On September 3rd, 1868, while settlers in Colorado Springs were desperately trying to harvest crops, a band of warriors swept down Monument Creek, capNaN
In August 1868, the settlers of Colorado Springs and the surrounding El Paso County lived in constant fear. The Cheyenne and Arapaho, armed by the U. S. government with rifles and ammunition supposedly for hunting, had turned those weapons against the frontier settlements. By early September, the raids had become so deadly that most ranch … Read more
On January 11, 1944, James Howard was escorting American bombers back from a mission over Europe when he spotted a small, battered group of B-17s drifting away from the main formation. They were…
On the morning of January 11, 1944, Lieutenant Colonel James Howard watched the sky ahead fill with German fighters. Behind him, the B-17s of a small bomber group were struggling to hold formation, their flanks exposed after the long run into Germany. Howard was alone, his wingmen gone, his ammunition nearly spent. In front of … Read more
On June 5, 2014, a highway worker mowing tall grass along a rural Wisconsin road found two suitcases sitting in the ditch—a black one and a purple one. He didn’t open them. When police arrived and…
The county highway worker was mowing tall grass along North Como Road in the town of Geneva, Wisconsin, on the afternoon of Thursday, June 5th, 2014, when he came across two suitcases sitting in the long grass of the ditch. A black one and a purple one. He didn’t open them. He just moved them … Read more
In September 1940, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto stood before Japan’s naval general staff and delivered a warning no one wanted to hear: if ordered to fighNaN
In September 1940, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto stood before the Japanese Naval General Staff and issued a warning no one in that room wanted to hear. If ordered to fight, he said, he would launch violent attacks for the first six months or a year, but he had absolutely no confidence in the second or third … Read more
On October 3, 1889, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain delivered a monumental 5,000-word address at the Gettysburg National Cemetery, a speech meant to definNaN
In October 1889, on the hallowed ground of Gettysburg, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain rose to dedicate Maine’s memorial monuments. A professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College, a major general who had commanded the 20th Maine Infantry with extraordinary distinction at Little Round Top, and a former governor of his state, Chamberlain brought more than ceremonial gravity … Read more
In 1994, 12-year-old Sarah awoke to her mother’s screams coming from the kitchen. She crept to her door and listened as someone opened a drawer, pulleNaN
On the night of May 11, 1994, twelve-year-old Sara woke to her mother’s screams coming from the kitchen. Too terrified to move, she hid behind her bed and listened as the cries turned to desperate pleas for mercy, then to silence. She heard the kitchen drawer open, then the sound of repeated stabbing. When the … Read more
In 1979, one programmer wrote 137,000 lines of assembly code in four months, alone, and created WordStar, the word processor that would soon run on 60NaN
In 1984, a piece of software called WordStar controlled sixty percent of the word processing market on personal computers. Its publisher, MicroPro International, had just gone public and was, by at least one measure, the largest software company on Earth: seventy-two million dollars in annual sales and more than 650,000 copies in circulation. Every law … Read more
In 1960s Harlem, a 22-year-old con artist walked into Bumpy Johnson’s territory and stole $26,000 from his collection routes. He forged documents, impNaN
A young con artist working the streets of New York had spent weeks studying an accounting firm on Madison Avenue, learning the habits of its staff, the timing of its deliveries, and the weaknesses hidden inside its routine. His name changed with the season; that month it was Adrien Vale. He did not steal with … Read more
In October 1972, 22-year-old Carol Jean Mercer locked up the Mil Haven drugstore at nine, started her usual six-block walk home, and vanished. Her husNaN
A single strand of hair sat in an evidence envelope for fifty-one years before it finally spoke. It survived a flood in the courthouse basement, three changes of sheriff, and a records purge that nearly saw it thrown away in 1998. When a lab technician finally extracted a usable DNA profile from it in the … Read more
In 1940, as German forces closed in on Paris, Peggy Guggenheim walked into Fernand Léger’s studio and bought a painting for $1,000. She was a 42-year-old American with a modest Guggenheim…
In the garden of the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice, a simple plaque is set into the wall. It reads: Peggy Guggenheim, 1898 to 1979. Not far from it, small stones mark the graves of her dogs, each name carved into the surface. A few steps away, through a doorway, … Read more