In 1912, a professionally staged wedding portrait showed a white groom standing beside a Black bride, her hand resting in his arm, both calm and unsmiNaN
In March 2024, a digital archivist at the Chicago History Museum sorting through a donation from a South Side estate sale made a discovery that stopped him cold. The photograph was a formal wedding portrait, professionally taken, dated June 15, 1912, in faded ink on the back. For its age, the quality was remarkable. A … Read more
On December 16, 1985, Thomas Bilotti stepped from a black Lincoln outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan and was shot six times before he could reachNaN
At 5:26 on the evening of December 16, 1985, a black Lincoln Town Car pulled to the curb in front of Sparks Steak House on East 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The holiday shopping crowd was still thick on the sidewalks. The driver cut the engine, and his boss reached for the door handle. Neither … Read more
In 1932, while confined at Johns Hopkins, Zelda Fitzgerald finished a novel drawn from her own life and secretly mailed it to Scribner’s before her huNaN
The spring of 1932 found Zelda Fitzgerald inside the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at Johns Hopkins, her thoughts scattering like startled birds. She began sentences that ended somewhere unrecognizable, her doctors calling it a thought disorder. But Zelda had always spoken this way when she was closest to the truth. She admitted to hallucinations at the … Read more
In 1975, as Patrick Plunkett lay dying of cancer at King Edward VII’s Hospital, he left his sickbed to supervise one last royal dinner. He was 51, theNaN
The royal burial ground at Frogmore holds a stone bearing the name Patrick Plunkett. He was not a prince, a husband, or a blood relation of Elizabeth II. Yet accounts describe the queen attending ceremonies after his death and sending spring flowers with a handwritten note while he lay in hospital. Decades later, newspapers called … Read more
On January 30, 1865, in Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Leven Johns paid one dollar for a loaf of bread that weighed three and a half ounces and fit inside his closed hand. Instead of writing a complaint,…
The loaf fit inside one hand. That was the first thing wrong with it. It was the thirtieth of January, 1865, in Richmond, Virginia, and a physician named Leven Smith Joins sat at a table with a small brown loaf of bread in front of him. He had paid one dollar for it. It weighed … Read more
On November 15, 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman cut the telegraph wires linking him to Washington, burned the bridges behind him, and marched 62,000 men into enemy territory with no supply lines…
On November 15, 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman made a decision no American soldier had ever dared before. He cut the telegraph wires linking him to Washington, burned the bridges behind him, and turned his back on his own supply lines. Behind him lay everything an army was supposed to need: food trains, reinforcements, a line … Read more
In March 1945, the British Pacific Fleet arrived at Manis in the Admiralty Islands and immediately began cutting down coconut trees. Their carriers haNaN
In the first days of March 1945, the ships of the British Pacific Fleet anchored at Manis in the Admiralty Islands and went looking for coconut trees. Their carriers had brought wooden floats out from home to keep each ship off whatever lay alongside her, but those floats belonged in calm water. Manis was an … Read more
In 1993, Oliver Hoare, a respected Islamic art dealer and close friend of Prince Charles, began receiving hundreds of silent phone calls at his London home. His wife, Dian, terrified, called the…
The telephone at the house in Pimlico began to ring in the small hours, and when the caller spoke, it was only with breath. The police who eventually traced those calls had expected to find some troubled stranger, some anonymous menace circling a respectable London family. Instead, the lines led back to Kensington Palace. By … Read more
On February 17, 1944, Vice Admiral Raymond Spruant ordered two of the newest battleships in the U.S. Navy, Iowa and New Jersey, to chase a fleeing JapNaN
On the afternoon of February 17, 1944, torpedoes from the Japanese destroyer Nowaki crossed ahead of the bow of USS New Jersey, one of the newest battleships in the United States Navy. American aircraft overhead had warned the ship just in time. The helmsman answered, and the tracks passed. On the flag bridge stood Vice … Read more
In 1981, Nancy Reagan controlled the President’s schedule using a three-color calendar. Green meant Ronald Reagan could travel. Yellow meant caution. Red meant he could not leave the building at…
On the morning of February 27, 1987, Donald Regan learned he had been fired as White House chief of staff the same way the rest of America did: by watching television. The president never called. Regan, a Harvard graduate, a Marine who had fought in the Pacific, the man who had run Merrill Lynch and … Read more