The Joe Louis Story

Familyland TV, 3:30 p.m.

This 1953 biopic stars actor-boxer Coley Wallace as Joe Louis (1914-1981), the heavyweight champion who was much beloved during the Depression and World War II.

American Experience:

The Gold Rush

PBS, 9 p.m.

After the gold strike in California in 1848, fortune-seekers flooded in, bringing to that region elements previously unknown: racism against Mexicans and Chinese, and genocide against American Indians. TV-PG.

Engineering an Empire:

Carthage

History Channel, 9 p.m.

The people of the North African city-state of Carthage employed advanced architecture, harbor design and shipping to dominate Mediterranean trade.

Marriage

Familyland TV

At 12 a.m. Tuesdays and 10:30 p.m. Thursdays, in Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love, Alice von Hildebrand discusses her late husband Dietrich’s book of that title. At 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays and 9 a.m. Thursdays, in Marriage: The School of Love, psychologist Richard Fitzgibbons and counselor Christine Whitman explore the sacrament of marriage.

Secrets of the Dead:

Dogfight over Guadalcanal

PBS, 8 p.m.

The recent discovery of a U.S. Navy F4F Wildcat on Guadalcanal confirms accounts of the epic dogfight there on Aug. 7, 1942, between American pilot Pug Southerland and Japanese ace Saburo Sakai in his Zero. Sakai so admired Southerland’s skill that he downed his plane by hitting the engine instead of the cockpit, so as to let him survive.

Da Vinci: Unlocking

the Genius

Discovery Channel, 9 p.m.

This special studies the multi-disciplinary inventive genius of Leonardo da Vinci, re-creates his workshop and profiles inventors today who work in a similar vein. A re-air.

Classroom: Veterans Day/Labor Day

History Channel, 6 a.m.

Nowadays Veterans Day honors our veterans of all wars, but it started out as Armistice Day, commemorating World War I’s cessation on Nov. 11, 1918. Labor Day began as a salute to America’s workers and their contributions.

For God and Country

EWTN, 5:30 a.m.

On Dec. 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, aboard the stricken battleship U.S.S. Oklahoma, Father Aloysius Schmitt, a Navy chaplain, gave his life for his men, saving their lives by pushing them out a porthole that his equipment prevented him from squeezing through.

Dan Engler writes from

Santa Barbara, California.