The New York Times and Breakwater Studios present a fascinating new series about people who nearly made history — and found happiness anyway.

ALMOST FAMOUS is a new kind of historical documentary series that exhumes unexamined records, interrogates unrecognized geniuses and invites you, the viewer, into the first-person narratives of these singular accomplices to history. These are the faces we could have known well, had the 20th century gone a little differently.

Kim I Am

In 2000, Kim Hill was the fourth member of an up-and-coming hip hop group called The Black Eyed Peas. That is, until she quit.

The Other Fab Four

In the mid-1960s, four teenagers from Liverpool were changing the face of pop music. Their names were Mary, Sylvia, Pam and Val.

The Lost Astronaut

Prolific sculptor Ed Dwight Jr. has never built a memorial for the first black astronaut. But for a moment in the 1960s, it would have been a self-portrait.

The King of Fish & Chips

In the late 1960s, Haddon Salt built a fast-food empire. Then Kentucky Fried Chicken came knocking.