Le Journal

David Pogue looks at our nation's tradition of pioneering inventors, from Thomas Edison's R&D facility in Menlo Park, N.J., to today's entrepreneurs pitching their ideas to "Shark Tank."

David Pogue looks at the pioneering spirit of innovation that Thomas Edison fostered at his R&D facility in Menlo Park, N.J., where his team helped create the light bulb and the phonograph. He also talks with Google's Steven Johnson and the panel of "Shark Tank" about today's entrepreneurs and whether an inventor's ability to persevere after failure Is a uniquely American trait.

In December 1953, Thurgood Marshall, an attorney who headed the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that racial segregation in America was an attempt to keep the formerly enslaved in "as near that stage as is possible." Bill Whitaker reports on how a long-standing legal doctrine was ended.

Built during the Great Depression, California's Golden Gate Bridge is for the West Coast what the Statue of Liberty is for the East: A lofty symbol of freedom, possibility and hope, constructed by workers who toiled at terrifying heights. Lee Cowan reports.

Correspondent Conor Knighton reflects on the American treasure whose preservation as our first national park inspired similar conservation efforts around the globe.