History

The night of September 30, 1974, found the Stanley Hotel nearly empty, its long hallways dark and silent, its dining room set for a single table. Most of the staff had already gone home, and the hotel was preparing to close for the winter. Among the last guests were a struggling writer named Stephen King … Read more

The made man walked into the bar in Queens like he owned it. June 11th, 1970. He had earned the swagger eight years earlier, when a federal judge handed him fifteen years for a heroin conspiracy. Now he was out, free, and ready to feel the weight of his status again. The other men in … Read more

The air in the hallway reeks of damp plaster and the acrid chemical bite of crack smoke. On a bare mattress in the corner, surrounded by the rotting debris of a life gone wrong—burnt spoons, empty cans, peeling wallpaper—sits a young man with a shaved head and translucent, shivering skin. To the passing world, he … Read more

When Edith Rockefeller McCormick died in room 1801 of the Drake Hotel in Chicago, she had less than nine thousand dollars to her name. She was the daughter of the world’s first billionaire, the wife of the heir to an agricultural empire, and by any measure the wealthiest woman in America. She had also buried … Read more

On the rain-swept hillside above the village of Berriedale, the silence of a misty August afternoon was shattered by a single loud bang. Residents looked up toward the high grounds, where a Royal Air Force aircraft had just nose-dived into the hillside and exploded on impact. Of the fifteen passengers on board, fourteen were killed … Read more

The child had stopped shivering, and that was the most dangerous sign of all. Mrs. Fletcher sat on the edge of the narrow bed in their Bethnal Green room, watching her youngest daughter’s breath come in shallow clouds beneath the threadbare blanket. It was February 1895, three in the morning, and frost had formed on … Read more

In 1980, the United States Supreme Court upheld a ruling that the federal government had stolen the Black Hills of South Dakota from the Lakota Sioux, in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. The Court ordered compensation: fifteen million dollars. The Lakota refused to take the money. The settlement has since grown in … Read more

The room was barely ten feet across, thick with coal smoke, and the children had already been hurried out for the night. A woman was in labor on the same straw mattress she slept on every evening, with no doctor, no hospital, and no medicine of any kind to ease her. The only help was … Read more

In the early autumn of 1893, the Bowes-Lyon family was staying at Ham House in Richmond upon Thames when their eldest child fell ill. Violet Hyacinth Bowes-Lyon, just eleven years old, had contracted diphtheria, a bacterial infection that remained one of the leading causes of child mortality in Victorian Britain. Despite the best medical care … Read more