The hunt for one of history's greatest treasures, the Holy Grail, leads modern-day researchers on a remarkable journey in... HOLY GRAIL IN AMERICA

New Two-Hour Special Premiering Sunday, September 20 at 8pm ET on HISTORY�

Did the Knights Templar, longtime guardians of the Grail, hide the cup of Christ in America ... more than 100 years before Columbus �discovered' the New World?

A trail gone cold long ago is retraced with fresh eyes and telling new evidence; where will the investigation ultimately lead?

NEW YORK, AUGUST 2009 - For centuries, the search for the Holy Grail has sent treasure hunters and scholars traipsing all over the globe. Should they have been focusing their efforts all this time in, of all places, North America? HOLY GRAIL IN AMERICA investigates the provocative possibility that the Knights Templar, a legendary Christian military order from the 12th century believed by many to be guardians of the Grail, stashed this precious relic somewhere on American soil - and that they did it more than 100 years before Columbus "discovered" the New World. The two-hour special premieres Sunday, September 20 at 8pm ET on HISTORY.

If retrievable today, the Holy Grail - the legendary relic supposedly used by Jesus at the Last Supper and said to possess miraculous powers - would be an object of incalculable historic and religious value. Searchers seemingly have left no stone unturned, yet the prize continues to elude them. But, by consulting with experts from a variety of scholarly and scientific disciplines (historians, linguists, cartographers, geologists, archeologists, architects, astronomers and more), HOLY GRAIL IN AMERICA picks up a centuries-old trail of breadcrumbs that leads from the Holy Land through Medieval Europe to an unsettled North America first visited by Vikings in 1000 A.D.

One telling clue that the Knights Templar chose to move their vast treasure from Europe to the New World when sentenced to death by a vengeful king and a corrupt pope might be found in Kensington, Minnesota. It is there, in the late 1800's that a farmer clearing trees unearthed a large stone slab covered with mysterious runes. Some insist that the message carved into the Kensington Runestone and dated 1362 was an elaborate hoax. But other researchers vouch for its authenticity and point to it as evidence of Templars in America. If the knights did indeed have the Grail and if they did bring it here, can it be recovered after all this time?

HOLY GRAIL IN AMERICA is produced for HISTORY by Committee Films. Michael Stiller is Executive Producer for HISTORY. Executive Producers for Committee Films are Andy Awes and Maria Awes.

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