In 1968, actor Nick Adams, known for playing Johnny Yuma in the series *The Rebel*, died suddenly at just 36 years old. He was a close friend to legenNaN
February 7th has claimed an unusual collection of lives, from a magician who redefined his craft to a television icon who died on a Los Angeles street. Among them was Doug Henning, the Canadian-born illusionist who brought a mystical, New Age sensibility to a profession long associated with tuxedos and top hats. Henning broke the … Read more
On December 5, 1975, 19-year-old Lindy Sue Biechler came home from the grocery store in Millersville, Pennsylvania. She set her bags on the kitchen taNaN
On a Friday evening in December 1975, a young woman named Lindy Sue Biechler came home from the grocery store in Millersville, Pennsylvania. She set her bags on the kitchen table and never got the chance to put them away. The nineteen-year-old was found on the floor of her apartment, stabbed nineteen times. A knife … Read more
In July 1998, a young mother was found shot dead on her couch in a rural trailer, her body partly covered by a blanket. Three .22 shell casings lay nearby, and her pants had been pulled down, a…
Lisa Carlson lay dead on the sofa, her body cold, surrounded by blood. It was just before nine o’clock on the evening of July 18, 1998, when her husband Daniel called emergency services. He told the dispatcher he had just returned from work and found his wife dead. Their two children were unharmed—they were at … Read more
In October 1937, less than a year after giving up the British throne for the woman he loved, the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson met Adolf Hitler at his Bavarian retreat. Photographs captured…
He signed the instrument of abdication at Fort Belvedere on the tenth of December, 1936. His brothers witnessed it. In less than a year as king, he had reached the point where the crown itself had become the obstacle, and he chose the woman over it. The decision would be made law the following day, … Read more
In December 1911, an estimated half a million people packed the Coronation Park in Delhi to witness George V and Queen Mary, the first British monarchs to attend their own Delhi Durbar in person….
On the twelfth of December 1911, as many as half a million people packed the Coronation Park in Delhi to witness the most spectacular display of imperial power the British Empire had ever staged. The event was the Delhi Durbar, a grand court held to mark the formal proclamation of George V as Emperor of … Read more
On April 21, 2012, Sergio Celis called 911 to report that his 6-year-old daughter Isabel was gone from her bedroom. Her window stood wide open, the screen lying in the backyard. The family had…
On April 21, 2012, just after eight in the morning, a father’s voice came over the 911 line, urgent and breaking. He reported a missing person, his six-year-old daughter. He believed she had been abducted from their home on East 12th Street in Tucson, near Broadway and Craycroft. The dispatcher asked for details. The father, … Read more
On December 21, 1866, Captain William J. Fetterman rode out of Fort Phil Kearny boasting that with eighty men he could ride through the entire Sioux nation. Behind Lodge Trail Ridge, a massive…
Captain William J. Fetterman had boasted, “Give me 80 men and I will ride through the whole Sioux nation. ” On the morning of December 21st, 1866, he rode out of Fort Phil Kearny with exactly that many men under his command, leaving with an overconfidence that ignored the warnings of his commanding officer. Neither … Read more
In 1967, Frances Shand Kydd did what aristocratic wives were never supposed to do: she left her husband and her four children for another man. Society branded her “the Bolter,” a word she said…
The telephone rang in the small house on the Isle of Seil, and Frances Shand Kidd answered it to hear a journalist’s voice on the other end. It was August 31, 1997. The news from the tunnel under the Place de l’Alma in Paris was still fragmentary, still unbelievable, but the reporter was not calling … Read more
In 1911, Evelyn Walsh McLean, heir to a Colorado mining fortune, bought the Hope Diamond—a 45.52-carat blue stone already blamed for beheadings, ruin,NaN
The Gilded Age promised American women unprecedented luxury in exchange for unprecedented submission. Marble palaces became gilded cages, with unlimited shopping budgets and social prominence purchased at the cost of personal autonomy. For a generation of women, the bargain seemed golden until they discovered that their husbands’ industrial fortunes had been built not only on … Read more
In 1920, a Cambridge historian found a family portrait in a Canterbury antique shop, and the child’s smile stopped her cold. Nine-year-old Millicent Ashford sat between her stern parents, wearing…
The photograph sat in a cluttered aisle of Pemberton’s Antiques in Canterbury, and Dr. Sarah Mitchell could not stop staring at the child’s smile. Cambridge professor of Victorian and Edwardian social history that she was, Sarah often spent her Saturday afternoons hunting for authentic period pieces to enhance her lectures or her upcoming book on … Read more