History

On January 14, 1979, Tommy DeSimone walked down the basement stairs on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx wearing a double-breasted black Bill Blass suit, certain he was about to become a made man. He was twenty-eight years old, ambitious, and sure this was his coronation. Instead, John Gotti put three bullets in his head. The … Read more

On August 27, 1939, just five days before the outbreak of World War II, a small silver aircraft lifted off from a secret German airfield near Rostock. It was not faster than the fighters of its day, nor did it carry weapons. But it had no propeller. For the first time in history, a jet-powered … Read more

In the summer of 1899, Australia was slowly pulling itself out of the economic depression that had gripped the early part of the decade. Small towns like Broadford, about 70 kilometers north of Melbourne, were beginning to recover. The community, sustained by farms, sawmills, and a paper mill, was a place where neighbors knew one … Read more

For sixty-six years, the man who cried hardest at her vigil was the man who had put her in the ground. Her name was Adeline Broussard. Everyone in Belle Rose called her Addie, and for two years she was the voice they heard in the dark. She worked the night switchboard at the parish telephone … Read more

Behind glass in a museum outside Washington hangs a Belgian lace veil made for a teenage princess promised the Austrian throne. The lace survived. The promise did not. Within eight years of wearing it, Princess Stephanie of Belgium lost her husband at Mayerling, where Crown Prince Rudolf was found dead beside seventeen-year-old Mary Vetsera. The … Read more

In December 1944, a German general tightened his grip around 18,000 American soldiers trapped in the frozen Belgian town of Bastogne. They were cut off, low on ammunition, and their medics had just been captured. By every measure the German command understood, the garrison should have collapsed. But it did not. When the Germans demanded … Read more

In the spring of 1902, a woman calling herself Cassie L. Chadwick made her way from Cleveland to New York City and took up position in the lobby of the Holland House, a luxury hotel at 30th Street and Fifth Avenue. She was waiting for James Dylan, a lawyer and friend of her husband. When … Read more

The photograph was dated 1887, and for more than a century it had sat forgotten in the attic of a textile mill owner’s mansion in Lowell, Massachusetts. When the estate was finally sold after years of legal disputes, its belongings were scattered among auction houses and antique dealers across New England. Among the hundreds of … Read more

Two armed men from downtown walked into Harlem on a Tuesday afternoon in August 1948 and spent twenty-five minutes humiliating a twelve-year-old shoe shine boy on 125th Street. They kicked his box apart, watched his coins scatter into the gutter, and walked away laughing. They did not know that from the corner booth of the … Read more