The cowl was off the engine, the flakes were still hitting the back of his neck, and he was already running. It was June 22nd, 1964, and James Carlisle had just abandoned his bulldozer on a fire line above Groveland, California. A wind-driven grass fire was laying down a run of flame through the Tuolumne … Read more

In September 1896, just over a year after Cornelius Vanderbilt II opened his new summer palace in Newport, Rhode Island, he sat at his desk in New York and suffered a massive stroke. He was fifty-four years old. The right side of his body went numb, his speech failed, and the man who ran the … Read more

The autumn of 1951 in Montpelier had come early and hard. The maples had shed their leaves sooner than usual, leaving the landscape bare and exposed beneath gray November skies. It was the kind of season that drove people indoors, that made conversations quieter and glances more guarded. But for those living near the old … Read more

For roughly seventy years, a few blocks of lower Manhattan held a distinction unlike any other ground in the world. Not the largest slum, not the oldest, but the most notorious, by every measure the nineteenth century had for measuring such things: the column inches devoted to it, the reformers who organized against it, the … Read more

Lance Corporal Jack Jones stands at the heart of one of Britain’s most beloved television comedies, Dad’s Army, which ran from 1968 to 1977 and drew as many as 18 million viewers. Portrayed by actor Clive Dunn, Jones was an elderly veteran of the British Empire, a man of lively catchphrases like “Don’t Panic” and … Read more

On the night of January 6, 1537, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, walked into a private meeting arranged by his own cousin and confidant. He never walked out. Lorenzino de’ Medici, a man Alessandro trusted, murdered him on the spot. The duke was just twenty-six years old, and he died without a legitimate heir. … Read more

On July 21, 2013, Tina Turner stood on the lawn of her Swiss estate beside Lake Zurich and married Erwin Bach, the German music executive who had waited 27 years to become her husband. She was 73, wearing an emerald Armani gown, and she told a reporter afterward that it was the happiest day of … Read more

The tide of January 1547 had turned against the most powerful king Europe had known. Henry VIII, once the embodiment of Renaissance kingship, now lay confined to his bed at Whitehall Palace, unable to walk, his ulcerated leg turned gangrenous, his body so enormous that he required a mechanical hoist to be moved. His physicians … Read more

Born in 1535 in Florence, Giulia de’ Medici entered the world as the illegitimate daughter of Alessandro de’ Medici, the city’s first duke and a man of mixed heritage often described as the first Black ruler of Renaissance Europe. Her father’s mother, a servant named Simonetta, was widely believed to have African ancestry, a trait … Read more