History

The obituary arrived at the offices of The Times in London in 1943, ready to be filed away until the day it would be needed. The subject was a man who was still very much alive, the most photographed young man in the world, a king for 327 days. Before the newspaper could hold it, … Read more

In 1949, a New York businessman named Samuel Wurtzel sat down in a barber’s chair in Richmond, Virginia, and learned that the first commercial television station in the American South was about to begin broadcasting there. No one in the city was selling television sets. Within weeks, Wurtzel had sold his import-export business, moved his … Read more

In September 2023, Beverly Uellet walked into a secondhand shop on Hammond Street in Bangor, Maine, looking for a birthday gift for her granddaughter. She stopped at the jewelry counter because something caught the light in a way she recognized. It was a small gold band, an engraved claddagh ring with a tiny chip in … Read more

On August 12, 1942, a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew over the half-finished airstrip at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal. A staff officer looked down at the ground the United States Marines had seized five days earlier and reported what Imperial Headquarters already wanted to hear: the Americans had pulled out. They had not. Over the next … Read more

In February 2023, investigators knocked on the door of an 81-year-old retired English teacher in Castine, Maine. Elliot Marsh had lived in that small coastal town for most of his life, taught high school English there for decades, and was remembered by former students as an excellent and dedicated teacher. He had also, according to … Read more

The griddle had been running since before dawn, and by the time the first men wandered in off the midnight watch, the smell of it was already drifting across the snack bar. A 19-year-old airman could walk in with a quarter in his pocket and walk out full. That was the promise of the PX … Read more

Somewhere on the planet, right now, there are twelve men sitting inside cells designed specifically so they could never leave. These are not ordinary prison cells. They are environments engineered from the concrete up to eliminate every possibility of escape, every whisper of outside communication, every trace of the influence these men once held over … Read more

By late 1944, Japan’s war strategy was collapsing. The Battle of the Philippine Sea that June—often called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot—had destroyed hundreds of Japanese aircraft and most of the Navy’s remaining veteran aircrew. Japan could still build planes, but under the strain of total war it could no longer train new pilots to … Read more

Seventeen years before the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, an American officer put down in writing the hour they would strike. He named the harbor. He named the targets. He named the morning. The Army read his report, then court-martialed him for writing it. His name was Billy Mitchell, and this is the story of … Read more