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00:00From coast to coast, America is a nation of trailblazers, people whose ideas have changed
00:10our lives and our country. In historic spots from east to west, pioneering men and women
00:19have altered our culture, our landscapes, and even our point of view. This nation was
00:27built by rebels who fought for freedom and a preacher who pushed for equality. It's where
00:35scientists propelled men to the moon and students transformed technology. From musicians in
00:43Kansas City to ballplayers in the Windy City, these are places where men and women shifted
00:49America's story and took us all in a new direction.
01:19Just south of Washington, D.C., along a quiet stretch of the Potomac River, is the home
01:36of one of America's earliest trailblazers, George Washington. He helped forge a new nation,
01:46in part to protect the land he loved, here at Mount Vernon. Washington inherited this
01:54Virginia plantation when he was 22, when America was ruled by the British. For 16 years, he
02:03dedicated himself to expanding and improving his land. His ideas about crop rotation and
02:11fertilization helped revolutionize farming. As his wealth grew, he expanded his home from
02:21six rooms to 21. When war erupted with England, Washington led the fight for both his homeland
02:30and his home. His leadership paved the way for a new kind of nation, governed from a
02:36city that would bear his name. As our first president, he created Washington, D.C., selecting
02:44both the land and its architect. He also appointed the first Supreme Court justices that established
02:54the presidential cabinet. After a lifetime of firsts, Washington asked to be buried not
03:02in the capital he created, but on the land he tended, here at Mount Vernon.
03:11Since Washington, America has seen two centuries of trailblazers, including a president known
03:19as the Great Communicator. Ronald Reagan moved into the Oval Office in 1981, as the Cold
03:27War escalated. He soon faced a nuclear arms buildup with the Soviet Union. Reagan believed
03:35he could ease tensions if he could meet one-on-one with Russian leadership. After four years,
03:43his administration pulled off something unprecedented—five summits with Mikhail Gorbachev. The third
03:52took place here, at the White House. It was the first time in 14 years the superpowers
03:58met on U.S. soil. That summit brought the breakthrough Reagan wanted. Both sides agreed
04:07to a decrease in nuclear weapons. The world watched as the two leaders sat in the East
04:15Room and signed the landmark INF Treaty. Reagan's achievement marked a new chapter
04:25in U.S.-Soviet relations, and the beginning of the end of the Cold War.
04:34While Reagan worked in Washington, trailblazers were making history across the country. In
04:39the 1970s, a journalist coined the term Silicon Valley. A decade later, in the 80s, this area
04:48south of San Francisco would change the world. Back then, it was home to a young entrepreneur
04:55named Steve Jobs. He began building computers in Los Altos, in his family's garage, with
05:01Steve Wozniak. In 1983, Apple sold its first computers to the masses. Today, the company
05:10is worth more than $700 billion and building a brand new headquarters. This construction
05:17site in Cupertino is Apple's future home. The main building, dubbed the Spaceship, will
05:23house 13,000 employees. The massive circular structure will be enclosed in glass, and parking
05:33will be underground so cars won't block the view. Twenty years after Apple launched, two
05:42other trailblazers teamed up in Silicon Valley. Google started here, at Stanford, in 1995,
05:51when grad student Sergey Brin took Larry Page on a campus tour. The next year, in Stanford's
05:59computer science building, they began working on a search engine called Google. In 1998,
06:08they moved it to the garage of this Menlo Park home. Six years later, they built their
06:16own campus, the 26-acre Googleplex in Mountain View. Today, the company continues to push
06:25the limits, working on wearable computers and smart cars. California's trailblazers
06:32have both brains and brawn. Five hundred miles down the coast, near San Diego, is the training
06:42ground for Navy SEALs. The men in this $22 million vessel are part of an elite force
06:49that revolutionized warfare and killed Osama bin Laden. The SEALs were formed under President
06:59John F. Kennedy in the 1960s. At the time, the Vietnam War was escalating, and Kennedy
07:08saw an increased need for small, mobile missions. Here at Coronado Beach, recruits face grueling
07:17team-building exercises. On their punishing obstacle course, they must carry a 300-pound
07:27log. Today, the military relies on special ops forces like these in the ongoing fight
07:37against terrorism. Trailblazers make their mark in the military and on the gridiron.
07:51Here in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Vince Lombardi became a living legend for his leadership
07:57and determination. Lombardi became a head coach for the first time in 1959 for the Green
08:06Bay Packers. They were the worst team in football, with a single win the previous season. First,
08:16Lombardi took away the footballs and put the players through grueling calisthenics. Then,
08:25tapping into his teaching background, he broke down tough plays to their fundamentals. Most
08:31importantly, Lombardi believed in his players, and soon, they began to believe in themselves.
08:41In their first game against the Chicago Bears, the same players who'd choked the previous
08:46year shined. The Packers won and were so elated, they carried Lombardi off the field and on
08:55to five championships. Today, the Lombardi spirit lives on. Since 1971, the Super Bowl
09:04trophy has been named in his honor. Wisconsin has a history of producing icons both in Green
09:12Bay and two hours south in Milwaukee. This is where longtime friends Arthur Davidson
09:23and William Harley dreamed of making a motorized bike. Today, their success story is celebrated
09:31here at a new museum. But their company started out far more modestly. They sold their first
09:40motorcycle from a shack. Determined to succeed, Harley put himself through college nearby
09:49at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He returned to Milwaukee with a degree in
09:57mechanical engineering. Two years and dozens of prototypes later, the men were making more
10:06than a thousand motorcycles a year. Harley and Davidson later convinced postal workers
10:18and allied troops to use their bikes, catapulting sales. Their brand went on to become an American
10:31icon, ridden by Rebels, Vietnam vets, and a trailblazing musician named Bob Dylan. He grew
10:43up on the Wisconsin-Minnesota border in the shipping town of Duluth. In 1941, Bob Dylan
10:51was born Robert Zimmerman at St. Mary's Medical Center into a tight-knit Jewish family. He gave
10:59his first singing performance in this green-roofed home when he was five years old. At age 18,
11:09Zimmerman went to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, but rarely went to class.
11:15Instead, he played his guitar in the apartment over this drugstore and listened to Woody Guthrie
11:24records. Looking out over campus, Zimmerman wrote songs and developed his distinct rock folk
11:35sound. After two years, he dropped out of college and changed his name to Bob Dylan. His music soon
11:45became the soundtrack for a generation. The southern city of Atlanta shaped some of America's
11:58foremost trailblazers, including a leader who never lost his faith. Dr. Martin Luther King,
12:06Jr. grew up in a neighborhood called Sweet Auburn at the height of segregation. He lived here with
12:13his parents and maternal grandparents who made religion the centerpiece of their family. Both
12:20his father and grandfather were pastors who instilled in King the importance of racial
12:26equality. As a boy, King walked to the Ebenezer Baptist Church where his father preached about
12:35social justice. King later followed in his dad's footsteps, attending his alma mater of Morehouse
12:48College. Here, he met the school's president, Benjamin Mays, a minister and early civil rights
12:56activist. King later called Mays his spiritual mentor and intellectual father. Soon, King became
13:08an ordained minister in his family's church. Here, he preached nonviolence as the civil rights
13:17movement grew. Despite increasing bloodshed, he remained steadfast in his beliefs until his
13:25assassination in 1968. Dr. King was laid to rest next to his childhood church in what's now the
13:36King Center. It's part of an historic park dedicated to his life's work. King's marble
13:47crypt lies above a reflecting pool. Nearby, an eternal flame burns, honoring trailblazers who
13:56have carried on in his stead. One of those men was a longtime friend who continues to work for
14:06peace and human rights nearby, here at the Carter Presidential Center. Former President Jimmy Carter
14:17opened it in Atlanta in 1982, after his administration was plagued by foreign crises.
14:27The Georgia native and his wife, Roslyn, decided to devote their lives to diplomacy and charity.
14:34Over the last 30 years, Carter has calmed tensions with foreign leaders and improved living conditions
14:42for millions. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of humanitarian work.
14:54Southern trailblazers have been both world leaders and ordinary citizens. This statue in Oxford,
15:03Mississippi, honors James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of
15:09Mississippi in 1962. Meredith was initially denied admission based on his race. Despite
15:17laws against segregation, he filed a discrimination suit that went all the way to the Supreme Court,
15:23which ruled in his favor. When Meredith arrived here, hundreds rioted and two people were killed,
15:32but he persevered. Meredith went on to become a lawyer and a leader in civil rights.
15:42While Meredith made strides in Oxford, trailblazers in southern Mississippi looked skyward.
15:51From Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, NASA scientists tested the rockets that sent
15:57men to the moon. The first person in charge here was Captain Bill Fortune, a Navy pilot and rocket
16:06pioneer. He led the difficult construction and operation of this high-tech facility in the early
16:1360s as the space race escalated. The Stennis team later tested the rockets that powered 11 of the
16:2417 Apollo missions, firing them on a massive test stand. In 1969, their engines sent Apollo 11 to
16:34the moon. Today, construction on a new test stand is underway. Many hope it will propel space travel
16:48into the 21st century.
16:54The South often led the way in the space race, both in Mississippi and Texas.
17:03In the 60s, NASA trailblazers flocked to a brand new facility in Houston. The Johnson Space Center
17:11is a $1.5 billion complex that covers 1,600 acres. One of its key buildings is Christopher
17:19Kraft Mission Control, named for the man who masterminded ground support for space flights.
17:26He orchestrated everything from communications to problem solving. In 1970, Kraft's cool-headed
17:34team got Apollo 13 home after they said, Houston, we've had a problem.
17:42Three years later, this sprawling complex was named
17:45for one of the biggest proponents of space exploration, Texas native Lyndon B. Johnson.
17:54He helped establish NASA 50 years after he grew up here in the plains of central Texas.
18:00Johnson was born into a poor family in this home in Stonewall,
18:05where his rural upbringing shaped the leader he'd become.
18:10As a child, Johnson went to this one-room schoolhouse and learned the importance of
18:16education from his mother. He worked all his life, including as a ranch hand on his uncle's land.
18:25Johnson later inherited the ranch, which he turned into his Texas White House.
18:34As president, he remembered his roots, advocating for the poor with his ambitious plan
18:40for a great society. LBJ and his advisers flew between Stonewall and Washington,
18:48ultimately passing landmark legislation that would make him the president of the United States.
18:56Including the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, and Head Start.
19:03But Johnson's presidency would become increasingly tangled in the Vietnam War.
19:09In 1968, he shocked the world by announcing he would not run for re-election.
19:18Johnson spent his remaining years on the Texas land of his youth.
19:25Some of America's most successful trailblazers have faded into history.
19:33These Nebraska crop circles exist today because of a little-known farmer named Frank Zeebach.
19:42In 1949, he invented the Zeebach self-propelled sprinkling apparatus.
19:48Before his sprinklers, farmers struggled to irrigate their fields with heavy pipes and pumps.
19:58In 1948, Zeebach began working on an alternative,
20:03a self-propelled system that would move from a central pivot point.
20:18He patented his plan in the 1950s, then began buying up acres of dry Nebraska land.
20:29His invention turned much of the land here from brown to green,
20:34and revolutionized farming around the world.
20:37Trailblazers out west have changed our landscapes and protected them.
20:46In the neighboring state of Wyoming, much of Yellowstone exists today
20:51thanks to a writer named George Byrd Grinnell.
21:07The National Park was created in 1872, but there was little oversight.
21:14For two decades, visitors hunted, poached, and vandalized.
21:30In the 1880s, Grinnell began lobbying for more regulation
21:35and found an ally in a young Teddy Roosevelt.
21:42In 1894, they pushed through landmark legislation called the Yellowstone Protection Act.
21:49It gave the park's caretakers clear power to protect its treasures,
21:55from its geysers to its wildlife.
21:58That bill saved America's last wild herd of buffalo from extinction
22:04and became a cornerstone of conservation law.
22:09Seven years later, Teddy Roosevelt became president
22:13and learned about another endangered Wyoming site called Devil's Tower.
22:19Thanks to Roosevelt, this ancient lava column became America's first national monument.
22:29It was preserved in 1906 by the Antiquities Act.
22:33A groundbreaking law that he passed.
22:37With it, the president could quickly protect sites without awaiting congressional approval.
22:48In office, Roosevelt used his power to preserve 230 million acres of public land
22:54and became the country's first conservationist president.
23:04While Roosevelt protected sites on the ground,
23:07two other trailblazers turned their attention to the sky.
23:11Across the country, on the shores of North Carolina,
23:15Wilbur and Orville Wright successfully took flight.
23:20It happened in 1903, where this granite monument now stands.
23:28The idea of flight had captivated the brothers since they were boys.
23:34Finally, in their thirties, they came here to test a flying machine they designed at home in Ohio.
23:44They hoped the reliable ocean winds would give them the lift they needed.
23:53In four attempts, they stayed airborne the longest the last time.
23:59For a remarkable 59 seconds.
24:04The men had proven flight was possible.
24:08Now, they wanted to show it was practical
24:11by building an airplane that could carry passengers long distances.
24:17They returned to Dayton, Ohio and the bicycle shop they ran from this historic brick building.
24:27Here, the brothers were able to earn a living while also pursuing their passion.
24:34After their success in Kitty Hawk, the men built another airplane
24:38and stored it in this reconstructed hangar.
24:48Nearby, a local farmer let them use his cow pasture as a runway.
24:57Their longest flight in 1904 was five minutes and four seconds,
25:02or four circles around the field.
25:07The next year, with a new handmade plane, they achieved their longest flight yet.
25:15Wilbur stayed airborne for 39 minutes, or 29 full circles.
25:23Five years later, in 1910, the Wright brothers began mass-producing airplanes like these.
25:33This is a replica of those early Model B flyers, the predecessor of today's airplanes.
25:46Historians believe around 100 Model Bs were produced,
25:50some of which were sold to the U.S. military.
25:55Others were used by exhibition pilots, many of whom gave awestruck Americans
26:00their first glimpse of the spectacle of flight.
26:07While some Ohio trailblazers defied gravity, others broke down barriers with speed.
26:18Ohio State in Columbus is the alma mater of one of the world's greatest athletes, Jesse Owens.
26:25In the 1930s, the track and field star trained on this campus for the 1936 Olympics.
26:33That year, the games were being held in Berlin,
26:37where Adolf Hitler planned to prove white Europeans were superior.
26:44But Owens stole the show, repeatedly shattering records.
26:48He became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals
26:53in a single Olympics, a record that would go unbroken for 48 years.
27:05Owens paved the way for future African-American trailblazers,
27:09including an outspoken boxer from Kentucky who took a stand against the Vietnam War.
27:17Muhammad Ali grew up in this Louisville home, where he began boxing when he was 12.
27:23In 1960, at age 18, he left Kentucky for the Rome Olympics and returned with a gold medal.
27:31Ali went pro that same year here at Louisville's Freedom Hall.
27:37His fame grew as the Vietnam War escalated, and in 1966, the U.S. Army drafted him.
27:47He famously refused to serve on religious grounds,
27:52a story that's told nearby at the Muhammad Ali Center.
27:58Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title in 1967 and banned from boxing.
28:04The Louisville native became a hero for his anti-war stance
28:08and went on to become the first three-time heavyweight champion.
28:12America's trailblazers have left their mark in sports and in music.
28:20500 miles from Kentucky, one man revolutionized jazz
28:25in a town that was at the center of the music scene, Kansas City, Missouri.
28:34This was home to the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker, who developed bebop.
28:43He grew up in the 1920s and 30s near 18th and Vine,
28:48which was at the heart of the city's black community.
28:52During segregation, African Americans came here for goods, services,
28:57and entertainment, like movies at the Gem Theater.
29:02But the big draw here was the music.
29:05As a teenager, Parker would head to clubs like the Blue Room while his mother was at work.
29:10He sat outside, captivated by the music, then practiced diligently at home.
29:20Parker's greatest influences were older musicians,
29:23many of whom gathered here at the headquarters of the African American Musicians Union.
29:35Today, Charlie Parker is viewed as one of the fathers of modern jazz
29:42and one of its most influential soloists.
29:49Many artists broke new ground in Kansas City, including a man at the forefront of animation.
29:56In 1922, this brick building housed Walt Disney's first company, Lifergram Studios.
30:04Here, Disney and other artists taught themselves how to make one-minute cartoon shorts to precede
30:11movies. The films were popular, but not profitable, so the man went to Hollywood,
30:17later producing Disney's first animated feature, Snow White.
30:23Today, investors are considering turning Disney's original offices into a museum.
30:34East of Kansas City, the town of Hannibal inspired a trailblazer in American literature.
30:42This river town was the childhood home of Mark Twain, who revolutionized prose
30:48by writing in a conversational tone instead of a formal one.
30:53Born Samuel Clemens, he grew up in this two-story home in the 1840s with his parents and three
31:01siblings. He often entertained himself by heading down to the Mississippi to watch the steamboats
31:10pass. Years later, he piloted his own steamboat here and famously adopted his pen name from a
31:22term used on board. Mark Twain meant the water was deep enough for a boat to pass.
31:31Twain's life on the Mississippi inspired the adventures of Tom Sawyer and later Huckleberry Finn.
31:40Ernest Hemingway later wrote that all modern American literature came from that one book.
31:51Literary trailblazers have been inspired by their surroundings both in the Midwest and the Northeast.
31:58This Massachusetts countryside was once home to Henry David Thoreau. He came to live on Walden
32:05Pond near Concord in 1845 on what's now protected parkland.
32:13In the solitude, he planned to finish his first book about a river trip.
32:19Instead, Thoreau started writing a lecture to answer residents' questions about why he was here.
32:26That speech became his masterpiece, Walden, a book that chronicled his time in the woods.
32:37Through it, Thoreau became one of America's earliest conservationists, a rebellious stance at the time.
32:48Today, his work is celebrated for being among the first and best nature writing.
32:56Massachusetts has a history of rebellion, especially in the historic city of Boston.
33:09It was once home to Paul Revere, who lived here in the North End.
33:16In the late 1700s, he met with rebels at Boston's old meeting house to debate American independence.
33:25The men called themselves the Sons of Liberty, and they were tired of British rule.
33:33In 1773, 5,000 patriots stormed in furious about England's latest tax on tea.
33:45A group of men, including Revere, went to Boston Harbor and tossed 340 chests of tea overboard,
33:52worth about $700,000 today.
33:58It became known as the Boston Tea Party,
34:01a pivotal event that brought England and America closer to war.
34:09Two years later, Revere would gallop out of Boston on his famous midnight ride.
34:16More than 200 years later, Boston would be the birthplace of another revolution in social media.
34:24The Harvard campus was once home to internet icon Mark Zuckerberg.
34:33He began college here in 2002 and started a networking site called the Facebook with some friends.
34:42It was originally just for Harvard students, but Zuckerberg believed it could be more.
34:47His sophomore year, he left this campus to work on Facebook full-time,
34:52and in the coming decade, built a fortune worth $45 billion.
35:02Recently, he broke new ground again,
35:04this time as a philanthropist.
35:07In 2015, Zuckerberg announced he'd donate 99% of his Facebook shares to charity.
35:15He made the pledge with his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, after the birth of their first child.
35:27Harvard has produced over 1.5 million Facebook posts in the past decade.
35:32Harvard has produced generations of trailblazers, including our 35th president, John F. Kennedy.
35:43But all his life, JFK preferred to be 70 miles south of Boston, on the Cape.
35:52His father, Joe, bought this home in Hyannisport in 1929, when John was just 12.
36:03The nine Kennedy kids spent their summers here,
36:06swimming and sailing these waters, and playing football on their expensive lawn.
36:15Years later, John and Bobby Kennedy bought homes nearby, creating the Kennedy Compound.
36:21In 1961, JFK became president and soon faced the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War,
36:36and civil rights violence. During those tumultuous years, he kept coming back to Hyannisport.
36:44He said its beaches were the one place he could be alone and think.
36:51In 2012, after the death of Ted Kennedy, the main house was donated to his institute.
36:59The storied home will eventually be open to the public.
37:10The Kennedys are among thousands of trailblazers
37:13buried in the state of Virginia at Arlington National Cemetery.
37:18This is the final resting place for military men and women,
37:22along with leaders in science, medicine, and the arts.
37:30But for decades, the land was home to the Confederate general and military trailblazer,
37:35Robert E. Lee.
37:40He lived at Arlington House for 30 years, before Union forces seized it and turned it into a
37:47cemetery. Lee moved here with his wife, Mary Custis, whose family built the home.
37:56They went on to have seven children as Lee's status grew.
38:02In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, Lee devised innovative battle strategies
38:08and became one of the Army's most respected leaders.
38:17Then, the country faced civil war. In 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union,
38:24and Lee faced a gut-wrenching decision. He could either side with his country or his state.
38:33Reluctantly, Lee resigned from the U.S. Army. He wrote,
38:38I have not been able to make up my mind to raise a hand against my relatives, my children, my home.
38:44Two days later, he became commander of the Confederate forces.
38:52Shortly after the war began, Union forces took Arlington House,
38:56driving Lee's wife and children from their lifelong home.
39:03Years later, they were buried in Lexington, in the Virginia soil they loved.
39:08Many of America's earliest trailblazers were Virginians, including Thomas Jefferson.
39:17He went to school three hours south of Arlington, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.
39:29At the time, this town was the capital of the Virginia colony.
39:33It was also a bustling new world for the 17-year-old, who grew up on a plantation.
39:40As a law student, Jefferson attended dinners here at the Governor's Palace, along with his professors.
39:49Inside, the man immersed him in debates about politics and law.
39:54That early education shaped his future work, including the Declaration of Independence.
40:02During the Revolution, Jefferson himself lived in this mansion when he became governor.
40:09Two decades later, he went on to become our third president.
40:14He was a man of great ambition, and a man of great ambition.
40:18In the Midwest, in northeast Kansas, a unique work of art honors a trailblazing woman.
40:27Amelia Earhart was born in 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, where this earthwork is today.
40:35She was a young woman, and a young woman, and a young woman, and a young woman, and a young woman.
40:41She was born in 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, where this earthwork is today.
40:52She grew up in her grandparents' house high above the Missouri River.
40:58Even as a girl, she took risks, sledding headfirst down hills and playing sports with the boys.
41:05In 1932, at the age of 35, she became the first female pilot to fly across the Atlantic.
41:14Earhart later broke distance, speed, and altitude records, not just for women, but for all pilots.
41:26Her achievements and her aviation club, the 99s, encouraged generations of women to follow their
41:33own dreams of flying, even after Earhart's untimely death.
41:50In the fields of southern New Jersey, one trailblazer proved herself in an unconventional way.
41:56In 1778, during the War of Independence, this land near Trenton was the site of the Battle of Monmouth.
42:05American troops faced the more experienced British in 100-degree heat.
42:11Legend has it that a patriot named Mary Hayes came to the rescue, delivering water to the front lines.
42:19She was later nicknamed Molly Pitcher.
42:22Molly Pitcher.
42:24But Pitcher did more than that. When her husband could no longer man his cannon,
42:30she reportedly stepped in, firing on British troops.
42:36The battle resulted in a draw, but it was a psychological victory for the Americans,
42:42who proved they were a formidable enemy for the British.
42:45As for Pitcher, her heroic acts became legendary,
42:49memorialized through buildings, stamps, and statues across America.
42:59New Jersey was also home to our most celebrated inventor, Thomas Edison.
43:08He worked on many of his creations here, at what's now Edison National Park in West Virginia.
43:15West Orange.
43:18Edison and his team came here in 1887, eight years after inventing the light bulb.
43:24Soon, they unveiled the first movie camera, called a kinetograph.
43:30They filmed in a structure known as the Black Mariah, the world's first movie studio.
43:38Inside, actors stood under this slanted roof, which hinged open to let light in.
43:46Edison soon started a film company, which made movies nearby in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
43:55In his time, this was a small town, with space to film and access to New York actors.
44:06Independent filmmakers flocked here, starting fledgling studios in buildings like this.
44:11MGM, Fox, and Universal all have roots here, making Fort Lee the birthplace of motion pictures.
44:22Fort Lee has a rich history of trailblazers, as does a city 800 miles away, on the shores
44:28of Lake Michigan. For decades, Chicago, Illinois has inspired pioneers,
44:35from architects who designed new buildings, to musicians who developed the blues.
44:43But one of its best-loved heroes is a man known as Mr. Cub.
44:49Ernie Banks came to Wrigley Field in 1953, as the Cubs' first African-American player.
44:56He went on to lead the league in home runs, later becoming a Hall of Famer.
45:01But fans loved him most for his attitude. Even in tough times,
45:06he was famous for saying, it's a beautiful day for a ball game. Let's play, too.
45:15In 2013, Banks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
45:20for both his storied career at Wrigley, and his eternal optimism.
45:26Half an hour away, on Chicago's South Side, a trailblazer forever changed science and medicine.
45:34At the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi created the first nuclear chain reaction,
45:40a discovery that's advanced everything from cancer treatment to nuclear energy.
45:46Fermi's breakthrough happened underground, in the middle of campus, near this glass library.
45:56Today, the sculpture entitled Nuclear Energy marks the historic site.
46:00In December 1942, in an underground squash court here,
46:05Fermi and his team created and controlled the nuclear chain reaction.
46:13Their achievement marked the dawn of the new era of nuclear science.
46:18The first ever nuclear reactor was built in the United States,
46:22and it was the first nuclear reactor in the United States to be built in the U.S.
46:28Their achievement marked the dawn of the nuclear age,
46:31and led to nuclear medicine, where doctors use radiation to diagnose and treat disease.
46:40Fermi's legacy lives on, just outside Chicago, at the Fermi Lab.
46:46Scientists come here from around the world to study subatomic particles.
46:50The work done here has helped researchers better understand
46:54matter, energy, and the origins of the universe.
47:06On the opposite side of Illinois, a trailblazer made his mark on the state's vast farmland.
47:13In the early 1800s, settlers began heading to this place.
47:17But they struggled to grow crops in the thick roots of the prairie grass.
47:22Their plows kept getting stuck.
47:29In 1837, a blacksmith named John Deere began working on a solution.
47:36He lived in this house in the town of Grand Detour.
47:41In his work, he discovered a new way to generate electricity.
47:47At a workshop out back, Deere fashioned a new plow with a streamlined shape.
47:53For the blade, he used steel instead of iron,
47:57hoping it would more easily slice through the tough roots.
48:05Four years and many adjustments later, John Deere produced 100 plows for local farmers.
48:12As demand grew, he moved his business 75 miles away to Moline, where it's still headquartered today.
48:23Here, John Deere manufactures hundreds of machines for construction and farming.
48:30Combines like these feature wireless data transfers and GPS
48:35for farmers plowing into the 21st century.
48:41But of all of Illinois' trailblazers, one stands out.
48:46Abraham Lincoln.
48:49His roots here shaped his character and our country.
48:55At 22, Lincoln left his father's farm for New Salem, determined to lead a better life.
49:03Poor and with little formal schooling, he worked odd jobs and became a farmer.
49:08With little formal schooling, he worked odd jobs and borrowed books to further his education.
49:17He won over local residents who elected him to the state legislature in Springfield.
49:26Over the next decade, Lincoln made his first public declarations against slavery
49:32and started a law practice with an abolitionist named William Herndon.
49:38For the next 14 years, Lincoln's family and status grew, along with his political aspirations.
49:49In 1858, from the Illinois capital,
49:52he delivered his House Divided speech during his bid for the U.S. Senate.
50:00Lincoln lost that election, but soon won the presidency.
50:04When he left Springfield, he told the gathered crowd,
50:08to this place and these people, I owe everything.
50:15No matter where you go in America, you'll find stories of innovators and pioneers.
50:25From everyday citizens to famous leaders,
50:28Americans have taken extraordinary risks for their families, their flag, and their future.
50:38Along the way, some became heroes, others became legends, many were largely forgotten.
50:47But all of them, in one way or another, blazed a trail into America's future.