In 1967, West Germany appointed Heinz-Günther Guderian to lead its panzer troops, the same armored post his father had held under Hitler. Heinz Guderian had built the Wehrmacht’s tank force and…
On October 14, 1944, a teenage Manfred Rommel stood at the family home in Herrlingen, watching his father say goodbye. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, had been ordered to report to Hitler’s headquarters, and his son knew something was wrong. The old soldier left the house wearing his field marshal’s uniform, carrying his … Read more
In 1663, Leonora Christina was arrested at Dover and imprisoned in Copenhagen’s Blue Tower without a single formal charge. She was the favorite daughter of King Christian IV, once the first lady…
On the 19th of May 1685, a royal order arrived at the Blue Tower in Copenhagen. After 8,000 days locked inside its stone walls, Leonora Christina, daughter of a king, was free. She did not walk out at once. The news spread, a crowd gathered in the courtyard below, and the new queen and her … Read more
On October 26, 1881, Ike Clanton stood unarmed in Tombstone while his nineteen-year-old brother Billy faced the gunfire at the O.K. Corral. Ike fled through a boarding house door and escaped…
On the morning of October 26, 1881, in the dusty Arizona Territory boomtown of Tombstone, a man named Ike Clanton stood facing Wyatt Earp in a narrow lot next to C. S. Fly’s boarding house. Clanton had spent the previous night drinking, boasting, and threatening to kill the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. Now, with … Read more
In 1957, Ford sold Americans a convertible whose roof folded itself into the trunk at the push of a button—the first mass-produced retractable hardtop in the country. The Skyliner looked like the…
The 1953 Willys Arrow rolled off the line with smooth, rounded curves where other cars carried sharp angles, a sloping roofline, and a modest inline six-cylinder engine that produced about 91 horsepower. Inside, there was seating for five, with a layout simple and plain beside the larger, more powerful American cars of the era. That … Read more
On April 4, 1958, fourteen-year-old Cheryl Crane walked downstairs in her Beverly Hills home, took an eight-inch carving knife from the kitchen, and climbed back up to her mother’s bedroom door….
On the night of April 4th, 1958, the most photographed blonde leading lady in Hollywood stood in the upstairs hallway of her Beverly Hills mansion and watched her 14-year-old daughter drive a butcher knife into the abdomen of her boyfriend. The boyfriend was Johnny Stompanato, 32 years old, a former enforcer for the Los Angeles … Read more
On May 1st, 1967, Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu married at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The ceremony lasted eight minutes, and photographs oNaN
On May 1, 1967, Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu married at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas in a ceremony that lasted eight minutes. The wedding photograph, showing the couple in formal attire beside an elaborate cake, appeared in magazines around the world within a day. It became one of the most recognizable images of … Read more
On June 30, 1951, a Navy fleet tug waited off the volcanic island of Anatahan, where Japanese holdouts had refused to surrender for six years. LeafletNaN
On the morning of June 30, 1951, a United States Navy fleet tug named Kokopa lay off the coast of Anatahan, a steep volcanic island roughly 75 miles north of Saipan. Aboard were a platoon of armed Marines, an interpreter, and a photographer from Life magazine. They were there to see whether a group of … Read more
On 18 August 1994, Martin Cahill drove to a quiet Ranelagh junction to return a video, and a gunman stepped up to his window. The first shot shattered the glass; a .357 Magnum kept firing into his…
He braked at a crossroads he had stopped at a thousand times before. A man stepped off the pavement. The window shattered with the first shot. August 18, 1994, around three in the afternoon, at the corner of Oxford Road and Charleston Road in Ranelagh, a quiet residential district of south Dublin. Martin Cahill was … Read more
In August 1853, at the imperial villa in Bad Isel, Duchess Helene in Bavaria prepared to become Empress of Austria. She had spent years training for this single destiny, drilled in languages,…
The winter light was already fading over the Alpine resort when the first dust of the travel-worn carriage settled on the street. The arrival at Bad Ischl in August 1853 was meant to be a coronation, a quiet prelude to the announcement that would seal the future of an empire. Duchess Ludovika stepped down with … Read more
In 1921, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon did the unthinkable: she refused a proposal from the King’s son. Bertie, shy and stammering, was devastated, but he told his mother he would marry no one else….
The first bombs fell on the afternoon of September 13, 1940. Queen Elizabeth and her husband, King George VI, were in their private rooms at Buckingham Palace when they heard the shriek of a diving bomber. Six bombs were dropped. Two exploded in the inner courtyard directly outside their windows. Glass shattered. Shrapnel tore through … Read more