History

Frances Bergen was the most beautiful woman in New York, a swan who dined with Truman Capote and charmed Ronald Reagan. But inside her own home, she lived a gothic nightmare. She was married to the most famous ventriloquist in the world, a man who gave his wooden dummy his own bedroom, his own wardrobe, … Read more

In the summer of 1911, two miners named James Hart and David Pugh filed a claim on a system of caves carved into the limestone cliffs above the Humboldt Sink in northern Nevada. They were not looking for history. They were looking for bat guano, a substance worth more than most minerals in that era … Read more

On 20 November 1947, Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten stood at the altar of Westminster Abbey, surrounded by the scent of incense and the weight of centuries, waiting to marry the future Queen of England. The world saw a fairy tale of diamonds and renewal, a brilliant signal that the British monarchy had survived the war. But … Read more

The door closed behind him, and for a moment the silence in Kensington Palace was absolute. Dr. James Colthurst set his medical bag on the polished table, opened it, and removed not a stethoscope but a standard cassette recorder. He pressed record. Across from him sat the Princess of Wales, her eyes carrying the exhaustion … Read more

By the spring of 1940, only three places in the United States knew how to build a submarine. Two belonged to the Navy, at Portsmouth in New Hampshire and Mare Island in California. The third was a private company, Electric Boat, at Groton in Connecticut. Every submarine the Navy ordered came out of one of … Read more

At 2:38 in the afternoon on July 8th, 1977, pump station 8 exploded. The federal accident report traces it to oil spraying out of a faulty strainer during the startup, where it found a source of ignition. Then the pump building burned. One worker was killed. Five more were hurt. Alyeska’s log records the oil … Read more

On the morning of July 14, 1933, a diver stood at the bottom of a pneumatic caisson in the Mississippi River at Waggaman, Louisiana, surrounded by air compressed to about 28 pounds per square inch above atmospheric pressure. He was 75 feet below the surface of the river. The water was above him. Around him … Read more

In the first months of 1942, American military codes were dying almost as fast as they were born. Japanese cryptographers were dismantling the communication ciphers of the United States nearly as quickly as those ciphers entered service, and the men using them knew it. Battle plans reached the enemy while they were still plans. The … Read more

On a single night in 1492, a family in Seville faced a choice that would define every generation that followed. Convert to Christianity by morning, or abandon everything they owned and sail into the unknown. Their name was ancient, carried by rabbis, merchants, and scholars who had lived in Spain for eight hundred years. By … Read more