Using sophisticated animation and expertise from modern scholars and archivists, this program reconstructs European voyages of discovery that took place in the 15th through 18th centuries and profiles the visionaries who led them. Viewers are introduced to Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian merchant who gave his name to the New World; Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese admiral who found the passage to the Pacific; Louis-Antoine Bougainville, the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe; French explorer Jean François de Galaup La Pérouse, whose expedition criss-crossed the Pacific, then vanished in Oceania; and James Cook, the English navigator who mapped the Eastern coast of Australia. (72 minutes)