'10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America' When: 9 to 11 p.m. today through Thursday, The History Channel.

PASADENA, Calif. -- When approaching The History Channel's new 10-hour series, it's important to take the show's title at face value: "10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America."

It's not the 10 most important days, nor is it a countdown that makes value judgments on how important any of these days were in American history.

"Our goal was to come up with days that would be both significant and credible and also be exciting television," said History Channel programming vice president Susan Werbe at a January press conference. "We weren't writing a history textbook. We didn't want to be too obvious."

Hence, the Declaration of Independence and Pearl Harbor are nowhere to be found.

"We wanted to find the spark or the trigger that may have set off a chain of events that unexpectedly led to change in our country," she said.

After meeting with a group of historians in October 2004, the choices were narrowed to 30 days covering 12 definable periods of American history. Then the list was winnowed to 10.

The Homestead Strike of 1892 was among the events chosen, with its hour airing at 10 p.m. Wednesday.

Directed by Rory Kennedy ("American Hollow") and written and produced by Jack Youngelson, "The Homestead Strike" uses both talking head historians and dramatic re-creations to efficiently explain how the lock-out/strike came about and its importance as a turning point in labor-management history. It's an educational but engaging (re: not boring) hour that's narrated by friend-of-labor actor Martin Sheen ("The West Wing").

"It's really the story of the workers' plight in America," Kennedy said, "and I knew that would speak to him and strike a chord for him."

The film details Andrew Carnegie's efforts to distance himself from the ugliness of the Homestead battle, the tactics of his business partner, Henry Clay Frick, and how public sentiment swung toward the side of management after an assassin attempted to kill Frick.

"We were at a very important point in our history where we were still a very young nation coming out of the Civil War, and we were deciding which direction to go in," said Kennedy, a daughter of the late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy. "This was the first time we saw industry explode and saw real capitalists emerge. There was a real question of how we as a society were going to deal with that. ... Industry won. Capitalism won. And because of that we are where we are today."

The Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area in Homestead helped the filmmakers with research and provided some archival photos used in the film. An inventive technique makes some of those old photos appear almost 3-D. Filmmakers spent only one day filming a few exteriors locally with the re-creations shot in upstate New York.

"10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America" kicks off tonight with "Antietam" (Civil War's bloodiest battle) and "Massacre at Mystic" (the first significant clash between the English and American Indians). Two one-hour episodes will air nightly, 9-11 p.m., through Thursday.

A different documentary filmmaker tackles each hour, including director R.J. Cutler ("The War Room"), who uses animation by Bill Plympton to tell the story of 1787's Shays' Rebellion (10 p.m. Thursday).

Twentieth-century stories featured in the series include "Einstein's Letter" (development of the atomic bomb), 9 p.m. Monday, and "When America Was Rocked" (Elvis on "The Ed Sullivan Show"), 9 p.m. Tuesday.

"What is so interesting about all of these films is that it emphasizes how contingent history is," said filmmaker Barak Goodman, director of "Einstein's Letter." "Something as small as a letter, something as small as an assassin's bullet or a television show can fundamentally alter the course of the nation's history."