On June 11, 1938, Hugh Lord rode away from his house in Saint Thomas, Nevada, with the rising water of Lake Mead at his front door. The town had stood where the Muddy River meets the Virgin since…
The dark opening at the waterline of Lake Oroville is the timbered mouth of a railroad tunnel, and the bare slopes around it are lake bed. The photograph was taken from a boat on July 17th, 2014, at Berry Creek, and the archive that holds the picture files it under the Western Pacific. In 2021, … Read more
On November 4, 1970, a nearly blind woman walked into a California welfare office seeking aid, accompanied by a small girl who shuffled with her hands raised like claws. The social worker sensed…
On the fourth of November 1970, a woman and a young girl walked into a social services office in Temple City, California. The woman was nearly blind and had come to inquire about benefits. The girl was with her. Almost immediately, the social worker noticed that something was wrong. The child appeared to be six … Read more
In September 1943, a twelve-year-old girl with dark braids pedaled her bicycle through the streets of Haarlem, passing Nazi checkpoints with a wicker basket on her handlebars. The soldiers glanced…
In September 1943, a young girl pedaled her bicycle through the afternoon shadows of Haarlem’s streets. Her dark hair was woven into two long braids that swung gently as she rode. She looked maybe twelve years old—innocent, harmless, the kind of girl you’d see carrying school books or running errands for her mother. Nazi soldiers … Read more
In 1900, Joshua Lionel Cowen was failing. His electric flower pot—a brass tube meant to light potted plants from below—had sold nothing, leaving him wNaN
In the winter of 1900, a twenty-three-year-old inventor named Joshua Lionel Cowen stood in a cramped, coal-stained workshop in New York City surrounded by batteries, brass tubes, and failed ideas. He was not trying to build toys. He had spent his efforts on industrial equipment: detonators, fuses for photographer’s flash powder, even designs for naval … Read more
1962 betrat ein 24-jähriger Amerikaner ohne Termin die Zentrale eines japanischen Schuhherstellers in Kobe. Gefragt, für wen er spreche, antwortete PhNaN
Er gehört zu den reichsten Menschen der Erde und zugleich zu den unsichtbarsten. Philip Hampson Knight, geboren am 24. Februar 1938 in Portland, Oregon, schuf mit Nike eine der lautesten Marken der Welt, während er selbst jahrzehntelang Interviews mied, Kameras auswich und seine Augen hinter dunklen Gläsern verbarg. Journalisten beschrieben ihn als einsilbigen Mann, der … Read more
In 1946, Ed Waldmire perfected a hot dog dipped in sweet cornmeal batter and fried on a stick at his drive-in in Springfield, Illinois, right on Route 66. He called it a Cozy Dog, and every family…
The air in the diner on the Texas Panhandle tasted of hot lard and coffee. A thin piece of cube steak, dredged in seasoned flour, dipped in egg, dredged again, and fried until the crust was as dark as fried chicken, lay on a plate under a flood of white pepper gravy made from pan … Read more
In December 1942, outside Stalingrad, a battle-hardened German platoon of 32 men moved through the ruins. The morning was eerily quiet. Then gunfire erupted from above, from the sides, from…
On December 15th, 1942, outside Stalingrad, a German platoon moved through the ruins. There were 32 men, battle-hardened, veterans of months of continuous fighting. The morning was quiet, too quiet. Snow covered everything. Then the shooting started—not from the front, but from above, from the sides, from nowhere and everywhere at once. Three men dropped … Read more
In 1936, the man who founded General Motors filed for bankruptcy listing assets of just $250—his clothes—against nearly $1 million in debt. William C.NaN
William Crapo Durant built General Motors on speed, leverage, and chaos, and the empire consumed him in return. Born in 1861 in Boston but raised in Flint, Michigan, Durant was a college dropout with a gift for salesmanship. He made his first fortune in the carriage business before turning to automobiles in 1904, taking over … Read more
In 1891, three sisters posed in a Vermont studio, arms linked, dressed in high-collared gowns. Two stared rigidly at the camera, as long exposures demanded. The youngest, Opal, tilted her head and…
Three girls stand side by side in a photograph taken in 1891, and one of them should not exist. Not in the way one might think. This is not about ghosts or double exposures or darkroom mistakes. It is about something far stranger. Marian Gephardt, a postal historian, stumbled into it on a wet Thursday … Read more
In 1929, an 82-year-old man checked into Virginia Beach’s grand Cavalier Hotel to recover from influenza. He was Adolf Coors, the German immigrant whoNaN
On the morning of June 5, 1929, a scream cut through the salt air at Virginia Beach’s most elegant hotel. A worker had discovered the crushed body of an 82-year-old man on the concrete patio below the sixth floor. The man was Adolf Kors, the immigrant who had built one of America’s greatest brewing empires. … Read more