History

On the first of July 1961, in a ten-bedroom Victorian house on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, a girl was born who would later become the most photographed woman in the world. She lived in that house for fourteen years, with a heated swimming pool and a tennis court, servants, and royal neighbors a short … Read more

The hospice worker entered the bedroom in Los Angeles on the afternoon of August 12th, 2000, expecting the routine of a dying woman. Instead, she found an 87-year-old woman dead in her bed, clutching a rosary in one hand and a small black-and-white photograph in the other. The woman had been the most beautiful brunette … Read more

Stuart Granger stood at the pinnacle of Hollywood in 1950, commanding $250,000 a picture at MGM, romancing Grace Kelly on screen, and married to Jean Simmons, the most luminous actress of her generation. They lived in a Beverly Hills estate with eight bedrooms, employed a full household staff, and were photographed at every premiere. By … Read more

In December 1565, Joanna of Austria, an 18-year-old Habsburg archduchess, arrived in Florence to marry Francesco de’ Medici, the 24-year-old heir to the Duchy of Florence. The wedding was one of the most spectacular events of the century, a carefully staged display of political alliance and dynastic ambition. Yet behind the triumphal arches and glittering … Read more

In the winter of 1895, the body of a small child was pulled from the waters of Sandridge Lagoon in Port Melbourne. A labourer working nearby saw something floating and, using a boat hook, retrieved it. He found, to his horror, that he had caught the body of a little boy, tied down with a … Read more

The lead coffin had to be cut open, and the men gathered around the grave on St. Helena knew that once the blade bit through the metal, there would be no turning back. Nearly twenty years had passed since Napoleon Bonaparte had been buried in this quiet valley, and no one present could say with … Read more

On the 18th of March, 1911, Theodore Roosevelt stood in a canyon in the Arizona desert, roughly 76 miles northeast of Phoenix, and looked up at the largest masonry dam the world had ever seen. He had left the presidency two years earlier, and now he had ridden out along a rough mountain road to … Read more

By the summer of 1943, American planners had spent months staring at what Japan had built on the island of New Britain. One hundred thousand Japanese soldiers sat inside the most heavily fortified position in the Pacific outside the home islands themselves. Seventeen miles of tunnels had been bored into the volcanic rock. Hundreds of … Read more

At 104 years old, Brooke Astor slept on a sofa that reeked of dog urine. Her nightgowns were so torn and frayed that nurses had to turn them inside out to hide the worst damage. The woman who had given away hundreds of millions of dollars to help strangers, who had personally visited every homeless … Read more