In 1867, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, became the first British royal to visit Australia, arriving in Adelaide aboard HMS Galatea to enormous colonial fanfare. For nearly five months…
The bullet struck near the spine, and Prince Alfred collapsed to the ground before the horrified crowd at Clonar Gardens. The Irish nationalist Henry James O’Farrell had approached at close range and fired once, and only the swift reaction of the onlookers and the prince’s entourage prevented a second shot. Within seconds the assailant was … Read more
In 1938, twenty-year-old Rosemary Kennedy practiced her curtsy for hours before being presented to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. She stumbled slightly, caught herself,…
In 1941, a young woman was taken to an operating room in Washington, D. C. She was twenty-three years old, and she had been given a mild sedative. She was awake. An incision was made through the top of her skull on both sides, and an instrument resembling a blunt knife was inserted into the … 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 he was. It was April 1976, and the body that had arrived that morning belonged, by every official record, to the richest man in America, but nothing about the man on the table matched that description. He weighed barely ninety pounds. His hair fell past his … Read more
When MTV wired the Osbourne mansion with cameras in 2002, one of Ozzy and Sharon’s children quietly packed her bags and moved out before filming began…
On July 5, 2025, Ozzy Osbourne, age seventy-six, took the stage at Villa Park in Birmingham one last time. It was the Back to the Beginning concert, a reunion with Black Sabbath’s original members, a farewell to the fans, and a full-circle moment in the city where it all began. Just seventeen days later, on … Read more
In 1883, Alva Vanderbilt spent $3 million building a French Renaissance palace on Fifth Avenue, then planned a costume ball for 1,200 guests. She deliberately withheld an invitation from Carrie…
The morning after Caroline Astor discovered her daughter had not been invited, her carriage appeared on Fifth Avenue. She had no choice. Carrie had been practicing a quadrille for weeks. Her friends had all received their invitations. To be excluded would be a humiliation the Astor name could not afford. So the Queen of New … Read more
In 1973, about 120 descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt gathered at Vanderbilt University, and by one often-repeated account, not a single one of them was a millionaire. Less than a century…
The man who reads America’s evening news to more viewers than almost anyone alive is the great-great-great-grandson of the richest American of his age. He has said more than once that he expects to inherit nothing from that line, not a single dollar, and he has called the idea of inheriting it a curse. The … Read more
In 1832, Boston merchant Thomas Caldwell moved his family into an old New Orleans property that had changed hands four times in thirty years, always selling cheaply, with records noting certain…
At 11 p. m. on February 10, 1833, Elijah was woken by the sound of breaking glass. He found the basement door standing open, a lamp burning at the top of the stairs. Descending cautiously, he discovered Thomas Caldwell and his eldest son James engaged in excavation work against the far wall. A large hole … Read more
In April 1929, a Philadelphia high chest sold for $44,000—a record price for American furniture, roughly the cost of nine ordinary houses. The buyer was listed as H.F. Winthrop. The initials were…
The high chest cost $44,000, which in April 1929 was a sum no one had ever paid for a piece of American furniture. It was a Philadelphia high chest, tall and carved, made in mahogany around the time of the Revolution, and it came up for sale at the American Art Association in New York … Read more
In January 1879, 149 Northern Cheyenne men, women, and children were locked inside an old cavalry barracks at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, with no food, water, or firewood. They had walked a thousand…
The thermometer had been their weapon for eleven days, and now, on the night of January 9, 1879, the people inside the cavalry barracks at Fort Robinson in the northwest corner of Nebraska decided they would rather face the guns than the cold. There were 149 of them—men, women, and children of the Northern Cheyenne, … Read more
In January 1932, Clyde Barrow walked with a limp for the rest of his life after having two of his toes removed in prison, desperate to escape the brutal labor of the East Prison Farm. He didn’t…
At about 9:15 on the morning of May 23rd, 1934, a Ford V8 came speeding down Louisiana State Highway 154. Hidden in the roadside brush, six law officers waited, nearly ready to abandon the stakeout. They had been in position for hours, some accounts say since the previous evening, and the couple they were hunting … Read more