On June 14, 1831, before sunrise, farmer Heinrich Brubaker stepped outside his stone house in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and looked at the foundation his neighbors had spent three weeks…
On the morning of June 14, 1831, just before sunrise, a farmer named Heinrich Brubaker stepped out of his stone house in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and looked down at the foundation his neighbors had spent three weeks laying in the field below. It was a stone foundation, sixty feet wide and ninety feet long, sunk … Read more
In September 1930, a newsreel camera captured four identical baby girls in matching bonnets on a Lansing porch, their mother arranging them for photographers who called it a one-in-20-million…
The newsreel camera set up on the porch in Lansing, Michigan, in September 1930, and Sadie Morlock arranged her four daughters in a row. They were identical, down to the last detail, four baby girls in matching bonnets, and the headline writers reached for the biggest number they could find: a one-in-20-million miracle. Strangers mailed … Read more
In January 1979, Tommy DeSimone was told he would finally become a made member of the Lucchese crime family. He dressed in his best clothes, borrowed …
Three men from the same crew. Three men who took part in the same criminal enterprise, the same hijackings, the same world of violence. One was executed by the mob. One died in prison after a murder conviction. The third died at sixty-nine of heart disease in Los Angeles, having lived freely for three decades … Read more
On 16 June 1890, the Duchess of Fife went into labor at her London residence, attended by the finest physicians in Britain. Everyone was waiting for a…
On a June morning in 1890, the Duchess of Fife went into labor at her London residence. The child, a son who would have carried the courtesy title Marquis of Macduff, was delivered stillborn. Court physicians confirmed the boy had been perfectly formed. For the duke and duchess, the loss was devastating. For the future … Read more
In 1760, Isabella of Parma arrived in Vienna to marry Archduke Joseph, and within days she had charmed nearly everyone at court. She played the modest…
Isabella of Parma was born in Madrid on New Year’s Eve, 1741, into a family that should have offered her every comfort. Her mother, Louise Élisabeth of France, was only fourteen years old when she gave birth, still practically a child herself. Her father, the Spanish prince Philip, left almost immediately for a military campaign … Read more
In 1941, Marcus and Company opened for business on the fifth floor of Gimbels department store, a full-page ad promising Fifth Avenue jewels at Gimbels prices. For nearly fifty years, the name had…
On a Monday morning in 1941, a jewelry store opened for business on the fifth floor of a department store in Manhattan. The cases were full. The designers were at their benches. The salesmen stood behind the glass in dark suits. Nothing about the jewelry had changed, only the address had. That same week, a … Read more
In the summer of 1900, inside a wooden cofferdam at the bottom of the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, a builder set the first granite footing for one of 47 piers that would carry 48 stone…
In the summer of 1900, a mason working inside a wooden cofferdam in the bed of the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, set the foundation stone for a granite pier—one of forty-seven identical piers spaced across the width of the river. The Susquehanna at Rockville is not a deep river. It is a wide one. … Read more
In April 1945, as Soviet forces closed in on Berlin, Eva Braun made a choice that stunned those around her: she traveled into the collapsing city to j…
The question itself contains a false premise, for Eva Braun had no children before, during, or after the Second World War. She died by suicide beside Adolf Hitler in the Führerbunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, married to him for less than a day, with no heirs and no legacy beyond the infamy of … Read more
By spring 1917, Britain had only six weeks of wheat left. The world’s mightiest empire, ringed by fertile fields, was starving. German U-boats had sun…
In the spring of 1917, Britain stood closer to starvation than its leaders dared admit. The world’s most powerful empire, which ruled a quarter of the globe and commanded the largest navy in history, had only six weeks of wheat left. Mothers queued for hours outside shops only to be told there was nothing left. … Read more
In 1969, a group of Ohio entrepreneurs bought the exclusive recipe from a London fish and chip shop that had been frying since the 1860s, carried it a…
At the peak of Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips in the late 1970s, there were 826 restaurants scattered across America, and the first thing that reached you through the door was the smell—malt vinegar cutting sharp through hot frying oil, salt and batter, and something faintly of the sea. That smell, the unmistakable perfume of … Read more