History

On a November afternoon in 1957, a New York State Police sergeant named Edgar Croswell drove past a sprawling estate on the edge of the small town of Apalachin and saw something that stopped him cold. The place was packed with cars—expensive cars, with license plates from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Florida, … Read more

On a March day in 1930, in a meeting room in New York City, a contractor named Paul Starrett stood before a group of investors and told them the plain truth. He owned nothing that would be useful for the job they were asking him to do. The job was to build the tallest structure … Read more

The old man, Isham Marrowbone, waited on the porch of the largest house with his hat on his knee and his hands folded over it. He had been sitting there in the grey light before dawn, watching the door of the west house where the surveyor from Louisville slept. When the door opened and Absalom … Read more

In June 2021, Sheriff Jesse Slaughter stood before cameras in Great Falls, Montana, and announced that a case which had haunted the city for sixty-five years was finally closed. It was, he said, the best conclusion possible in a case of its kind. There would be no trial, no sentence, because the man identified as … Read more

On the night of November 4, 1878, the children of the Grand Ducal palace in Darmstadt gathered as they often did before bed, and fifteen-year-old Victoria read aloud to the younger ones. Four-year-old Marie, the baby of the family, was in high spirits. She leapt up, begged for an extra slice of cake, and received … Read more

In 1768, Empress Catherine the Great stood at a crossroads. Before her lay the files of a five-year investigation into Darya Saltykova, a wealthy Moscow noblewoman accused of murdering dozens of her own serfs. The judicial council had recommended the death penalty, but Catherine refused to sign it. Executing Saltykova would grant her a quick … Read more

The engine coughed once, then caught, and the twelve horsepower tractor began to pull against the frame bolted to the road grader behind it. On that field in Steven, Minnesota, in 1920, a crew of engineers watched the machine crawl forward at a mile and a half per hour, dragging a six-foot blade through the … Read more

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, the only surviving child of Vernon and Gladys Presley. His twin brother, Jesse Garon, was stillborn, a loss that shadowed him for the rest of his life. The family was poor and deeply religious, living in a tiny two-room house his father had … Read more

In January 2021, a forensic laboratory in Texas received a package containing evidence from a murder scene, a crime that had occurred in 1989. The scientists who opened it were told something that made most of them uneasy. What they held, the last remaining biological evidence in a case 32 years old, was nearly nothing. … Read more