History

Edward S. Curtis stood before the glass plate negative and made a decision that would alter the historical record. The image he had captured showed Little Plume and his son Yellow Kidney inside a lodge, surrounded by the traditional items that told the story of a people he believed were vanishing. But there, on the … Read more

The most hunted woman in America could not walk. For the final eleven months of her life, through every shootout, every bank robbery, even the largest manhunt the country had ever mounted, Bonnie Parker was incapable of putting one foot in front of the other. It was not a limp. It was a complete inability … Read more

The flames had already taken hold of the upper floor by the time the first neighbors stumbled out of their houses. It was just after midnight on April 25th, 2011, and the street in Nottingham had been dark and quiet, the kind of night broken only by the distant sound of a car passing. Then … Read more

The cell held a cot, a table built to collapse if anyone leaned on it, and a peephole through which a guard watched day and night the prisoner’s head and hands. Inside that cell sat the man who had commanded the Luftwaffe. Next door was the minister who had negotiated with Stalin. Farther along, the … Read more

The photograph has a way of stopping you cold. A man sitting on a bare steel beam eight hundred feet above the streets of New York, eating his lunch. No rope, no harness, no net. His boots hang out over open air, and behind him the whole city falls away into haze. He is not … Read more

At 3:30 in the morning on December 7, 1941, five Japanese midget submarines slipped away from their mother ships and began the slow, careful approach to the mouth of Pearl Harbor. Each boat carried two men. Each man understood, though no one said the word aloud, that the mission was not expected to end in … Read more

In October 1911, thick autumn fog settled over the remote valleys of Kanawha County, West Virginia, when the first reports emerged of something deeply wrong at the Cranshaw farm. The property sat about fifteen miles from the nearest settlement, Cedar Falls, reachable only by a narrow dirt road winding through dense oak and pine forests. … Read more

In the early 1980s, American cars began replacing carburetors with electronic fuel injection, and a small, seemingly technical change rewired the entire relationship between a driver and their vehicle. For the first time, a component under the hood could not be diagnosed with eyes, ears, or hands. It required a specialized, proprietary tool to read … Read more

At this moment, you are wearing something that did not exist for most of human history. The underwear against your skin, whatever its type or brand, is a remarkably recent invention. For thousands of years, men wore their outer garments directly against their bodies, with nothing beneath at all. Skin touched wool, linen, or hide, … Read more