History

They found my son’s body in the bayou on a Tuesday morning. His small hands were still clutching the fishing line he had been holding when they beat him to death. He was nine years old. His name was Baptist, and he had smiled at the wrong white man’s daughter. That was his crime. That … Read more

On the evening of Saturday, February 1, 1896, Sophia MacLeod lay dead on the kitchen floor of her home at 33 Brighton Street in Charlestown, a respectable district of Boston. She wore her nightdress and slippers, and a large pool of blood had spread across the floor around her. The rooms throughout the house had … Read more

On the 24th of March, 1903, the Southern Pacific sent a locomotive out onto a brand-new railroad embankment in the Great Salt Lake, and the ground under it went down into the water. Partway across, the embankment gave way. The track dropped, and the engine came to rest still sitting on its rails in about … Read more

In the autumn of 1777, in the forests and farmlands north of Albany, an army that had never lost a major battle against the British marched into a trap of its own making. Its commander believed that discipline, firepower, and the mere sight of a British column would be enough to scatter any force of … Read more

The sound reached Prentice Moyle through the closed door of the supply shack, and it made him set down his pen. He had been updating the inventory ledgers by lamplight, the way he did most nights, when the noise came from beyond the camp perimeter. At first he took it for an animal, an elk … Read more

At 2:30 in the morning on November 27, 2009, Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant and a tree just a few feet from his own driveway in Windermere, Florida. Neighbors who came outside after hearing the impact found him unconscious on the ground, with his wife Elin standing over him. Emergency … Read more

The truck hit the other vehicle head-on, and Shifty Powers’ body went flying over the top of the cab and slammed into the pavement. He had survived months in Normandy, Holland, and the frozen Ardennes without a scratch, one of the few men in Easy Company who had never been wounded in combat. Now, on … Read more

On the afternoon of June 25th, 1876, along the dusty ridges above the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, time ran out for Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the men riding with him. Not in a grand, drawn-out epic, not in the heroic last stand the paintings would later show. For most of those … Read more

The bullet took Frank McLaury low in the belly, and the fight was over almost before it had properly begun. Doc Holliday’s shotgun had spoken first, and Frank staggered, his own shot tearing through Wyatt Earp’s coat instead of his chest. Across the narrow lot off Fremont Street, in the space of perhaps thirty seconds, … Read more