In August 1910, Ava Willing Aster arrived unannounced in Newport with her seven-year-old daughter, and her ex-husband, Colonel John Jacob Astor, slippNaN
In August 1910, a woman arrived in Newport with her seven-year-old daughter, and her husband fled the state by yacht rather than face her. Her name was Ava Willing Astor. Her husband was Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, soon to become the richest man ever to board the Titanic. She had left him three years … Read more
In the fall of 1884, a Chinese carpenter balanced on a wooden platform high above Lopp Brook in British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains, nailing planks into place. The platform was soft, freshly cut,…
In the autumn of 1884, a carpenter worked on a timber bridge above Loop Creek in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, driving spikes into a deck plank at a height that left no practical option if he lost his footing. The creek below was not far, but it was far enough in the way … Read more
In the autumn of 1303, Pope Boniface VIII sat alone on his throne in his half-burned palace at Anagni, dressed in the full papal robes, the crown on his head, the cross in one hand and the keys of…
On the last day of December 1502, Cesare Borgia rode out to meet the captains who had plotted against him. The town of Senigallia had just fallen, and the reconciled commanders came to greet him as friends, embracing him one after another in the winter light. His escort folded around the party and walked them … Read more
In 1943, a 24-year-old pilot named Hugh Verity flew an unarmed single-engine Lysander from the Sussex coast into occupied France, landing by moonlight in remote fields to deliver and collect…
It was the first time she had ever been in an airplane, and the noise terrified her. Catherine Gampel did not know what to do. But she knew the plane had come to pick her up, and so she was pleased. Then people said there was a lot of flak around the plane, and she … Read more
On April 33rd, 1945, Eva Brown died beside Adolf Hitler in the Fura bunker, a companion largely unknown to the German public. Her death plunged her middle-class Munich family into sudden, crushing…
In the Führerbunker beneath Berlin, Eva Braun lay dead, her lips blue from the cyanide she had swallowed just hours earlier. She had taken the poison immediately after her marriage to Adolf Hitler, on the 30th of April 1945, and her body was carried up into the ruined courtyard of the Reich Chancellery, doused in … Read more
In 1927, Texas Guinan charged five dollars a head at her 300 Club on West 54th Street, greeting every newcomer with the same two words: “Hello, sucker.” She had once sold popcorn in Waco for three…
The woman from Georgia pulled the next batch of fried chicken from the cast-iron skillet and salted it hot. Across the room the piano man was playing, somebody knocked at the door, and the host called out the password. The rent was due Monday, and the plates of chicken were the difference between keeping the … Read more
In 1769, Maria Amalia of Austria was married by proxy in Vienna to a man she had never met—Ferdinand of Bourbon, the 18-year-old Duke of Parma. The groom wasn’t even present. She had resisted the…
On a dark night in June 1804, in a city that was never her home, Maria Amalia lay dying. The woman they once called “la Mata,” the madwoman, had been reduced to a frail figure who could barely rise from her bed. Her left hand had been paralyzed since spring. She was fifty-eight years old, … Read more
In the 1880s, a Humboldt County logging crew stood over a redwood log twenty feet across, a tree they had spent days felling onto a bed of brush. Then one man walked up carrying an auger longer…
The log measured twenty feet across. It lay on a bed of brush and bark the crew had spent days building beneath it, a long cushion meant to keep the trunk from shattering when it finally came down. It had taken those days to bring the tree to the ground. Now a man walked up … Read more
In August 2010, Lady Anne Glenconner sat in a lawyer’s office in St. Lucia as her husband’s will was read aloud. After 54 years of marriage, Colin Tennant left his Caribbean estates not to her,…
The afternoon sun in Saint Lucia was merciless in August 2010, but Lady Anne Connor sat still in the lawyer’s office, ready for the final act of a marriage that had been a psychological war for fifty-four years. She was the daughter of an earl, the devoted lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, and the woman who … Read more
In 1606, Marina Mniszech, a Polish noblewoman, became Tsarina of Russia by marrying a man who claimed a stolen throne. Nine days later, a furious MoscNaN
In 1606, a Polish noblewoman became the tsarina of Russia by marrying a man who claimed to have reclaimed a stolen throne. Just nine days later, her husband was butchered by an angry mob. She refused to surrender her crown. Instead, she stunned the empire by publicly declaring that a second, completely different impostor was … Read more