On January 14, 1898, Ernest Hokinson loaded a horse-drawn sleigh with 400 pounds of salted pork, flour, lamp oil, and a box of medical supplies and set out across the frozen surface of Lake…
On the morning of January 14, 1898, a man named Ernest Hawkinson loaded a horse-drawn sled with four hundred pounds of salt pork, flour, lamp oil, and a box of medical supplies, and drove it out onto the frozen surface of Lake Superior from the pier at Bayfield, Wisconsin. The temperature stood at twenty-three degrees … Read more
In 1876, Charles Peace shot a policeman in Manchester and returned home to Hull, where two innocent brothers were arrested for the crime. William HabrNaN
In the early hours of October 10, 1878, three policemen patrolling the affluent streets of Blackheath in southeast London noticed a light burning inside a house. They watched for a while, then moved in. One officer went to the rear of the property while the other two rang the front bell. The burglar inside rushed … Read more
In 1885 Vienna, Empress Elizabeth—Sisi—sat for a portrait and, bored and restless, asked that a charming actress be invited to entertain her. Katharina Schratt arrived at the painter’s studio and…
The Empress of Austria-Hungary stood on the deck of her yacht, the Miramar, lashed by salt spray, the sky a bruising purple above her. She was soaked, shivering, staring into the abyss of a storm that terrified her own crew. This was Sisi, and this was how she felt alive. Miles away, under the warm … Read more
In the winter of an unnamed Roman fort on the German frontier, a medicus named Aulus watched a water carrier stumble from a barrack door and vomit onto the frozen ground. The man glanced around,…
The first thing that hits Aulus is the smell. Inside the valetudinarium, the Roman military hospital planted on the German frontier, the air hangs heavy with the iron of blood, the sour reek of unwashed skin, and one more thing underneath it all. Something sweet. That is the rot. A legionary lies on a straw … Read more
In August 1972, a plane carrying Prince William of Gloucester, the most glamorous royal of his generation, exploded in a fireball moments after takeoff, killing him instantly. But the real tragedy…
On August 28, 1972, an aircraft carrying one of the most compelling princes of his generation erupted into a fireball, and with it died a member of the royal family widely regarded as one of Prince Charles’s closest idols. But the real tragedy was not the crash itself. The real tragedy lay in the secret … Read more
On December 2, 1863, a 15,000-pound bronze figure was hoisted nearly 300 feet above Washington and bolted atop the Capitol’s new iron dome, while canNaN
On December 2, 1863, at the height of the bloodiest conflict in American history, a bronze figure of a woman was lifted in pieces to the top of the new iron dome rising over Washington and bolted into place nearly three hundred feet above the ground. Cannons fired a salute across the city, and the … Read more
In the summer of 1913, an Italian immigrant stood on a wooden platform 200 feet above Tankhannock Creek in Pennsylvania, waiting for a bucket of concrete swinging toward him on an overhead cable….
In the summer of 1913, a laborer stood on a temporary wooden platform two hundred feet above the floor of Tunkhannock Creek in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, guiding a concrete bucket suspended from an overhead cable. The cable ran from an aerial tramway strung between towers on the hillside above. The bucket weighed hundreds of pounds … Read more
In 1877, a California mining man named George Hearst took an option on a low-grade gold claim in the Black Hills called Homestake, then bought it and its neighbor outright. The ore held less than…
The cage drops and the floor of Lead falls away. Ten minutes later the doors open and you are 4,850 feet down, almost a mile beneath the rooftops of a town that clings to a steep South Dakota hillside in tight switchbacks. Even this is only the middle of the mine. The workings continue to … Read more
In 1949, an aging cowboy named Jim McDaniels swore an affidavit that challenged everything known about the legendary Billy the Kid. The accepted history claimed he died in 1881, but McDaniels, a…
In 1949, an aging cowboy named Jim McDaniels signed a sworn affidavit that would challenge one of the most famous deaths in American history. McDaniels, a man who had ridden with the Jesse Evans gang during the Lincoln County War, declared with absolute conviction that he could face any stranger and know, without a doubt, … Read more
In 1868, a ruined banker named Edmund McIlhenny shipped 658 bottles of pepper sauce from a remote Louisiana salt dome, selling them for a dollar each. His banks had collapsed with the Confederacy,…
The katana came down in darkness. Walter McIlhenny had stumbled into a Japanese officer on Guadalcanal, close enough that neither man had time to raise a rifle. The officer snatched the nearest weapon, a sword still in its scabbard, and swung it at Walter’s head. The blow dented his helmet and knocked him off his … Read more