On December 7, 1958, Ken and Barbara Martin loaded their three daughters into their red and white Ford station wagon and left Portland, Oregon, to cut Christmas greenery. That afternoon they…
The station wagon hit the water upside down and sank into the deep basin known simply as the pit. For sixty-six years, that is where it stayed, buried under nearly ten feet of silt and debris, invisible to sonar, missed by every diver who had ever searched for it. When the diver finally saw it, … Read more
In January 1937, a nine-year-old girl walked out of her father’s house in Hancock County, Tennessee, telling him she was going up the road to fetch a NaN
In January 1937, a nine-year-old girl named Eunice Winstead walked out of her father’s house in the hills of Hancock County, Tennessee, telling him she was going up the road to fetch a doll. She met her neighbor, Charlie Johns, a tall, dark-haired tobacco farmer in his twenties, and the two walked several miles through … Read more
On August 12, 1942, a Japanese warrant officer named Sakata was placed in a landing craft with 25 armed Americans and taken west along Guadalcanal’s cNaN
On the evening of August 12, 1942, a landing craft pushed away from the boat pool near Kukum Village on Guadalcanal, carrying twenty-five armed Americans and a single Japanese prisoner. The prisoner was Warrant Officer Soneto Sakata of the Imperial Navy, who had been in American hands for only a matter of hours. The men … Read more
On April 14, 1944, a Royal Navy crew opened the valves of a hollow concrete box the size of a six-story building and watched it sink into the Hamble estuary. It was brand new, 180 feet long, 4,500…
On the morning of 14 April 1944, a crew from the Royal Navy opened the sea valves in a hollow concrete structure the size of a six-storey apartment block and watched it sink into the shallow waters of the River Hamble estuary on the south coast of England. The concrete walls were four feet thick. … Read more
In October 1958, a multi-ton steel arch section dangled 700 feet above the Colorado River, swung out over Glen Canyon on a cable barely thicker than a man’s forearm. Workers on the narrow top…
October 1958. A section of steel arch swung out beyond the rim of Glen Canyon, seven hundred feet above the Colorado River. Far below, the water looked like a thin ribbon. The section hung from a cable strung across the gorge, a temporary track that from this distance appeared no thicker than a man’s forearm. … Read more
1965: Man Tried to Beat Frank Sinatra, But then Sonny Franzese Showed Up
The man grabbed Frank Sinatra’s arm and spun him around, getting in his face. The four associates moved closer, forming a semicircle, blocking any path to the car. The singer tried to pull free, but the grip only tightened. “You think you’re better than me?” the man said, his voice rising. “You think because you’re … Read more
In 1937, Norman Baker bought a failing Arkansas hotel and turned it into a cancer hospital. He had no medical training. His miracle cure was alcohol, glycerin, carbolic acid, and ground watermelon…
The decision came down on the first day of September 1939, the same day German tanks rolled into Poland and Europe plunged into war. In Eureka Springs, Arkansas, federal agents moved on the Crescent Hotel and arrested Norman Baker for mail fraud. Seven counts. They did not accuse him of murder, though more than 150 … Read more
In 1847, Elias Gent paid cash for 1,100 acres of steep Ozark forest nobody wanted, land with one narrow trail, a spring that never dried, and caves rNaN
The Gent family built their kingdom in the deep hollows of the Ozarks at a place called Morning Fork, and for nearly a century they ruled that land as if it were their own sovereign state. Sheriffs refused to climb the mountain. Census workers turned down the assignment. Even federal revenue agents, men who hunted … Read more
On June 13, 1863, inside the Masonic Hall in Columbia, Tennessee, Lieutenant A. Willis Gould confronted Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest, furious that a transfer would brand him a coward….
It was a Saturday, the thirteenth of June, 1863, and Lieutenant A. Willis Gould stood before Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Masonic Hall in Columbia, Tennessee. Gould was there to protest his transfer. Forrest, for his part, believed the young lieutenant bore responsibility for the loss of two guns at Sand Mountain on … Read more
In 1936, with America still deep in the Depression and nobody buying the farm engines that had kept their Nebraska factory alive, two cousins named EvNaN
The Cushman Eagle sat in driveways across America in the 1950s with its teardrop gas tank and exposed engine exposed between the rider’s knees. It looked like a Harley-Davidson shrunk down to teenager size, and for a 12-year-old too young to drive a car and too old to pretend a bicycle was enough, it represented … Read more