In 945 AD, Prince Igor of Kyiv returned to the Drevlians demanding a second tribute, then sent most of his army home. The tribe had endured enough. Th…
In the autumn of 945, the fragile peace of Kyivan Rus shattered with a brutality that echoed across the forests of Eastern Europe. Prince Ihor, ruler of Kyiv, had marched his army into the lands of the Drevlians, a powerful Slavic tribe that had dared to stop paying tribute after the death of a previous … Read more
In June 1976, sixteen-year-old Carol Sue Claybour left her Fort Wright home to meet friends for supper and was last seen getting into a light-colored…
On March 8, 2023, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office held a press conference that had been more than four decades in the making. Detective Coy Cox stood at a podium beside an enlarged photograph of a teenage girl. For the first time in 46 years, he spoke the name of the man who had killed … Read more
In January 1902, a brilliant Serbian physics student named Mileva Marić gave birth in secret in Novi Sad, Serbia, to a daughter she and Albert Einste…
In January 1902, a daughter was born to Albert Einstein and Mileva Marić in Novi Sad, Serbia. The child was conceived out of wedlock, and her birth was kept secret from nearly everyone. The parents called her Lieserl, a diminutive placeholder name used in their private letters. Albert, then twenty-two and still searching for steady … Read more
In 1688, Prince George of Denmark received word that his brother-in-law, William of Orange, was preparing to invade England. George, married to Princess Anne, had already endured six pregnancies…
Prince George of Denmark stood at the window of his London residence and listened as the Danish envoy delivered the message that would split his life in two. It was early November 1688, and his brother-in-law, William of Orange, was preparing to invade England. William was furious at the open Catholicism flourishing at the court … Read more
In November 2003, a teenager stumbled back into his grandmother’s home in Pingyu County, China—bloodshot eyes, puncture wounds on his abdomen, marks around his neck, and a raging fever. She…
In November 2003, a teenager stumbled back to his grandmother’s home in Pingyu County, barely able to speak. His eyes were bloodshot, his neck bore marks, his abdomen was covered in puncture wounds, and he was burning with fever. His grandmother first assumed he had been beaten. Then he began to tell her where he … Read more
In July 1989, 16-year-old Fawn Cox went to bed alone on the second floor of her family’s Kansas City home, her window open because there was no air conditioning upstairs. Her mother slept one…
The alarm had been ringing for what felt like forever. It was just after nine in the morning, and the sound was coming from Fawn’s room, upstairs. Beverly and Felisa waited, expecting her to stir and silence it any second. But the ringing went on. Finally, they climbed the stairs and opened her door. Felisa … Read more
In 1999, archaeologists climbing a 6,700-meter volcano on the Argentina-Chile border spotted something glinting beneath the ice. What they dug out stu…
In 1999, archaeologist Johan Reinhardt and his team climbed to the summit of the highest volcano on Earth, a 6,700-meter peak on the Argentina-Chile border. The mountain sits inside the death zone, where oxygen drops to half its sea-level concentration and freezing winds strip flesh from bone. Life cannot endure there, only wind and silence. … Read more
In 1900, Dayton, Ohio—a city of just 85,000 people—was issued more patents per capita than Boston, Chicago, or New York. It was, by that measure, the most inventive place on Earth. The airplane,…
In the spring of 1913, the water came into downtown Dayton in a wave. For three days the rain had fallen on the watershed of the Great Miami River as it had not fallen in living memory, and the river, swollen past any levees the city had built, crested at twenty-nine feet on Wednesday, March … Read more
In June 1978, Bob Crane, the beloved star of Hogan’s Heroes, was found beaten to death in his Scottsdale apartment, an electrical cord wrapped around…
Bob Crane was one of the most recognized faces on American television in the 1960s, the clean-cut star of Hogan’s Heroes who played the witty and resourceful Colonel Hogan. To the millions who watched him outsmart his German captors in the World War II POW comedy, he was a charming, likable everyman. But on June … Read more
On April 14, 1902, a 26-year-old opened a one-room dry goods store in a Wyoming coal town and rang up $33.41 by closing. James Cash Penney had come west because a doctor told him his lungs were…
On the fourteenth of April 1902, a young man opened a shop in a coal town in western Wyoming, and by the time he locked the door that night, the register held $33. 41. The figure never looks like the beginning of anything. The man was twenty-six years old, and he had come west because … Read more