In October 1854, surveyor Ambrose Kittering arrived in Harrow Crossing, a remote Kentucky mountain town of forty houses, hired to map a road through the valley. That first night, the innkeeper’s…
In the late autumn of 1854, in a tavern room in a small valley town no map would ever record, a surveyor sat facing a man in grey. The stranger had entered without a sound, walked the length of the public room without a footfall on the boards, and stopped at the surveyor’s table. He … Read more
On July 30, 1985, eight-year-old Nicole Morin left her Toronto apartment to meet a friend at the lobby pool. She wore a one-piece bathing suit, red canvas shoes, and carried a purple beach towel….
On an October morning in 2014, police moved through a wooded area near Horseshoe Valley Road, north of Toronto, scanning the ground with radar. They were there because a tip had come in after the release of a short video reconstructing the last known movements of a girl who had been missing for twenty-nine years. … Read more
On September 29, 1968, 22-year-old art student Wendy Hallison kissed her family goodbye and drove to a Thrifty Drugstore on Fairfax Avenue to buy a haNaN
On September 29, 1968, a 22-year-old art student named Wendy Joe Howison left her family’s Los Angeles home to buy a hairdryer advertised for sale at a Thrifty Drugstore on Fairfax Avenue. She was a senior at San Fernando Valley State College, a young woman with a warm smile, a small poodle named Pierre, and … Read more
On May 30, 1922, President Warren G. Harding stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and formally accepted the monument on behalf of the nation, adNaN
On May 30, 1922, President Warren G. Harding stood on the steps of the newly completed Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. , and formally accepted the monument on behalf of the American people. Before him sat the man who had led the effort to build it: Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the twenty-seventh president … Read more
On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones lost 22.6% of its value in a single session, the worst crash in American stock market history. In Southern CalifornNaN
On the morning of October 19th, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 22. 6 percent of its value in a single session, the largest one-day percentage drop in the history of American stock markets. Ticker machines could not keep up with the selling. Fortunes built over decades evaporated before the closing bell. In a … Read more
In 2017, outside a Brooklyn courthouse where Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán faced drug trafficking charges, a woman appeared claiming to be his eldest daugNaN
In May 2017, outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, a woman in ill-fitting pants that dragged through sidewalk puddles presented herself to the world. She was there to support the man about to stand trial for drug trafficking, money laundering, and firearms charges that would put him away for life. The man was Joaquín “El … Read more
In 1770, a German doctor named Johann Friedrich Struensee saved the life of Denmark’s crown prince by inoculating him against smallpox. The boy’s mother, 18-year-old Queen Caroline Matilda, had…
She was not yet out of her early teenage years when she was sent away to become a queen. Almost at once, she found herself trapped in a marriage that turned into a nightmare. Then Caroline Matilda fell in love with another man—the king’s own physician. Their secret affair set loose whispered accusations, political conspiracies, … Read more
In 1963 Harlem, a private investigator began secretly following the crime boss Bumpy Johnson, logging his every movement for nineteen days. He changedNaN
In 1963, a professional investigator was hired to do what he did best: follow Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson through the streets of Harlem, unnoticed. For nineteen days, the former detective recorded Johnson’s movements, meetings, and habits, building a careful profile of the man who had long been one of New York’s most feared and respected criminal … Read more
In August 1942, a wartime flying accident in Scotland killed 14 of the 15 people on board, including Princess Alexandra’s father, the Duke of Kent. She was just five years old. Her only brother…
The announcement came on the nineteenth of November 1962, and it settled something that had been quietly wondered about in royal circles for some time. Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of the late Duke of Kent and one of the most admired young women in Britain, was engaged to Angus James Bruce Ogilvy, the second son … Read more
In 1933, Unity Mitford, a teenage British aristocrat, traveled to Germany and met Adolf Hitler for the first time. She became obsessed, moved to Munich, and began tracking his daily routines,…
The bullet entered Unity Mitford’s skull on the morning of September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany. She had shot herself in a Munich park, and the bullet did not kill her. It lodged in her head, inoperable, and she lay unconscious in a Munich hospital while Hitler paid her medical bills … Read more