In the winter of 1891, a young trapper named Oren Kabb set his steel traps along the lower benches of Boggs Hollow, a narrow valley no hunter had dared work in nearly forty years. Four nights…
The trap snapped with a sound he knew better than his own heartbeat. Ransom Teague froze in the darkness, his long rifle across his knees, his eyes fixed on the black wall of the valley above his camp. It had come from there, from a place where no trap had been set in forty years. … Read more
In October 1859, a Methodist circuit rider named Absalom Teague rode into a cove at the head of Deep Creek in western North Carolina to bury a woman named Nance. A Cherokee boy had intercepted him…
In the autumn of 1859, a 41-year-old Methodist circuit rider named Absalom Teague was overtaken on a road north of Waynesville, North Carolina, by a Cherokee boy of perhaps fourteen years who would not give his name, but who asked the reverend a specific question before anything else. The boy asked whether he was the … Read more
In 1972, Sig Manufacturing designed a radio-controlled trainer from scratch for beginners who kept crashing within seconds of takeoff. Most so-called trainers were fast sport planes with only a…
The smell gets to you before you even understand what it is. Balsa wood. CA glue. Maybe paint thinner if you are from the older generation, or the smell of hot plastic from a heat-shrink film iron. If that scent reaches you, you know exactly what this is about. The Sig Kadet built you while … Read more
In 1929, as New York raced to build the world’s tallest skyscraper, the stock market collapsed and fortunes vanished overnight. Most developers would have abandoned the project. John Jacob Raskob…
In the spring of 1929, New York believed it could touch the sky. Stock prices climbed, skyscrapers multiplied, and two of the richest men in America, John Jacob Raskob and former Governor Al Smith, decided to build the tallest building the world had ever seen. They bought the site of the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel … Read more
On April 1st, 1943, Eleanor Cole approached a German checkpoint on Route 7 near Lyon carrying forged papers and a small wooden case holding a lipstick. She was a British SOE agent, operating under…
The cafe on Rue de la République smelled of burnt chicory and yesterday’s tobacco. Marie Laval sat by the window, her fingers tracing the rim of a cup that held no real coffee, only roasted acorns. Outside, German soldiers walked past in pairs, their boots striking the cobblestones with mechanical precision. She watched them without … Read more
In 1852, workers at New Albany, Indiana, launched a steamboat so massive it was called one of the three wonders of America. The Eclipse stretched about 350 feet, weighed over 1,100 tons, and…
The Eclipse came off the shipways at New Albany, Indiana, in 1852, and anyone who saw her knew she was not an ordinary boat. She measured roughly 350 feet in length and weighed 1,117 tons, which made her about three times the size of most vessels on the Western rivers. Inside her hull sat a … Read more
On May 15, 1930, sixty men hauled wooden pilings with steel tips into a New Jersey tidal marsh and began driving them into ground that was mostly black mud, salt grass, and stagnant water. They…
On the morning of May 15, 1930, a crew of sixty men moved into the Meadowlands of New Jersey carrying wooden piles with steel tips and a pile driver mounted on a barge, and they began to build a highway in the air. The ground beneath their feet could not be called ground in any … Read more
In December 1968, Herman Petty reopened a McDonald’s on Chicago’s South Side, becoming the first Black franchisee in the city. Months earlier, Dr. King’s assassination had left parts of Chicago…
The December air over the South Side of Chicago was cold and bitter, and the store at 63rd and Woodlawn had been dark for months. When Herman Petty pushed open its doors to reopen the location as a McDonald’s franchise on December 21, 1968, he did more than flip on the grills. He crossed a … Read more
On January 1, 1274, a woman named Emma of Hatch spent the day walking door to door through the village of Beeston, begging for bread. Nobody recorded …
In January 1274, a woman named Emma of Hatch spent the day going door to door in the village of Beeston, begging bread. Toward evening, she turned back to find somewhere to lodge for the night. Her way took her over a plowed field in the parish of Northill. There, according to the coroner’s roll … Read more
In May 2014, outside a hospital in Nice, a 77-year-old woman stopped to tell a stranger that medicine had made great progress and he must keep hope. Minutes later, as her car reached the exit, a…
On an evening in May 2014, in a hospital in Nice, a woman of seventy-seven stopped to speak to a stranger. She told him he must keep hope, that medicine had made great progress. But as her car reached the exit, a man dressed in black stepped from behind a wall and fired twice through … Read more