On August 13, 1944, American patrols pushed past Argentan and came within six miles of Falaise, where the retreating German army was struggling to escNaN
The Battle of the Falaise Pocket ended the fighting in Normandy with a massive Allied victory, yet it was a victory that should have come sooner and been far more complete. German Army Group B was surrounded and destroyed near Falaise, but the encirclement took eight days longer than necessary, and tens of thousands of … Read more
In the spring of 1942, at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a young lieutenant named Edward Uhl stopped beside a scrap pile and stared at a five-foNaN
In the spring of 1942, on the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a young lieutenant named Edward Uhl was walking past a scrap pile when he stopped at a piece of steel pipe. For months, he had been wrestling with a problem the U. S. Army had failed to solve for two years: how to … Read more
On October 27, 1962, deep beneath the Atlantic, a Soviet submarine was being hunted by United States Navy ships. On board, the crew was exhausted, the air was running out, and depth charges were…
Nearly a hundred feet below the surface of the Barents Sea, inside a Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine running silent and hunted, the captain had reached his limit. For hours the American destroyers above had been dropping practice depth charges, steel canisters that burst with thunderous concussion, rocking the boat, driving men to the edge of their … Read more
In 1917, twelve-year-old Prince John of the British royal family was moved to Wood Farm, an isolated brick house on the Sandringham estate, and erased from the court circular. His name vanished…
On the evening of 10 December 1936, a 41-year-old king of the British Empire sat down in a room at Fort Belvedere and signed a single sheet of paper. The moment the ink dried, Edward VIII ceased to exist. In his place stood the Duke of Windsor, a man without a crown, without a country, … Read more
On January 6, 1992, a white Lincoln pulled up in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, and John “Johnny Boy” D’Amato climbed into the back seat believing he was headNaN
On the afternoon of January 6, 1992, a white Lincoln pulled up to a block in Mill Basin, Brooklyn. The man in the backseat was fifty years old, broad-shouldered, well-dressed, and he believed he was going to lunch. He was John “Johnny Boy” D’Amato, the acting boss of the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey, … Read more
On October 30th, 1995, Princess Diana told her legal adviser, Victor Mishcon, that unnamed sources had warned her of a planned accident involving her NaN
On an August night in 1997, the Mercedes carrying Diana, Princess of Wales, entered the Alma tunnel in Paris and struck the 13th pillar. Investigators found evidence suggesting contact with a white Fiat Uno, a car whose driver was never publicly identified with certainty. Cameras supplied no decisive image. Witnesses spoke of speed, motorcycles, and … Read more
In 1892, Vita Sackville-West was born inside Knole, a 365-room English castle with 52 staircases and a stone leopard on every gable. Because she was aNaN
Vita Sackville-West was born at a quarter past four in the morning on March 9, 1892, in a bedroom of Knole, the vast Kentish manor Queen Elizabeth had given to her ancestor Thomas Sackville three centuries earlier. Because she was a girl, not a single stone of it would ever be hers. The house itself … Read more
In 1700, when the last Spanish Habsburg king died, royal physicians found a heart the size of a peppercorn and a head filled with water. He was Charles II, the product of generations of relentless…
The royal physicians who opened the body of the last Spanish Habsburg king found a heart no larger than a grain of pepper, and a head filled with water. This was not the body of an ordinary man. It was the genetic wreckage of centuries of frantic inbreeding. The king was Charles II, the Bewitched. … Read more
On May 22, 1942, a Japanese encrypted message revealed that a unit called AF was running low on fresh water. That message was the answer Joseph RochefNaN
Commander Joseph Rochefort could not tell the United States Navy where Japan’s aircraft carriers were on the morning of December 7, 1941. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s strike force had crossed the North Pacific under strict radio silence, and every American intelligence organization searching for those carriers had lost them. By the end of the attack … Read more
In October 1883, a 19-year-old servant named Missouri Burns—known to everyone as Zora—boarded a train for Lincoln, Illinois, carrying a secret she hadNaN
On the morning of October 15, 1883, a man walking along a quiet country lane on the outskirts of Lincoln, Illinois, came upon the body of a young woman lying at the side of the road. She had been killed with considerable violence. Her forehead had been crushed by heavy blows, there were bruises on … Read more