Where can I find decent quality footage of famous historical events (such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, landing on the moon, MLK's speech, etc.)?

I've looked everywhere online, and it seems that the only option is to purchase very expensive stock footage. I can't help but think that there must be some way of finding this footage for free, since they are huge historical moments that have been and should be viewed by millions of people. I only need a few seconds of many major events for a personal project of mine, so purchasing this highly priced stock footage would be unreasonable.

If anyone can give me any resources or ideas (perhaps a specific movie/documentary I could rent that has a lot of footage in it?) I would be very grateful. Thanks for your help!

The best thing I can currently come up with is the Prelinger Archive (http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php)

Not sure if it has footage of those major events though.

Thanks for your help Rob! But I think I figured out a pretty good solution to my problem. All I had to do was go to the library! There were at least 15 or 20 history documentaries on the shelves, and I checked out a bunch of them. All I need to do now is figure out how to get the VHS footage onto my computer, but I'm sure that won't be too hard. Thanks a lot!

I'm not sure you are allowed to use that footage. It might have
copyrights etc. attached to them!

I'm a little late to this thread by I have some questions. Where did the Prelinger site get this stuff and is it all public domain?

I would like to get my hands on old footage from various decades that is in the public domain. I did some internet research for government owned footage, figuring stuff like moon landings would have to be government property (assuming NBC wasn't there!) and further assuming that government footage would be public domain (maybe I'm wrong).

What I found was that you have to work through some contracted vendor to get the footage and that vender makes a nice profit by charging for the free footage!

My thought is that if anyone used this "service" to get the footage, then it should be floating around and available somewhere. Maybe that is where Prelinger gets the stuff.

I just want the footage for personal use, so paying for it isn't an option for me.

I can't speak for the Prelinger archive, contact them. I do believe
it is free for use though. Be safe and contact them.