they may be more than thankful for their miraculous escape from the blazing inferno of the hindenburg. members of the crew not seriously injured were housed in the officers mess at the naval station. the 13-year-old cabin boy is the youngest survivor will appear before the department of commerce investigation board that calls commander rosendahl as first witness. but experts believe the exact cause of the greatest of air disasters will never be known. will loom a question mark that can never be forgotten. each week, american history tv's american artifacts takes viewers behind the scenes at archives, museums, and historic sites. in 1215, a group of noble men confronted the king of england demanding their rights be recognized, written down, and confirmed by royal see.

king john agree granting fundamental legal rights to the noble men including trial by jury, habeas corpus and no taxation without representation. the version is still a law on the books in england and wales, and that was the first to apply these rights to all english freemen. the charter was later cited in the writings of some of the founding fathers as they sought the same political rights leading up to the american revolution. in 2007, co-founder of the carlisle group and philanthropist david reubenstein purchased one of only four known original 1297 magna cartas and the only original copy in the united states. in 2009, he permanently loaned the document to the national archives as a gift to the american people. it was taken off display in 2011 to undergo conservation treatment and to be placed in a new protective case.

american history tv attended a press briefing for the unveiling of the newly encased magna carta. >> i'm david barry of the archivist of the united states and it's a pleasure to welcome to you one of the conservation labs of the archives. for many a year, the only copy of the magna carta has been out of sight, undergoing conservation treatment. we're showing you the result of our staff's expert pain staking work displayed in a new encasement designed and fabricated by the national institute of standard and technology. the 700-year-old document looks better than ever. when the magna carta is back on public display beginning february 17, it will be a more accurate rendition of the record. annotated translation of the

latin document and learn how it influenced america's founding charters, keck la ration of independence, the constitution and the bill the rights. the connection between magna carta and the effects of secure liberty and law over the centuries have inspired a new gallery which will be the future home of magna carta. this new permanent exhibit will allow visitors to examine important records of our evolving ideas about who has rights and to see the links between those ideas and the forces that shape our lives today. the new gallery will be named in honor of david m. rubinstein with whom we're indebted three times over, first in his position to acquire magna carta and to make it accessible to the american people here at the national archives. second, his tangible contributions to make in new display possible and no develop our new orientation and exhibit spaces.

and third and most heartfelt, for his personal commitment to the preservation, access and understanding of our documentary heritage. this past november, it is my honor to present david with the foundations records of achievement award acknowledging not only the aid he's rendered this organization but his many contributions to the storehouses of our cultural history. david's enthusiasm for using great historic records, his tools for advancing specific understanding is self-evident. we have with us today amelia bundles, who is right here in front of us, who is the new head of the foundation of the national archives. and now david. >> david, thank you very much. david fariel has done an extraordinary job of as the archivist of the united states. and i want to thank you for the job you're doing in helping to preserve the important documents in our country. when i first heard of the magna carta being for sale, i was

surprised it was for sale and i was surprised it was the only copy in private hands. i was afraid it would probably leave the country, and although it wasn't drafted or written here, it was an important document for hundreds of years because it was drafted before our country came into existence, i thought it was important to be kept in the united states. because, as david said, it was the inspiration for the declaration of independence, bill of rights and so many other document our country is founded on. i'm very pleased that people from all over the world will now have a chance to see it. it is encased and hopefully will last another 800 years or so. we will be celebrating in three years the 800th anniversary of the original magna carta in 1215 and that will be a lot of ceremonies in the united states and england, and our archives will no longer be on his own.

>> i am very honored that they're willing to do so and they've done so with an extraordinary attention to detail and extraordinary love of this document. so i'm very pleased and honored to be with you today, and i want to thank you david and your wonderful colleagues for doing this job and making sure the magna carta is available for everyone to see. >> this is the hard part. >> very gently. >> i think a nuclear bomb would not be able to destroy this. >> please, please, please.

>> so it's now my pleasure to introduce kitty nicholson, who was the manager of the magna carta preservation process and she'll tell us a little bit about the process. thanks, kitty. >> thank you very much. the document conservation lab of the national archives was really honored and pleased to be asked to be involved in ensuring the long-term preservation of the 1297 rubinstein magna carta. in taking on this project, we were building on the expertise that we acquired in the recent treatment and encasement of the charters of freedom and being able to apply it to the preservation of another great charter from an earlier era in english history. the project had separate lines of work that came together flawlessly. one was the conservation

examination and treatment of this great document, another was the design and fabrication of this really remarkable state of the art encasement that would be filled with inert gas, and the third was the fabric and design of the exhibit case to hold all this and protect it. as i've said, all those strands have come together in just the last week or so, and we're very happy and excited. the conservation goals for this project were to remove old repairs and old adhesives that were detracting from the document. this is a document on parchment, and just parenthetically, parchment is especially prepared and stretched animal skin. this is not paper, and it's from an era when parchment was a preferred support for very important documents, public laws and things of that nature. so it's totally understandable that it's on parchment and that's partly why it's come down to us in such incredible condition.

in our conservation work, two of our senior archive conserve fors carried out a very important examination of the parchment. the wax seal at the bottom and the old repairs that were present and the old adhesive. based on the examination, they wrote a treatment proposal and arced for very details photography of the front and reverse of the document. we also carried out special photography using ultraviolent light. it reveals things the naked eye can't see. in this case, when you get to see a little closer, there are some areas where the liquid dripped on it and we can't find the text there. what we found was the ultraviolet photography revealed and capture the ink text lost to the naked eye.

we're very excited and pleased to do that. the treatment itself began with a very careful removal of the old repairs and the old adhesive, which were causing contractions of the parchments. after those were removed, they repaired the small holes and tears that existed using a long fibered hand made paper, adhered with wheat starch paste and gelatin. and the fills that were made in areas where there was loss of the parchment were toned to marsh the surrounding parchment. if you look at it with the naked eye, actually, it's really a great job and i have some are and sometimes colors don't read the same on the web and you can see where the filters are made, but they are much less obtrusive. after all that work is done, it is carefully humidified indirectly to relax it and dried

between felts for many months, because once it's sealed in this incasement, we want it to rest in a relaxed form, and not retract or do anything to change. parchment is very responsive to humidity and we want it to be perfectly stable. all materials used in this conservation treatment are stable and long lasting materials. we have every reason to believe that 800 years from now they will still be in fabulous shape, just like the document itself, and it's incredible clear ink, which if we could read medieval latin would be perfectly legible. our national archives conservatives wrote the requirements for this wonderful encasement as part of a memorandum of agreement in the national institutes of standard and technology who became our partner in discussing the design and details of the design of this encasement so it would both protect the document and look

really fabulous on exhibit as it -- it should. for more than a year, archives conserve fors, scientists and exhibit staff met with nist engineers and talked through every possible detail to make sure it was just right. that led to the design of the encasement you see here today, and i'm pleased now to introduce to you design engineer jay brandenburg. jay works for the national institute of standards and technology and will tell you about the nist side of this project. >> probably the biggest question i always get asked, how did nist get involved for such a project? we've had a -- a tradition of working with some of the most important document inside the beltway, basically preserving them for both the national archives and a library of congress. this encasement itself had some unique challenges, as you can

see the document comes out at you, so it's almost a three-dimensional image coming at you. that floating document created a lot of design and manufacturing problems to us that we were able to overcome. the design of the encasement, i don't known it will withstand a nuclear blast, but there are a lot of inherent things that ten years ago would not have been in any encasement found around. we've made this to be able to take a lot of the expected environmental issues that could occur, even something as simple as changes in barometric pressure can have a large impact when you are trying to seal something and oxygen changes. the lighting to make it an absorbing background so you can see everything.

we try to make it as reflective as possible, and in in this, we had to change our way of thinking to make it somewhat rustic and make it so it did not reflect any light. the design process itself, we started in the middle, at the document. and our primary focus was on preserving the document and providing the best thing for the document. there is basically three large components, i should say four large components in this encasement and hundreds of little ones you don't see. there's a frame on the outside. this started out as a three-inch, 300-pound block of aircraft aluminum machined down. the bottom, what you see, the chamber of the other side. the back side of the chamber created out of an 800-pound block of aluminum, all reduced

down. in itself, when you create that much material creates a lot of stress and makes the machinery process very difficult to get to maintain a got sealing surface. the platform, which we mentioned. another difficulty matching the seal on it and being able to success spend the seal so there is no pressure as kitty mentioned on the document. that was something that until we could physically have it sent in there, we had to do modifications, and with all of our technology, it came down to a lot of hand grinding and polishing when it got to those specific details. and the fourth component is the glass itself, because of the lighting and the able to display this, a lot of concern that goes into the design of the glass material.

used to give the outer face that the public will see. and i like to thank some of our partners and some local companies, alexander metal finishing and stripping, for their participation in this project to got some of the final finishes you see on the project. and i think that's all i have. >> are there any questions? >> we were here when you first delivered the magna carta. you talked about your interest. will you tell us that story again. >> i worked on capitol hill when i was very young, 25 years old. chief council on the house subcommittee on constitutional amendments and a spent a fair amount of time thinking about and working on constitution, and that was perhaps one of the

inspirations for my being interested. and in recent years, i bought some other documents that are early american documents important to the history of the country. but many of these documents are all really based on the magna carta and the principles in the magna carta. very pleased i was fortunate enough to do this for the american public and i hope many people come to watch it, look at it, learn about it. >> for people who are unfamiliar with the magna carta, could somebody please give us a magna carta 101? >> on june 15, 1215, in runningmeade, noblemen came together and insisted on certain principles so they wouldn't feel

like they were being taxed without representation in effect. king john agreed with a seal the principles which the noblemen asked him to agree to including the rights of habeas corpus, punishment should be proportionate to the crime involved. no taxation without representation. it was written in medieval latin. unfortunately, one of the principles would result in him being excommunicated. the king of england was subordinate to the pope. and the pope said this wasn't a good principle. it said 25 noblemen could come together and overrule what the king wanted, and if that were the case, maybe somebody could overrule what pope wanted. the pope said i don't like that. the king didn't want to be excommunicated.

there was a new version of this one that kept the peace for a while. when king henry died, his son, king edward became king, he was grandfathered, needed money to fight wars in france, sought from noblemen more money and they asked him to agree to a new magna carta. and he did so in 1297. this became the law of the lan of england. this actually became something that really set the trend, and the 1215 was abrogated. this is the one that's really the law of the land and that's why it's so important is that -- >> well, that's very good. >> what about the magna carta do

we have in our laws? >> well, in the bill of rights we have in effect -- the whole government is based on no taxation without representation. representative of government, we have the right to habeas corpus. crime, punishment proportionate to the crime, trial by jury, things like that are the inspiration for our bill of rights, but if you read the early writings of hamilton and jefferson and adams and madison, many times they say it's because of the magna carta that we're doing this, and, remember, these people who were breaking away from england, they viewed themselves as englishmen. and they don't want to break away from england and we're entitled to all rights of englishmen, and that includes the magna carta. and ultimately they said no, you are different and that led them

to break away, because the rights they thought they had as englishmen were not the rights that they had in the colonies. it was the magna carta principles that made many feel they really deserved certain rights and not having them, they should break away. >> you come from baltimore. did you ever come down for field trips? >> i did. >> do you wonder if kids will see this. >> i was brought here, like everybody throughout the united states in eighth grade i is brought here in their eighth grade. i did come to see the archives and other buildings in washington. i don't know if in the recesses of my mind, if that was involved. did i come as a young boy. >> you have -- and in other areas recently, the monument.

did they count on you as a back stop when things go wrong? >> many people have more resources and i do, and i'm sure the federal government has a lot more than i have. to give, but when i find something i'm interested in, i am happy to do some of one of the most important things i am proud of, under david farios' leadership, the archives moved forward in making sure that people can see these important documents and make sure that national archives accessible. one of the things i'm most pleased i'm involved with. >> and beyond your generosity, you just turned 62 i think. >> thank you. >> what happens after that? do you bequeath it to the archives? what will become of it? >> everybody in life has certain things they like and i guess one

of the things like is buying these documents and owning them. and as owner of them, i'm responsible for insurance on them. responsible for the expense of the encasement and so forth, but you can't be buried with these documents as far as i know, so you can assume the appropriate place will see these documents when i'm not on this earth. >> any other questions? if not, if you would like to come up and take photographs, remember, i'm sure you have been told before, no flash. and we'll take you up for a tour in the rotunda, and you can actually learn more about the document up there. >> thank you. >> my name is marvin pinkert, and i'm director of the magna carta experience. the encasement you saw downstairs will slide into the case on my right and that will be the home for the magna carta.

this is where it was prior to the re-encasement project. but what's really different is that we've created these interactive units that allow visitors for the first time to not only take a close look at the magna carta, but read it, since not a lot of our visitors speak medieval latin. let me show you a little bit of what's on the unit. tree of liberty running from the roots of magna carta through the document itself, and this allows you to take the closer look at the document, see its detail, see things like the lost text. there's a second of magna carta, which appears to the naked eye to be white, but when we put it under an ultra violet light, we were able to reveal the text is

still there. in the document. for the first time you can read the document in its entirety in accomplish. you can look at high lice in the highlights in the document. for example, the issue of rule of law and here, the language of the document itself, in translation, no freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or deceased of his free tenement of his liberties without lawful judgment of hits peers. all the law, all the provisions of magna carta, applied to noblemen and people with property, whereas the bill of rights was a document intended to cover much larger swath of the population. we showed some examples of the influence of magna carta on american life. the way it was used as an emblem of the rights of englishmen. in our early history.

here we have paul revere holding magna carta. another example is john dickinson's, the patriotic american farmer and his elbow rests on magna carta. but it also continues later on in our history. what you are looking at is franklin roosevelt's third inaugural address, and the detail here says the democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. it is enblazed anew in the middle ages, written in the magna carta. as late as the onset of world war ii, fdr is still referring back to the legacy of magna carta.

so we think this new interactive device will give a lot more to the display of magna carta, and give a deeper understanding, not just how the document is important but how it connects to our charters and freedom. >> you can watch american artifacts and other american history tv programs any time by visiting our website, c-span.org/history. born in a north korean work camp, it's the only world he'd ever known. also the only one known to escape from camp 14. >> his first memory at age of around 4 was going with his mom to a place near where he grew up. in the camp to watch somebody

get shot. and shootings, public executions in the camp were held every few weeks. and they were a way of punishing people who violated camp rules, and of terrorizing the 20 to 40,000 people who lived in the camp to obey the rules from then on. >> tonight, author blaine hardin on shinh's journey out of north korea and learning about society and civilization. and may 6th, look for our interview with robert karo, it coincides with the release of the passage of power, volume four in the years of lyndon johnson. the biography of the 36th president. it's a safe bet that few of those know much about the men on

horseback whose commanding figure has been there since 1901. john a. roggin was a democratic congressman from southern illinois resigning his seat, he entered the union army as a colonel. miss distinguished service in such western campaigns as ft. donaldson and vicksburg earned him promotion to the rank of major general and brief command of the army of tennessee. few of the war's political generals contributed as much to northern victory. after the war, logan organized the grand army of the republic and helped promote the first memorial day in 1868. he returned to congress serving three terms in the senate. 15 years after his death in 1886, this impressive tribute joined washington's growing company of civil war generals. in life, no stranger to controversy, some thought him too political a