l2910 The jar weighed about four pounds. It was glass, sealed with wax, and filled with brandy—because brandy was what Captain Harry Love had available at his camp on Cantua Creek under the blazing California sun in late July 1853. What he needed, and what the state of California required before paying $6,000 to any man … Read more
A man once walked through Caroline Astor’s mansion on Fifth Avenue with a tape measure and recorded the exact length of her staircase railing. In the spring of 1926, those measurements were printed in an auction catalog under lot 160, offering the entire decorative ironwork of the house for sale to the highest bidder. Bidders … Read more
On the morning of April 26, 1865, a tobacco barn burned in the gray pre-dawn light on a quiet Virginia farm. Inside, a young man lay on the straw, no longer able to move his hands or feet. Soldiers stood in a circle around the fire and watched him die. Two weeks earlier, that same … Read more
When Susanna York learned she had been nominated for an Academy Award without being consulted, her reaction was not gratitude but outrage. The British actress publicly rebuked the Academy in 1970, saying she was “offended to be nominated without being asked,” a stunning display of defiance from someone on the cusp of Hollywood stardom. She … Read more
For more than ten years after one of the most famous battles in American history, the public had only heard one side of the story. Every surviving account, every newspaper column describing Custer’s Last Stand came from the men who had been defeated, retreating, or simply absent when the final fight happened. The victors remained … Read more
Federal records show that before Joseph Bonanno allegedly conspired to have Tommy Lucchese and Carlo Gambino killed, the New York mob boss had already been accused of plotting to murder another crime family leader—Los Angeles boss Frank DeSimone. According to FBI files, in 1961 Bonanno allegedly formulated a plan to take over the Los Angeles … Read more
In the summer of 1832, the American painter and traveler George Catlin stood on a low ridge overlooking the upper Missouri River and witnessed something he could barely bring himself to believe. A Sioux horseman, riding at full speed, drove an arrow into the shoulder of a massive bull buffalo estimated at 2,000 pounds. The … Read more
In 1861, the young Georgia poet Sidney Lanier, a recent Confederate Army enlistee, attended a mock medieval tournament in Kinston, North Carolina. Watching mounted Confederate officers dressed as knights competing for the honor of a local belle, he was enraptured. To him, the scene was a metaphor for the war itself—the South as a gallant … Read more
The destruction of three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 is often taught as a simple story of imperial arrogance meeting savage revenge. Tight lines of legionaries were supposedly overwhelmed by a screaming tide of barbarians pouring out from between the trees. That version survived for centuries, but it is wrong. The … Read more
Judy Garland was found dead on the morning of June 22, 1969, in the bathroom of a rented house in London’s Chelsea district. Her fifth husband, Mickey Deans, discovered the locked door and eventually climbed to the roof to look through the window. She was 47 years old, had been famous since she was a … Read more