In 1812, Princess Augusta Sophia, daughter of King George III, secretly drafted a petition to her brother the Prince Regent, begging permission to marry General Sir Brent Spencer, the soldier she…
She was a princess, and she fell in love. She asked her father for permission to marry, and he said no. Then she spent the next forty years waiting for a freedom that never came. This is the story of Princess Augusta Sophia, the daughter King George III kept hidden from the world. To the … Read more
On 9 November 1918, Chancellor Prince Max von Baden announced Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication to the German public before the Kaiser had agreed to it or signed a single document. At Imperial Army…
On 21 March 1933, the cameras flashed inside Potsdam’s Garrison Church as Adolf Hitler, newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, stood in the presence of the fallen Hohenzollern dynasty. Standing close beside him, in a place of honor, was Crown Prince Wilhelm, the eldest son of the deposed Kaiser, the man who had publicly endorsed Hitler … Read more
In 1785, a diamond necklace worth a fortune became the center of a scandal that reached the French court. Cardinal de Rohan claimed Queen Marie Antoinette had ordered it, but she insisted she…
On the sixteenth of October 1793, in Paris, the woman the crowd had once hailed as queen walked toward a scaffold. She had been a prisoner for months, stripped of her name, her family, her title. As she climbed the steps, she stumbled against the executioner. She turned and said, “Forgive me, sir, I did … Read more
In October 1887, trapper Callaway Renfield heard his own name called from the tree line near his isolated cabin in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. The voice belonged to his partner, Wendelin Brask,…
The voice came from the tree line about a hundred yards off, and it spoke one word only. Callaway. Just that. The sound of it stopped him cold in the act of unsaddling his mule, and he stood there in the failing light with one hand still on the cinch, because the voice was not … Read more
In 1810, a 21-year-old Khoikhoi woman named Sarah Baartman was placed on a raised stage inside London’s Egyptian Hall, where crowds paid two shillings to stare at her locked behind a cage barely a…
Two shillings. That was the price. Two shillings to stand in a crowd and stare at a living woman locked inside a cage in the middle of London. She was twenty-one years old, barely over four feet ten inches tall, and she had been brought halfway across the world to be looked at. She would … Read more
In 1931, with the Great Depression gutting America, Ignaz Schwinn summoned his motorcycle division and ordered it shut down—even though Excelsior-Henderson was still profitable and third-largest…
In October 1992, Edward Schwinn Jr. signed the papers that ended it all. The company his great-grandfather had built from nothing, the name that had glowed on a quarter of the bicycles in America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Creditors had squeezed the last value from the brand, the factories had gone silent, and … Read more
In the early 1960s, the average American family lived comfortably on a single income of about $7,000 a year, and the morning began with the clink of glass milk bottles on the doorstep. A gas…
The milkman’s truck had barely disappeared down the street when the first clink of glass bottles sounded at the door. Before breakfast was even on the table, the familiar rhythm of the morning had already begun: the soft thud of crates, the rattle of glass, the small chocolate bottle left behind as a sweet surprise … Read more
In 1669, a baby girl was born in Vienna with an inbreeding score of roughly 31 percent—higher than the child of a brother and sister. Her name was Maria Antonia of Austria, daughter of the Holy…
She was twenty-three years old, and the fever had burned for weeks. In a different time, she would have been given a simple remedy and recovered. In Vienna, on Christmas Eve 1692, the doctors could only watch as her strength slipped away. The baby boy she had given birth to in October was healthy, a … Read more
In 1348, a musician in Avignon sat down and wrote to friends in Bruges about what he was watching. His name was Louis Heyligen, and he served a cardinNaN
In the spring of 1348, Louis Heyligen, a musician in the household of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna at Avignon, sat down and wrote to friends in Bruges about what he was watching. Half the city was dead, he said. The Pope had bought a field for the overflow of corpses, and it had filled inside six … Read more
On July 16, 1918, Alexandra Feodorovna, the last Empress of Russia, wrote eleven lines in her diary about a gray morning, eggs delivered from a convent, and supper at eight. Then she closed the…
On the sixteenth of July, 1918, Alexandra Feodorovna wrote in her diary about the weather. A gray morning, later warmer. Eggs had been delivered from the nearby convent. Supper was at eight in the evening. She closed the diary and put down the pen. Within hours, she and every one of her five children would … Read more