The hepatitis A outbreak began with a single order of raw onions, and within weeks it had torn through a Pennsylvania Chi-Chi’s like a fire through dry brush. More than six hundred people fell ill. Four of them died. The lawsuits that followed were crushing, and the damage to the chain’s reputation was beyond repair. … Read more

On the morning of December 30, 1944, a British major general climbed aboard a light aircraft at an airfield in Belgium, in weather that had grounded everything else over Europe that day. He was forty-four years old. No one thought of him as a famous soldier, and he told no one what he was doing. … Read more

The knife was already wet with Captain Dubois’s blood when Mary felt the first tremor of the new power moving through her, and in that moment she understood that there would be no going back. The ceremonial dagger had opened his throat in a single precise cut, but this kill had been different from Moreau’s. … Read more

Howard Markel was sixty-three years old in the autumn of 2001, and he was one of the last men to come up the hoist when the Sunshine Mine in the Kurden district of northern Idaho closed for good. He had worked underground there in one capacity or another since 1958, had survived the 1972 fire … Read more

The winter of 1892–93 had buried the San de Cristo Mountains under snow so deep that most passes stayed shut until late April. It was in this isolation that the people of Crestone Valley first noticed something wrong about the furs delivered by Zachariah Whitmore, the trapper who had appeared in their settlement the previous … Read more

On the morning of June 17, 1876, General George Crook’s army of more than a thousand soldiers and nearly three hundred allied Crow and Shoshone warriors stopped on the banks of Rosebud Creek in southern Montana. The men were brewing coffee and resting their horses, a routine break in a long campaign through rugged country. … Read more

Graceland, the Memphis estate that would become synonymous with Elvis Presley, was a home filled with music long before the King of Rock and Roll ever walked its halls. The property originally belonged to the Toof family, prominent Memphians who named the land in honor of Grace Toof, a beloved relative known for her warmth … Read more

At about four in the afternoon on the 6th of May, 1945, a line of trucks pulled up between the storage sheds of the Japanese Navy’s repair depot at Seletar on the north shore of Singapore Island. Armed troops climbed down beside two of Admiral Dönitz’s submarines. The boats were U-181 and U-862, both long-range … Read more

The knock came in the early afternoon, not loud, not forceful, just firm enough to demand attention. Samuel froze midstep. Eleanor closed her eyes briefly, then opened them, her expression settling into stillness. Let them in, she said. The door opened to reveal three men, dressed plainly, respectably, no uniforms, no insignia, nothing to suggest … Read more