In August 1931, salvage diver Absalom Fardsted descended 190 feet to the wreck of the SS Amberly, a freighter sunk off Maine. Inside, he found somethi…
Absalom Vardsted was a salvage diver, and after the summer of 1931, he never again stepped into water above his ankles for the rest of his life. Not the sea. Not a river. Not the shallow end of a public pool. Not even a bathtub if he could avoid it. He washed at a basin, … Read more
In April 1976, when Howard Hughes’s body arrived at a Houston morgue, the staff could not confirm who he was. The richest man in America weighed barely 90 pounds, his hair fell past his shoulders,…
The morgue staff in Houston could not confirm who the body belonged to. He had been the richest man in America, and now he weighed barely ninety pounds, his hair falling past his shoulders, his fingernails curled and overgrown. The FBI had to be called in to match fingerprints because nothing else about him was … Read more
In 2005, Russell Crowe was staying in a New York hotel when a phone call to his wife wouldn’t connect. Instead of calling for help, the Oscar winner stormed to the front desk, grabbed concierge…
Hollywood has always sold the world a certain kind of story: the ingenue discovered at a soda fountain, the troubled star redeemed by love, the brilliant artist whose eccentricities are the price of genius. The camera smooths the rough edges. The lighting softens the lines. What the camera never shows is the moment it stops … Read more
In 1945, Paul Newman was assigned as a turret gunner aboard the USS Bunker Hill, preparing for the invasion of Okinawa. Days before the battle, his pi…
Paul Newman spent the summer of 1953 on Broadway in Picnic, a play that would change his life in two ways. His performance drew attention from audiences, many of whom had come to see him after his photograph appeared in a Staten Island newspaper. More importantly, the production threw him together with an actress named … Read more
In June 1941, as Hitler’s armies poured across the Soviet border, a 24-year-old history student named Lyudmila Pavlichenko walked into a recruitment office and volunteered. The recruiters, seeing…
Her rifle cracked, and a second Romanian soldier crumpled to the ground. Ludmila Pavlichenko lowered the Mosin-Nagant, her hands trembling. She was twenty-four years old, a university history student from Kiev, and in the space of a minute she had killed two men. The first shot had been instinct. The second had been confirmation. Around … Read more
In 1884, a massive castle-like building stood nearly alone on Central Park West, surrounded by shanties, goat pastures, and empty lots. Critics mocked it as Clark’s Folly, certain wealthy New…
On the afternoon of Friday, December 17th, 1960, Ernest A. Gross was sitting in his Wall Street office when the telephone rang. The caller was William Zeckendorf, the undisputed czar of New York real estate. “I want to introduce myself,” Zeckendorf said. “I’m your new landlord. ” Gross was one of the Dakota’s most distinguished … Read more
In 1949, a biologist in the Great Smoky Mountains counted the flashes of a single firefly and recorded a number almost no one believed. For two weeks each June, thousands of Photinus carolinus…
In the summer of 1949, a biologist working in the Great Smoky Mountains counted the flashes of a single firefly and recorded a number he himself could barely believe. The fireflies on that hillside were blinking together. All of them, across acres of dark forest, in perfect unison, for two weeks every year. He wrote … Read more
On February 4, 1986, 17-year-old Shondra May clocked out of her McDonald’s shift early in Forest, Mississippi, called her mother to say she was on her way home, then stopped at a variety store for…
On the afternoon of Tuesday, February 4th, 1986, 17-year-old Shondra May came home from school just like she did every other day. She sat down and finished her homework, then ate dinner with her mother. Nothing about the evening felt different. Nothing warned her that it would be the last normal night of her life. … Read more
In April 1935, Emmy Sonnemann married Hermann Göring inside Berlin Cathedral as Luftwaffe aircraft flew overhead and Adolf Hitler stood witness. She became the self-declared First Lady of the…
The evening of October 15th, 1946. Hermann Göring bit down on the glass capsule hidden somewhere on his body, a capsule that had survived every search of his cell and his person during the months of his detention at Nuremberg. The cyanide hit his system and within minutes he was dead. The American guards found … Read more
In 2002, 25-year-old Canadian actor Jesse Nielson landed the role of a lifetime: Gabriel Patterson, the brilliant young researcher on the syndicated a…
In the spring of 2003, a young Canadian actor named Jesse Nielson returned home to Ontario after completing production on the first season of Adventure Inc. , a syndicated action-adventure series that had made him an international star. He was twenty-five years old, and the future seemed boundless. Within weeks, he was dead. The official … Read more