In the 1870s, a new Colt revolver cost roughly a month’s wages for a cowboy, making it a man’s most valuable possession. Yet Hollywood’s low-slung, quick-draw holster never existed on the real…
The outlaw’s hand hovered above a holster that Hollywood had taught the world to recognize at a glance: slung low on the thigh, cut away so the cylinder and trigger guard sat naked to the sun, the leather polished and supple, built for one purpose only. In the movies, that holster wins the duel before … Read more
In 1934, a five-year-old Lithuanian Jewish boy named Zvi escaped rising danger in Europe when his family fled to South Africa, where he grew up as Har…
Lawrence Harvey cut the figure of a man born to play the cad. On screen, he was the perfect pinstriped rogue, a charming social climber who could exude irresistible charisma one moment and withering disdain the next. Off-screen, he cultivated an equally enigmatic persona. “I’m a flamboyant character, an extrovert who doesn’t want to reveal … Read more
On November 6th, 1895, thousands lined the streets outside St. Thomas’s Church to watch Consuelo Vanderbilt, the most celebrated bride in America, become a Duchess. The next morning’s headlines…
On the morning of November 6th, 1895, the most celebrated bride in America sat alone in her apartment and cried. A footman had been posted outside her door. Not even her governess, the woman who had been her closest companion, was permitted to enter. Downstairs, a legal settlement was being executed that would direct millions … Read more
In 1625, workmen began tearing the bronze beams from the porch of the Pantheon, where they had held up the roof for 1,500 years. Every conqueror who had sacked Rome had left them alone. Pope Urban…
By noon the statue no longer existed. The pope had been dead for barely an hour. The crowd that came through the gate of the Roman College, the Jesuit school where Maffeo Barberini had learned his Latin sixty years before, pulled down the full-length figure of their most illustrious pupil and broke it into pieces. … Read more
In March 1930, a working-class Chicago family paid five dollars—barely affordable during the Depression—for a single studio portrait. For ninety years…
In March 1930, the Patterson family of Chicago walked into a photographer’s studio and sat for a portrait they knew would be their last. The family, consisting of father Robert, mother Catherine, their two young sons, and three-year-old Helen, dressed in formal clothes and arranged themselves before a painted backdrop. They could not afford the … Read more
In October 1929, a 27-ton steel spire waited hidden inside the fire shaft of a Manhattan skyscraper, concealed from the rival architects racing to build the world’s tallest tower. Architect…
A 27-ton steel needle hung suspended above Manhattan, 860 feet in the air. William Van Alen stood on the sidewalk, watching, his stomach churning. If the cable snapped, fifty-four thousand pounds of metal would tear through seventy stories and crash onto Lexington Avenue below. Rumors had circulated for weeks. A flagpole, people said. Some kind … Read more
In November 1800, John Adams moved into a vast, unfinished mansion in Washington, becoming the first president to live there. The exterior stone walls stood complete, but inside, many rooms had no…
In the late summer of 1814, President James Madison and his cabinet fled Washington as British forces marched toward the capital. First Lady Dolley Madison remained at the President’s House longer than the others, working against the approaching enemy to save what mattered most. She oversaw the removal of important state papers, including copies of … Read more
In 1913, the U.S. Geological Survey investigated strange lights rising above Brown Mountain in North Carolina and blamed locomotive headlamps on the tracks below. Then a flood washed out those…
On a cold January morning in 1987, a woman named Zona Heaster Shue lay dead at the bottom of her staircase in Lewisburg, West Virginia. Her husband, Erasmus Shue, reported the death. The local doctor examined her briefly while Erasmus held her head in his hands and wept, and recorded the cause of death as … Read more
On September 11, 2003, John Ritter was rehearsing a scene for his hit sitcom when he complained of chest pain, nausea, and sweating. Some on set thoug…
The afternoon of September 11th, 2003, began like any other on a soundstage at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The cast and crew of the hit sitcom Eight Simple Rules were gathered for a rehearsal, and the mood was light, as it always was when John Ritter was around. The fifty-four-year-old was running … Read more
In April 1865, Julia Grant refused to accompany the Lincolns to Ford’s Theater, convinced something terrible would happen. Her husband, General Ulysses S. Grant, had accepted the invitation to see…
The telegram arrived at General Grant’s headquarters on the evening of April 14, 1865, and it carried an invitation that would test more than protocol. President Lincoln and his wife were going to Ford’s Theatre that night to see a play called Our American Cousin, and they wanted the Grants to join them in the … Read more