The cyanide capsule was hidden somewhere on his body when they searched him on the morning of October 15th, 1946. It had to be. Hermann Göring had undergone a final, thorough inspection just hours before his scheduled execution—guards had checked his cell, his clothing, his belongings, even his mouth. Yet when the appointed hour came, … Read more

For thirty-seven years, she was known only by what she wore: a fringed buckskin jacket. Discovered face down in a water-filled ditch along Greenley Road in Newton Township, Ohio, on April 24th, 1981, the young woman had auburn hair braided into pigtails, a patterned turtleneck sweater, and bell-bottom jeans. She had no shoes. Her feet … Read more

In the autumn of 1636, Father Isaac Jogues stepped from a canoe onto the sandy beach below the Huron village of Ihonatiria, in what is now Ontario. He was exhausted after nineteen days of paddling and portaging up the waterways, but his spirit was high. He had been chosen, one of six Jesuits selected for … Read more

In 1949, a quiet trip by train was supposed to be just another careful arrangement. Bumpy Johnson boarded a northbound train from Pennsylvania Station under a name close to his own, one that no clerk would think twice about. He had a meeting outside the city with a fixer named Arthur Lowell, a man who … Read more

The letter arrived in Lubeck in December 1945, addressed to the Duke of Windsor from a man named Count Bentinck, a member of one of Europe’s most famous noble families of diplomats. It came out of the blue, and it was something of a shock to the British authorities who intercepted it. The count was … Read more

The killing of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo on May 24, 1993, at the Guadalajara International Airport stunned Mexico. Six others died with him in a hail of gunfire at the terminal. The official investigation concluded that gunmen working for the Arellano Félix organization had mistaken the archbishop’s vehicle for one carrying Joaquín Guzmán Loera, … Read more

On August 6, 1945, ten German nuclear scientists sat together at Farm Hall, a country estate near Cambridge, England, where they were being held under British guard. They had no laboratory, no access to German records, no government position. They had only newspapers, radio broadcasts, and one another. Among them were Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, … Read more

On May 2, 1988, twenty-nine-year-old Diane Don did not show up for her shift at the San Diego Transit Corporation, where she worked as a radio repair technician. When she failed to answer her telephone, a co-worker named Gary Beyer drove to her apartment complex in Santee, California, to check on her. He found the … Read more

The split rail fence ran along the base of the ridge for nearly a mile, sagging in places, overgrown in others, but unmistakably a boundary. Hollis Varnell stood on one side of it, and on the other side stood a woman who had not introduced herself, who had not asked his business, and who had … Read more