In 1782, a man dug two feet into the ruins of a Gloucestershire chapel and struck lead. John Lucas cut the coffin open with a knife. Inside lay Catherine Parr, the queen who outlived Henry VIII,…
In 1782, a man digging in the ruins of a Gloucestershire chapel struck lead two feet down and cut it open with a knife. The woman inside had been dead for 234 years. Her skin was still white, still soft, still moist to the touch. Six women married Henry VIII. What was done to them … Read more
In 1981, six-year-old Adam Walsh stood watching older boys play an Atari display inside a Sears store in Hollywood, Florida, while his mother, Reve, walked a short distance away to ask about a…
The announcement crackled over the Sears public address system, slicing through the hum of a Tuesday afternoon. Adam Walsh, please come to customer service. Reve Walsh scanned the faces moving past her, every pair of little shoes, every child’s head in the crowd. None of them was her son. The voice came again, calm and … Read more
In 1698, inside a mountain convent in Aragon, friars put a question to a demon speaking through a possessed nun: had the king of Spain been bewitched?NaN
She was born to rule an empire that her own family had spent two centuries shrinking with every marriage bed they shared. Mariana of Austria arrived in the world on Christmas Eve 1634, the second child of the Holy Roman Emperor and a Spanish infanta, which made her the niece of the man then sitting … Read more
In 1965, Edie Sedgwick was the undisputed queen of the New York underground, a silver-haired heiress who mesmerized Andy Warhol and the world. But benNaN
In March 1965, at a party hosted by film producer Lester Persky in New York, Edie Sedgwick walked into a room where Andy Warhol stood in a corner, silent and spectral in a bad wig and dark glasses. She was wearing a gray jumpsuit, her movements jerky and electric, and when she began to dance, … Read more
In 1913, an 18-year-old Italian immigrant stepped onto Ellis Island with little more than striking good looks and a restless ambition. Rudolph Valentino arrived in America expecting opportunity,…
In the early autumn of 1926, Rudolf Valentino was promoting his latest film when the crowd around him suddenly went still. The most idolized man in Hollywood, the face that had launched a thousand imitations and sent women into frenzies at the mere sight of him, collapsed without warning. He crumpled to the ground in … Read more
On August 8, 1945, Japan’s ambassador in Moscow finally got the meeting he had chased for weeks. Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo had told him to pressNaN
At 3:40 in the afternoon of August 7, 1945, Japan’s foreign minister, Shigenori Togo, sent a single urgent instruction to his ambassador in Moscow: secure the meeting with the Soviet leadership that Tokyo had been seeking for weeks. The ambassador, Naotake Sato, finally got what he had been chasing. Vyacheslav Molotov agreed to see him … Read more
In 1999, the daughter of Muhammad Ali stepped into a boxing ring for her first professional fight. Laila Ali had told her family she wanted to box, anNaN
The world knew Muhammad Ali as the greatest, the fighter who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. But behind the roar of the crowds existed another man, a father to nine children who each inherited a piece of his brilliance, his faith, and his fire. While his public battles were fought in … Read more
In 1963, Nelson Rockefeller was the Republican Party’s brightest hope for the White House—until he married Happy Murphy just 34 days after her divorce was finalized. She was a mother of four who…
The telephone rang in the governor’s mansion in Albany, and the man who answered it had spent his entire life preparing to be president. Nelson Rockefeller, heir to the Standard Oil fortune, governor of New York, had done everything right. He had served three presidents, won a landslide election in a Democratic state, and built … Read more
In 1954, Burger Chef sold a burger, fries, and a cold drink together as one combo for just 45 cents, an idea that helped it grow into a formidable rival to McDonald’s. By 1973, the chain had over…
On a weekend night in the 1990s, the last Burger Chef still standing locked its doors for good. A chain that had once run more than a thousand restaurants, that had invented the modern kids’ meal and taken on McDonald’s at its own game, disappeared from the American roadside without ceremony. For decades it had … Read more
In February 1928, Walt Disney walked into a New York office expecting a raise. He was 26, and his cartoon rabbit, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, had become a national hit, complete with toys and candy…
Walt Disney sat on the cold office floor in the dark and listened to his first company die around him. He was twenty-one years old, broke, and the rooms that had recently held a working crew now held only him. He washed once a week at the public baths inside Union Station and lived on … Read more