heart-wrenching love story that provides a unique and inside look at Charles Darwin. Torn between faith and science, he struggles to finish his legendary book "On the Origin of Species," which goes on to become the foundation for evolutionary biology.
Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.
Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.
