History

The rain came down cold over Middle Tennessee on the morning of November 27, 1863, the kind of steady November rain that soaked through a wool coat and settled into the bones. A wagon climbed the low rise northeast of Pulaski, pulled by two mules, their harnesses wet and creaking, mud caking the wheels. In … Read more

Born Christian Ludolf Ipsen Jr. on April 2, 1908, in Belleville, Illinois, Buddy Ebsen grew up in a family of dance instructors. He was one of four children, the only son of Christian Ipsen and Francesca Ipsen, both of whom taught dance. The family lived near St. Louis until Buddy was ten, then moved to … Read more

On the morning of Sunday, May 12, 1889, a cleaner named Thomas W. Armour walked down to the water near the Clifton boat club on the eastern shore of Staten Island and found a woman’s body washed up against the rocks. She was fully dressed, a dark dress over a blue-and-white striped petticoat, every button … Read more

The verdict landed, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, collapsed lifeless to the ground. She had been convicted of bigamy in front of a packed Westminster Hall, with Queen Charlotte and her children, including the future kings, watching from the stands. The woman who had clawed her way from genteel poverty to become one of … Read more

On the 27th of June 1969, three children stood inside a funeral home in New York. The oldest was 23, the middle one 16, the youngest 14. None of them had a mother anymore. She had been called the greatest entertainer who ever lived. She had filled Carnegie Hall on a Tuesday night in 1961 … Read more

The order came down from the German high command in the autumn of 1943, and it was direct: the village of Lingiades was to be destroyed. A German officer had been killed by partisans, and the men of the First Mountain Division were sent to exact the price. They surrounded the settlement in western Greece, … Read more

In the spring of 2001, an old woman sat in a chair at Soestdijk Palace and no longer knew her own daughters. Her husband, celebrating his ninetieth birthday before a television camera, told the nation that his wife of more than sixty years no longer recognized anyone who loved her. Three years later, on the … Read more

In August 1958, a mother flew west across America with the body of her twelve-year-old son. The boy’s father was in Switzerland, at a villa on a lake. The mother was Teddy Getty, once a supper club singer. The father was J. Paul Getty, the oilman Fortune had named America’s wealthiest man the year before. … Read more

In the winter of 1772, armed soldiers dragged a twenty-year-old queen from her bed, separating her forever from her two infant children. Her lover, the royal physician, was thrown into a dungeon to await public dismemberment. Yet the true horror of this scandal lay not in their punishment, but in the psychological nightmare that had … Read more