Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: A divine encounter,

that turned the tide of the American Revolution.

A miraculous glowing light,

that saved wounded soldiers from certain death.

And the strange tale of a mummy,

and a ruthless assassin.

The founding of the United States of America is

emblazoned with stories of high ideals and heroism.

But among the accounts of fierce battles and great turmoil

are bizarre and fascinating tales

of otherworldly events.

How much did superstition, secret identities

and mystical encounters play a role in

shaping American history?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

SHATNER: Inside a Masonic Lodge,

a 20-year-old man sits blindfolded,

surrounded by Freemasons dressed in dark robes.

He takes a blood oath to join their secret brotherhood,

and will remain a member until his death.

This young initiate is none other than

the future first president of the United States

George Washington.

George Washington, when he joined the lodge

at Fredericksburg,

he had come in to

a large amount of property.

His father died, and then his older brother died.

And so he joins the Masons

because he wants to be in the company of

other important men,

and Freemasonry was an important aspect of

his life in those early years.

He brought Masonic philosophy into the way

he commanded troops as well.

ALEXIS COE: During the Revolution, George Washington

is often described as some sort of founding superhero.

We see Washington in so many of the portraits

of the Founding Fathers,

sort of towering above people,

and part of the reason is

he was taller than most people

and he had presence.

SHATNER: As Commander in Chief of the Continental Army,

George Washington became

the most visible leader of the American Revolution.

Today, he is often referred to

as the father of the United States.

But while Washington's influence on American history

is well known, there is much about him

that remains shrouded in mystery.

Washington was famously secretive

about his personal life.

However, we know that he was raised

by a single mother who read The Bible,

and very few other books.

He could quote from The Bible.

For example, Washington will say,

"It's providence that this should happen,"

or that God intended him to do something.

RICHARD BROOKHISER: Washington's God, and we know this from his correspondence,

intervenes in history, watches over history.

He's this all-powerful force

looking over humanity and human history,

and capable of helping you out

if you behaved well

and if you asked for his help.

SHATNER: Is it possible that, as both a Freemason

and devout Christian,

George Washington secretly believed that God

would intervene on behalf of the colonists

in the American Revolution?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining how Washington

was able to lead his army through its lowest point.

After numerous bloody battles against British forces,

General George Washington decides to

encamp the Continental Army for the winter.

For the next several months,

Washington and his troops

will have to endure the bitter cold.

BROOKHISER: The problem at Valley Forge was

the army was just not being supplied with anything.

They didn't have enough food,

they didn't have enough clothing.

The accommodations that they built at the camp

were put up at the last minute.

RICHARD SPENCE: When you get people

crowded together in unsanitary conditions

with low nutrition,

you will have a significant mortality rate.

So, in the Valley Forge situation,

the Continental Army is at a fairly low point,

and during that six months,

20% of its ranks will die.

SHATNER: The conditions at Valley Forge were so severe

that Washington wrote,

"Unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place,

this army must inevitably starve, dissolve or disperse."

But then, in the Continental Army's darkest hour,

Washington reportedly sought help

from a higher power.

COE: As the story goes, Washington got on his knees.

You know, he kneeled at Valley Forge,

and he asked God for help.

BROOKHISER: The man who first reports Washington praying

at Valley Forge was a man who lived there.

He was a Quaker named Isaac Potts.

And he's the one who says,

"Oh, I saw him. I was behind a tree.

I saw the commander in chief, and he's kneeling in prayer."

Washington certainly would have prayed

at Valley Forge, because it was terrible.

It was desperate.

I think he took the situation very seriously,

and hoped that providence

might improve it.

SHATNER: There were also reports that Washington

not only prayed at Valley Forge

but also had a divine encounter.

A soldier named Anthony Sherman

claimed to witness Washington

saying that he received confirmation

that his prayers had indeed been heard.

LANCE GEIGER: The report was that, at Valley Forge,

that Washington said,

to an officer, that he had seen a vision

of an angel talking to him.

The vision given to him by this angel was

the angel essentially waved his hand,

and on one side of America was an ocean and Europe,

and on the other side was an ocean and Asia,

and so that the angel had revealed

to George Washington this vision

that America would go from coast to coast.

SHATNER: What occurred after Washington's alleged vision was very curious.

Against all odds,

and despite losing 2,000 men to cold,

starvation and disease,

the Continental Army survived the winter at Valley Forge.

And then,

only ten days after leaving the encampment,

Washington and his troops won a decisive victory

over the British at the Battle of Monmouth.

Many Americans came to believe that Washington's prayer

had miraculously changed the colonists' fortunes.

GEIGER: This idea of Washington praying in the woods,

for a young nation that was still a fragile nation,

it gave us this idea that

God heard Washington praying,

and so there's a reason to believe that

maybe our nation would survive.

SHATNER: Could divine intervention have played a role

in George Washington's success

in the American War of Independence?

Did faith in a higher power help Washington

gain the trust of the Continental Army

and the loyalty of

a top secret spy ring?

SHATNER: The British Army scores

a decisive victory over General George Washington

and the Continental Army.

The British take control of the city

and make it their military headquarters.

In the summer of 1776, the Revolutionary War

is not off to a good start for the Americans.

New York is one of the largest cities

in the American colonies at the time.

As a result, Washington needs to retake New York.

And so, this demonstrates really a critical need

for intelligence to know what the enemy is doing,

what the forces are comprised of,

what their intentions are.

He needs information.

SHATNER: To obtain the intelligence

that he desperately needs to retake New York City,

Washington created an intelligence network

made up not of soldiers but rather ordinary citizens

living in and around New York.

The group became known

as the Culper Spy Ring.

TYLER: We're not sure

how the Culper Spy Ring got its name.

But the one thing we do know is that

Washington's main spy was

a farmer named Abraham Woodhull,

and they gave him the codename Samuel Culper.

OLLY: Abraham Woodhull enlisted a small group

of perhaps a half a dozen men

who conveyed military intelligence

from Manhattan to Washington's headquarters.

And then, because Abraham Woodhull

could not constantly be

going into New York to gather information,

he enlisted the services of Robert Townsend,

who was a merchant in Manhattan.

As a merchant, he could be really any place.

He could be down by the waterfront,

he could be in coffee shops,

he could be chatting in a tavern with people.

So, he was gathering information.

And so, Robert Townsend took the name

of Samuel Culper, Jr.

SHATNER: To ensure that their messages

were not read by the British,

the Culper Spy Ring devised ingenious methods

of sending coded messages.

TYLER: The Culper Spy Ring

communicated with each other

by mostly letters.

They used numbers to represent words,

about 700 different words.

And these numbers

were written in the messages,

and then the spy code was given to the people

who needed to translate the code

at Washington's headquarters or wherever.

SHATNER: Historians have been able to decode and decipher

many Culper Spy Ring messages that still exist today.

But there's one message

that continues to baffle experts.

It's a letter that refers to a mysterious spy

who was known only as "355."

There is a spy letter dated August 15, 1779

written by Abraham Woodhull,

in which he says that he's going to go into the city,

into Manhattan, to gather information

with the help of a "355."

So, this number 355

is a very tantalizing and mysterious detail

that leads to speculation because 355

is the numerical substitution in the spy code for "lady."

It's so fascinating to think about a lady spy

during the Revolutionary War

that this has fired the imagination

of hundreds of people

that have written books about who this spy could be.

SHATNER: Over the years, there's been intense speculation

as to the identity of Agent 355

and what role she played in the Culper Spy Ring.

Some experts believe

there is evidence to suggest that the woman

may have been an African-American slave

who was known as Liss.

BELLERJEAU: Liss was born into slavery in Robert Townsend's household.

Townsend was the lead spy of the Culper Spy Ring,

Culper, Jr.

Now, the British had promised escaped American slaves,

if they would come over to the British side,

at the end of the war, they could become free.

And one of the British commanders

that was a leading abolitionist

was a man named Colonel John Graves Simcoe.

And in May of 1779,

Simcoe was staying in the Townsend home.

Liss got to know this commander,

and when Simcoe left the house,

she escaped with him.

SHATNER: In recent years, some historians have theorized

that Liss's escape with Colonel Simcoe

was actually a ploy,

and that the real reason Liss left Robert Townsend's house

was so that she could spy on the British army.

BELLERJEAU: Now, if Liss was inside British headquarters,

serving as an enslaved person,

she could pass through rooms and observe things,

overhear things,

and she wouldn't even be noticed.

SHATNER: Was Liss actually a double agent

who was secretly working with the Culper Spy Ring?

It's an intriguing theory.

And some experts propose that, not only was Liss 355,

but also, it's possible she played an important role

in exposing America's most notorious turncoat,

Benedict Arnold.

There was a secret meeting of the British officers

held at a house in East Hampton.

Colonel Simcoe went out with his troops to this meeting.

And the British talked about how they had

just secured the deal with Benedict Arnold

to give up the fort at West Point for money.

Now, an account was written of this meeting

that said that an enslaved woman in the house

was passing through a room

and overheard the men

talking about how an American general

was gonna give up an American fort to the British.

This woman is described as a waitress

or perhaps mistress to Colonel Simcoe.

That's the woman who I think could be Liss.

SHATNER: Curiously, less than one month

after this secret meeting took place,

Benedict Arnold was revealed to be a traitor to the Revolution.

There are those who believe that the timing

of these events is no coincidence,

and that Liss provided crucial information

that made it possible to expose Arnold.

But ultimately,

the real identity of 355

remains unknown.

OLLY: We know the other members of the Culper Spy Ring,

but who was this woman

who was coded as 355?

Today, we're used to women

playing important roles as spies,

but in the Revolutionary War, that would've been very rare,

and so this has fascinated people since 1779.

SHATNER: Perhaps it's not surprising that spies

played a pivotal role in the American Revolution.

But the real identity of these secret agents

has been an unsolved mystery for over 200 years.

And it took nearly as long

to discover the truth about a strange glowing entity that,

for wounded soldiers of the Civil War,

was the difference between life

and death.

SHATNER: On the morning after the bloodiest battle

of the Civil War, thousands of dead soldiers

lay strewn across the blood-soaked farmland.

But while the brutality of the Civil War is well-documented,

approximately two-thirds

of the more than 600,000 deaths in the war

weren't caused by injuries

sustained on the battlefield,

but rather by disease.

FISHER: The Civil War represents

the last major conflict

that, um, that humans experienced, um,

before the, sort of, the inception

or the origins of-of germ theory.

You can imagine the conditions that soldiers live in,

crowded together, substandard sanitation.

In some cases,

open wounds that aren't being treated correctly.

It's really gross. Everything smells terrible.

Uh, these doctors aren't washing their aprons.

They can't explain

where they're getting these diseases from,

how they may be spreading it.

SHATNER: As uncontrollable infections

ravaged both Union and Confederate encampments,

soldiers and their doctors

debated the cause of their afflictions.

Many came to believe that the air itself was poisoned.

RAJ DASGUPTA: When we talk about

some of the deadliest viruses that we know,

some of them get transmitted by respiratory droplets,

the air.

When you cough, when you sneeze, just by talking.

So, maybe they weren't too off by saying the air is bad.

SHATNER: In the mid-19th century,

little was known about disease control

or preventing the spread of germs.

But as the scope of the war widened

and the ferocity of infectious outbreaks

resulted in even more horrific causalities...

...doctors were forced to expand their knowledge

of diseases and how to contain them.

They realized that maybe a barn isn't the best place

to be doing amputations and open surgeries.

So, as the war goes on,

there's beginning to be an understanding

of what medicine should be.

Things like triage, things like an ambulance system,

hospitals, these are all established during the Civil War

in the United States for the first time.

SHATNER: In many ways, the Civil War marked the beginning

of medical science as we know it

and the end of mankind's superstitious attitude

towards disease.

But there is one event on the battlefield

that medical historians still struggle to explain to this day,

because it simply defies understanding.

Union and Confederate forces square off

in one of the bloodiest confrontations

of the Civil War, the Battle of Shiloh.

After two days of vicious fighting...

(soldier screams)

SHATNER: ...more than 20,000 men lie dead or dying.

WYNN: So, Ulysses S. Grant is the commander

of the Union army at this battle.

He went out and looked over the battlefield

and he could see that there were so many soldiers who had been

wounded and killed that he could've walked across

one side of the battlefield to the other

without ever touching the ground,

walking from body to body to body.

SHATNER: As night falls over the battlefield,

many injured soldiers lie helpless,

hoping to be rescued before their wounds become infected.

What happens next

is one of the enduring mysteries of the Civil War.

WYNN: Soldiers are out between the lines,

wounded during the course of the battle.

It's cold at night. They're out there shivering,

and they happen to look down at their shattered arm or leg,

and they notice this soft, faint, bluish-greenish glow

seeming to come off their wounds in the darkness.

There was a connection that was being made amongst the soldiers

that those who experienced this glowing wound effect

seemed to have better outcomes

when they went back to the field hospital,

and it seemed as though

their wounds may not have been as infected.

JULYE BIDMEAD: They termed this bluish-green glow

"Angel's Glow." Why?

Because to them, it looked like a halo.

Mystical light surrounding them.

So, it was a way of them thinking that God

or the angels were protecting these particular soldiers.

SHATNER: Was the so-called "Angel's Glow"

a type of divine intervention

that somehow protected certain soldiers

from deadly infection?

Perhaps.

But recently, a new theory has surfaced,

one that suggests this phenomenon

may have had a more conventional explanation.

BIDMEAD: It wasn't

until many years, like, 150 years later,

that a 17-year-old high school student visited Shiloh,

and he decided for his science project

to research bacterium that glows.

And they were able to find out that there was a bacteria

that would emit some sort of parasitic worm.

It would get into the veins, and then it would glow.

SHATNER: Could the Angel's Glow really have been a sign

of a type of bacteria, rather than guardian angels?

And if so, could this bacteria have actually been responsible

for saving the lives of the wounded soldiers?

FISHER: Presumably,

what happened with those soldiers with the Angel's Glow

is that those bacteria were actually infecting their wounds.

And because bacteria exude a lot of antibacterial

and antimicrobial compounds, they actually reduce

the level of infection in the soldiers that they colonized.

SHATNER: The bacteria theory is the best scientific explanation

we have for what caused the Angel's Glow.

If this incredible theory is true,

then it seems that some forms of bacteria can actually help us

in the fight against disease.

But the soldiers whose lives were saved

at the Battle of Shiloh believed

that what healed them could only have been sent from heaven.

WYNN: We can't know what those soldiers experienced

out there on the battlefield between the lines.

They're in the dark, they're suffering from shock.

Who's to say that they didn't experience that,

or that they did experience that?

Did guardian angels reach down from the heavens

and comfort the wounded, sick and dying soldiers at Shiloh?

To the men suffering on the battlefield,

the possibility that Angel's Glow saved them

is entirely plausible.

But there's another strange story from the Civil War

that involves America's most notorious assassin,

and the unlikely events surrounding his life

after death.

SHATNER: The St. Louis World's Fair opens to packed crowds.

Over the course of the next six months,

more than 19 million people stroll down a mile-long midway

lined with exhibitions

showcasing the world's most advanced science,

technology, art,

and one rather bizarre attraction.

The alleged mummy of John Wilkes Booth,

the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

ORLOWEK: Encountering a mummy that is being claimed

to be John Wilkes Booth,

the man who killed,

who I think most people think was our greatest president,

would be pretty mind-boggling.

YOUNG: So, it was a high point of many people's lives

to see the mummy of the dark figure

of American history, John Wilkes Booth.

To see some part of that story, even the horrific part of it,

is still an expression of grief and attachment

to Abraham Lincoln.

SHATNER: For nearly three decades,

the mummy of John Wilkes Booth,

America's most infamous assassin,

drew eager crowds around the world.

Which was extraordinary,

because according to the United States government,

the body of John Wilkes Booth had been buried

in a Baltimore cemetery since 1865.

According to most historical accounts,

after John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln

during a performance at Ford's Theatre

in Washington, D.C.

on April 14, 1865,

Booth fled on horseback to Virginia,

eluding Union soldiers that were stationed

at the city exits by Vice President Andrew Johnson,

with orders to kill anyone attempting to leave.

Booth was eventually cornered inside a barn

just south of Port Royal, Virginia,

where, after he refused to surrender,

Union troops shot and killed him

on April 26, 1865.

ORLOWEK: The barn was set on fire.

The traditional version is

that the body was identified and eventually,

the government released the body to the Booth family.

SHATNER: After receiving the body,

Booth's family supposedly buried him

in the family plot at a Baltimore cemetery.

But if that's the case,

how did his preserved remains end up

as a traveling sideshow attraction?

According to some researchers,

it was all due to a chance encounter

involving a man named Finis L. Bates

that occurred 12 years

after Booth's supposed death in 1865.

MARK EBNER: Bates was this lawyer,

slash carney barker, slash showman.

He was

living in a town called Granbury, Texas,

and befriended a guy named John St. Helen.

ORLOWEK: One night, St. Helen became very ill

and called Bates to his bedside.

And he gasped out to Bates that in fact,

he was really John Wilkes Booth.

Bates, of course, thought the man was hallucinating,

because everybody had been told

that John Wilkes Booth had been killed 12 years earlier.

Booth, slash St. Helens-- he recovers

from this illness, and he skips town.

Years later, in Enid, Oklahoma,

there is a guy, David George.

George had enough of this world, and he killed himself.

And there was no next of kin, but he did leave word,

"Please call Finis L. Bates,"

and that they did.

SHATNER: As the story goes,

when Finis L. Bates arrived in Enid, Oklahoma

and viewed the dead body of David George,

he made two startling observations.

The first was that David George's appearance

closely matched that of John St. Helen's,

the man who had claimed to be John Wilkes Booth.

And the second was that George's body

had been strangely preserved.

YOUNG: The undertaker, having no money for a burial,

puts arsenic in the veins to preserve the body,

mummified the body,

and puts it in a store window as a gag holding a newspaper.

So they get ahold of Bates, who puts two and two together.

He realizes it's the man

who claimed to be John Wilkes Booth,

takes possession of this mummy.

He goes into the sideshow business,

and for a small price, you could see the mummy

of John Wilkes Booth.

SHATNER: If Finis L. Bates's story is true,

and John Wilkes Booth lived

under at least two other identities

before dying in Enid, Oklahoma in 1903,

the question is, how did Booth escape the barn

where he was supposedly killed by Union troops?

ORLOWEK: In 1919, the granddaughter

of one of the soldiers who was at the barn

gave a sworn affidavit saying

that man was not John Wilkes Booth

who was killed in the barn.

That man had red hair and ruddy features.

John Wilkes Booth had black hair and smooth features.

EBNER: If revisionist history

is to be believed,

John Wilkes Booth was given a password... to freedom,

and this was done by the original conspirator

in Abraham Lincoln's death,

supposedly-- Vice President Andrew Johnson.

YOUNG: John St. Helen is apparently on his deathbed,

and he made kind of a deathbed confession.

He tells the whole story of how it was plotted,

not by himself, but by the vice president, Andrew Johnson,

who was, of course, the beneficiary,

became president because of the death.

SHATNER: Is it possible

John Wilkes Booth lived as John St. Helen,

before dying as David George in 1903,

only to be reborn as a mummified curiosity?

While this may seem like a farfetched notion,

according to researchers,

we may never know what really happened

because authorities are preventing anyone

from finding out the truth.

In the 1990s, the Booth family was convinced

that John Wilkes Booth really got away,

and they agreed to authorize the exhumation of the body.

There are all sorts of tests that would compare it with DNA

from anyone of John Wilkes Booth's

immediate family members.

Unfortunately, the cemetery fought it,

and the Booth family was denied permission.

SHATNER: Now you might be thinking,

if officials at the cemetery are preventing Booth's grave

from being exhumed,

why not simply do a DNA test on his supposed mummy?

Not surprisingly, researchers agree

that a DNA test would solve the mystery,

if only they knew where to find the mummy.

ORLOWEK: So, unfortunately, it's uncertain where it is.

So unless we can either find the mummy

or dig up the body in the Booth plot,

this will forever be a mystery.

SHATNER: John Wilkes Booth is perhaps the most notorious figure

in American history,

in both his life and his death.

And while we may never know if the traveling mummy

was truly Mr. Booth,

the possibility alone was enough

to intrigue thousands of curious onlookers.

Such is also the case with another tall tale,

where some speculate

that one of the most popular landmarks in the United States

can manipulate the weather.

SHATNER: Standing 630 feet tall

and 630 feet wide,

the St. Louis Arch

is the world's tallest freestanding arch.

Memorializing Thomas Jefferson,

Lewis and Clark and other great pioneers,

the arch has been nicknamed "the Gateway to the West."

Each leg of the arch is sunk in almost 24,000 tons of concrete

60 feet deep,

enough to withstand earthquakes

and winds as strong as 150 miles an hour.

The exterior is comprised of 2,000 tons of stainless steel,

the most ever used for any single project in history.

It is, in short, a modern engineering marvel.

But that's not even the most incredible thing about it.

Heavy, dark, dangerous thunderstorms have been known

on many occasions

to head directly for the city of St. Louis.

And as they get closer,

they seem to split right down the middle,

go out and around the city

and reconnect after they've passed the city of St. Louis.

JOHN BRANDENBURG: It's very strange,

but there does seem to be an effect where thunderstorms

tend to kind of break apart when they get near this thing

and they reform afterwards.

It doesn't mean that St. Louis doesn't have thunderstorms.

It does.

But it doesn't seem to have

as many thunderstorms in the area of that arch.

SHATNER: The St. Louis Arch's alleged power

to redirect thunderstorms

has led some to give this phenomenon a name,

the Arch effect.

TRAVIS TAYLOR: Some people believe that the St. Louis Arch

is changing the flow of the air

that's causing weather patterns to occur or not.

But a storm cloud top is 10,000 to 50,000 feet high.

The arch is only gonna be a few hundred feet high at best.

So how is this affecting something

that is so much larger?

MICHAEL DENNIN: I think we all are well aware of the way structures

certainly impact airflow, air currents and winds.

And the arch is certainly very large and very geometric,

and I think it does have what we might call local micro effects.

But what kind of influences could that have

on, sort of, larger weather systems, particularly storms,

either attracting or not attracting thunderstorms?

That's harder to kind of really wrap your head around.

SHATNER: If the shape of the St. Louis Arch

isn't the reason it's capable of affecting the weather,

then what is?

According to some scientists,

it's not how the arch was designed

but what it's made of.

Now, as you look at the design of this thing,

it's a stainless steel structure,

it's completely unique architecturally,

it's basically a ring made of metal.

Metal is a conductor.

The various stainless steels and other metals that are in it

conduct electromagnetic energy.

You could, you know, connect a battery to one side of the arch

and, uh, light a flashlight on the other side of it,

and that's-that's fairly unique.

You can't do that with most skyscrapers.

So one mechanism where it could affect the local weather

is to short out the Earth's electric field in that vicinity.

In a weird way, it's kind of an oddly shaped, big lightning rod.

Normally we think of lightning rods as being sharp and pointed

and there's a clear ion electromagnetic effect.

It has been proven by Nikola Tesla and other scientists

that you can use electromagnetic fields

to create holes in the atmosphere

to manipulate the weather.

SHATNER: Could generating a powerful enough electromagnetic field

actually make it possible to manipulate something as vast

and unpredictable as weather?

It's an intriguing and somewhat unnerving notion.

But believe it or not, in 1990,

the United States military

conducted a series of experiments

designed to do just that.

There was a secret program by the military called HAARP,

which was instituted to try to understand the ionosphere.

This is a matter of national security.

Communications go through the upper atmosphere,

called the ionosphere,

and we have to study it.

So HAARP shot radio frequency radiation into the ionosphere

to see how it was distributed around the planet Earth.

If you look, there have been many direct correlations

between major storms and HAARP being active.

It could be that the hurricanes and superstorms and tornadoes

that are created while HAARP is working

are actually just a-a side effect.

But the people that are operating this device understand

and know its potential for use as a weather weapon.

SHATNER: Is the St. Louis Arch not only an impressive national monument

but also evidence of the United States government's

ongoing attempts to control the weather?

Perhaps the answer lies not by examining the design

of the St. Louis Arch

but by investigating the extraordinary career

of the man who designed it.

SHATNER: As World War II rages across several continents,

acclaimed architect and eventual designer of the St. Louis Arch

Eero Saarinen

is secretly enlisted by the United States military

to work for a new clandestine organization.

Its name?

The OSS, Office of Strategic Services.

Or as it is known today...

the CIA.

The fact that Eero Saarinen was in the OSS

designing weapon systems during World War II

and at a time when the OSS was looking into ways

to "weaponize weather"

makes this whole connection

to the design of the St. Louis Arch extremely interesting.

Now, that isn't to say I believe it can control the weather,

but it does open the door to the idea that it might've been

one of the things Saarinen was out to achieve.

SHATNER: While at the OSS,

Saarinen designed buildings and weapon systems,

many of which were never completed or built.

Is it possible he later used these secret plans

to engineer the St. Louis Arch,

creating something that can actually control

or perhaps harness the weather?

Controlling the weather is the ultimate superweapon.

It's even more powerful than the atomic bomb.

So if Eero Saarinen was involved in analyzing

and studying the possibility of weather modification

and you put all those factors together,

I think you have a guy that basically conducted

a big, giant weather modification experiment

with the St. Louis Arch.

SHATNER: Weather as a weapon?

There are some who think the idea is not as preposterous

as it seems,

especially when considering that, even today,

many world governments are pouring millions of dollars

into research designed to manipulate weather.

I think weather modification has definitely been an ongoing...

endeavor of governments all over the world for decades.

The St. Louis Arch appears to be

an experiment in weather modification.

The HAARP device appears to be

an experiment in weather modification.

Who knows what the Russians and the Chinese are doing?

There's some sort of technology out there.

There's been lots of work in the field of weather control.

Using silver iodide

inside of thunderstorms to decrease the size of hail.

That goes on in many parts of the world

to alleviate that problem.

They're always firing rockets into the atmosphere in China

to manipulate the weather.

But is this a good idea?

TAYLOR: You wonder, if you could steer a tornado,

what would it take?

Even a nuclear weapon might just nudge it, if even that.

DENNIN: One challenge with that is your shockwave

is gonna be hard to focus, perhaps,

and it might cause the damage

you were hoping to avoid with the tornado.

EVANS: These are forces at work

that could wipe out major cities.

And we're finding out every day new things

that we've never seen before.

So maybe the lesson learned here is

we shouldn't meddle with forces that we don't really understand,

because we may not like the result.

♪ ♪

Today, the notion of man creating

weather modification machines has actually gone

from science fiction

to fact.

In any case, the St. Louis Arch remains, as always,

a stunning piece of architecture

that may or may not have anything to do with the weather.

It's intriguing to think that American history

is interwoven with stories of strange encounters,

miraculous healings

and unsolved mysteries.

Could some of these incredible tales be true?

Well, for now,

that remains...

unexplained.

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