In 2018, historian Marcus Webb was cataloging donations at the Montgomery Historical Society when a studio portrait from 1890 stopped him cold. A prosperous black family of five, the Harris…
On an August afternoon in 2018, Dr. Marcus Webb was cataloging donations at the Montgomery Historical Society in Alabama when a studio portrait stopped him cold. The photograph showed a Black family of five posed against a painted backdrop, professional lighting, careful composition, expensive. The father stood dignified beside an ornate chair. The mother sat … Read more
On May 22, 1992, Tony Accardo died in his sleep at a Chicago hospital, surrounded by his children. No handcuffs, no guards, no prison cell. He was 86. Accardo had spent roughly seventy years in…
At 7:45 on the morning of May 22, 1992, Tony Accardo died in his sleep at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital in Chicago. Heart failure, complicated by respiratory disease. He was eighty-six years old. His children stood at the bedside. There were no handcuffs, no prison guards, no bullet wounds—just an old man passing quietly, … Read more
In 1951, Marlon Brando tore a shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire and became the most desired man in America, weighing around 170 pounds with a physique that looked carved from stone. He won…
On May 12, 1956, Montgomery Clift left a dinner party at Elizabeth Taylor’s house and drove his car into a telephone pole. Actor Kevin McCarthy, who had been driving ahead of him, ran back to the wreck and later described what he saw: Clift’s face was, in his words, “torn away, a bloody pulp. ” … Read more
In 1784, a gravedigger on the Baltic coast was paid two thers to bury a man his entire town could not name. The church register at Echena called him only the so-called Count of Saint Germain, a…
On the 2nd of March 1784, a gravedigger on the Baltic coast earned two thalers for putting into the ground a man his whole town had failed to name. The bell ringer collected twelve marks for tolling the bell. The plot itself—tomb number one inside the church of St. Nikolai in Eckernförde—cost ten thalers, and … Read more
In May 1882, Doc Holliday was walking near 16th and Lawrence streets in Denver when a small, bearded man stepped from the shadows and leveled two revolvers at him. The gunman, Perry Mallon,…
The Denver deputy sheriff Charles Linton was not entirely sure what to make of the man who burst into his office waving two revolvers. The stranger was small and bearded, with a reddish face and small, fiery eyes, and he claimed to be a California lawman who had just made the arrest of a lifetime. … Read more
On April 11, 1947, inside Ray’s restaurant in Harlem, a drunken white contractor named Vincent Dhorty slapped Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson across the face in front of 120 stunned diners. Johnson, the…
On the evening of Friday, April 11, 1947, the sound of an open palm striking a man’s cheek cut through Ray’s restaurant in Harlem like a shotgun blast. One hundred and twenty people stopped chewing at the same instant. The jukebox had been playing Billie Holiday, but now the only thing anyone could hear was … Read more
In September 1945, on a small farm in Fruita, Colorado, farmer Lloyd Olsen chopped off a rooster’s head for dinner and watched the bird keep trying to walk. He named it Mike. Fed with an…
In December 1952, inside the vast Olympia hall in London, the Bertram Mills Circus opened its doors for the night like any other show of the era. The crowd settled into their seats, the ringmaster’s voice rang out, and the usual pageant of horses, clowns, and acrobats began. Then the gorilla Elvara did something the … Read more
In 1832, on a Georgia cotton property, nine armed overseers surrounded a 27-year-old enslaved woman named Martha after she stepped between a whip and an 11-year-old boy caught stealing cornmeal…
They came for her with nine men and enough rope to bind a mule. They left with three men unconscious in the dirt and six more limping toward the county doctor, carrying a story that would outlast every property record ever burned in that part of Georgia. The woman at the center of it stood … Read more
On July 15, 1988, Bolivian special forces moved before dawn toward a cattle ranch called El Soga, guided by American drug agents. Inside the main house, a 62-year-old man in a silk robe was…
At dawn on July 15, 1988, a convoy of Bolivian special forces, guided by American Drug Enforcement Administration agents in unmarked vehicles, sped down a dirt road toward a vast cattle ranch called El Suja. Inside the main house, a 62-year-old man in a silk robe sipped coffee and watched the sun rise over his … Read more
In 1902, Joseph Stickney opened a $1.7 million hotel at the base of Mount Washington, then told reporters he was the fool who had built it. He was dead within a year. His hotel outlived him by…
On July 28th, 1902, Joseph Stickney stood before a gathering of reporters at the base of Mount Washington and told them to look at him. He was, in his own words, the fool who had built all of it. The hotel behind him had cost $1. 7 million, more than almost any private citizen in … Read more