History

The 18,000 dollars sat in an October office in the Ozarks, and Alcott Frine could not stop turning the figure over in his mind. On paper, it looked like the deal of a lifetime: sixty acres of standing timber, a spring-fed creek bottom, and a house a patient man could rebuild with his own hands … Read more

On the morning of 27 June 1950, inside Prague’s Pankrác prison, the hangman set the noose around a woman’s neck. Her last words were meant to be finished, but the executioner did not wait. The drop did not break her neck. She suffocated slowly instead, her agony lasting nearly a quarter of an hour. She … Read more

In September 1942, a photograph reached the cover of Life magazine, and the world agreed: this was the most beautiful woman alive. Her name was Princess Fawzia of Egypt, sister of King Farouk and first queen of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. The world could not stop looking at her. All she … Read more

In the spring of 1483, the most powerful woman in England barricaded herself inside a church. No foreign enemy was hunting her. The danger came from within her own family—from her dead husband’s brother, a man who had just placed himself between her twelve-year-old son and the throne the boy was born to inherit. She … Read more

By the spring of 1857, the young Empress Elisabeth had been married for barely three years, and already the walls of the Viennese court were closing in on her. The Hofburg’s rigid etiquette, the ceaseless scrutiny, the suffocating presence of her mother-in-law—all of it pressed down on a girl who had grown up running free … Read more

On a winter day in 1676, a twenty-one-year-old Bavarian princess faced the sun in an open garden, refusing to shade her face as the heat burned her skin raw and blistered. Eleonore Magdalene of Neuburg wanted to ruin herself. She was about to be married to the Holy Roman Emperor, and she believed that if … Read more

In the summer of 1861, a coded message tucked into the elaborate hairstyle of a young woman courier slipped across enemy lines and into the hands of Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard. The warning was precise: Union forces were advancing toward Manassas Junction. Beauregard positioned his troops accordingly, and the result was the First … Read more

February 6 has claimed a striking collection of lives across the arts, medicine, and the British throne. On that date in 2017, Professor Irwin Corey died at the age of 102. He was a stand-up comedian known for a peculiar act: he would wander on stage, ramble endlessly, and never quite reach a point, all … Read more

For nearly four decades, the Spokane police were convinced they had already caught the person responsible for the murder of nine-year-old Candy Rogers. They had a name. They had a physical detail linking him to the clothing found at the crime scene. The man was already in prison, serving a life sentence for two other … Read more