In 1969, on a Marrakech rooftop, Talitha Getty sat draped in silver jewelry and silk, the queen of bohemian glamour—but her eyes weren’t gazing at theNaN
On a rooftop in Marrakesh, in 1969, a photograph captured a woman who seemed to have stepped out of a dream. She sat adorned in silver and silk, her eyes dark and searching, not looking at the horizon but looking for an escape. The image would become famous, an icon of bohemian glamour, but it … Read more
In 1958, Ford unveiled a concept car designed to travel 5,000 miles on a single charge—not from a battery, but from a nuclear reactor mounted in the trunk. The Ford Nucleon imagined a future where…
The Reverend Alfred Juliano had a single, noble ambition: to build a car that could not kill anyone. A priest who had turned to car design, he imagined a vehicle that was completely accident-proof, and in 1957 he unveiled his answer to the world. It was called the Aurora, and it was a monstrous, bulky … Read more
In 1975, Indira Gandhi suspended the world’s largest democracy. Her court conviction for electoral malpractice had left her cornered, so she declared a state of emergency, jailed thousands of…
The guards were Sikhs, men sworn to protect her with their lives. They had served her for months, part of the small circle who stood between India’s prime minister and the world. On the morning of October 31, 1984, as Indira Gandhi walked through the garden of her residence toward an interview with the actor … Read more
On September 16, 1942, Japanese troops reached the last ridge above Ioribaiwa and saw the sea glittering through the mountain mist. They embraced, poiNaN
On the evening of September 14, 1942, General Tomitaro Horii sat in a valley just behind the fighting at Ioribaiwa and made a decision. The Japanese offensive along the Kokoda Trail, which had carried his South Seas Force through some of the toughest country in the Pacific, was over. The advance would be canceled, and … Read more
On May 17th, 1824, twenty-eight days after Lord Byron died in Greece, a small group gathered in publisher John Murray’s drawing room on Albemarle Street and fed the poet’s only written account of…
On May 17, 1824, in a drawing room on Albemarle Street in London, a small group of men stood around a fireplace and watched the pages of a manuscript turn to ash. Twenty-eight days had passed since Lord Byron died of a fever in Greece, and now the only life story he had ever written … Read more
On March 31, 1948, a two-ton steel ball swung into the northwest tower of a Manhattan mansion as a crowd watched from Riverside Drive. The stone held. The second swing tore a hole twenty feet…
At noon on the 31st of March, 1948, a crowd stood on Riverside Drive and waited for a house to come down. The operator in the crane worked a row of hand levers. A steel ball weighing two tons swung out and struck the northwest tower. The stone held. Then the second swing opened a … Read more
On November 14, 2011, in São Paulo, Brazil, Kim Gordon stood on an outdoor stage before tens of thousands, playing bass a few feet from Thurston MooreNaN
On November 14, 2011, Kim Gordon stood on an outdoor stage in São Paulo, Brazil, at the SWU Festival, bass slung low, a few feet from Thurston Moore, her husband of twenty-seven years and co-founder of Sonic Youth. The crowd numbered in the tens of thousands. The band played for thirty years and played as … Read more
In 1921, a state surveyor named Elbert Craddock walked into a West Virginia valley to mark timber boundaries. The job was routine. The valley was not. At a bend locals called Dead Man’s Bend, he…
The water was willing to take the account. On the fifth day, when he rose at dawn, the whole family was already standing at the water’s edge, below the wheel, their backs to the houses, their faces to the silent river. Old Ossie was there, and Absalom, Harlan, Verly, and the mute man, Doss. They … Read more
In 1668, the Marquis de Montespan staged a funeral in a Gascon church for his own wife, complete with a requiem mass, black mourning, and their two smNaN
In the summer of 1680, prisoners in the dungeons of Vincennes began speaking a name that would shake the throne of France. The name belonged to Françoise de Rochechouart, Marquise de Montespan, the most powerful woman in the kingdom, the woman people called the true queen of France. According to the testimony gathered by the … Read more
In 2012, Harold Henthorn led his wife Toni off the marked trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, two miles into rough terrain, on their twelfth wedding anniversary. She had bad knees and wasn’t…
The 911 call came from somewhere deep in Rocky Mountain National Park’s rugged backcountry, a spot Harold Henthorn would later describe as a hiking trail gone wrong. His wife, Toni, had fallen 128 feet down a steep rock face, he said. He couldn’t reach her. It was September 29, 2012—their 12th wedding anniversary—and the story … Read more