l2910 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
For more than two centuries, a weapon carried by Indigenous warriors across a vast stretch of North America has been misunderstood. It was a wooden club carved to look like the stock of a musket, and it was deadly in close combat — not because it fired a bullet, but because it crushed bone and … Read more
In the winter of 1871, a Viennese crystal assessor named Kasimir Brandt was called to a dismantled estate outside Salzburg to evaluate a set of chandelier components. His professional training had prepared him for nearly every grade of crystal that passed through the largest glassworks of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. What he found in those crates … Read more
By mid-August 1942, Australians with shortwave radios were picking up a familiar voice on Radio Tokyo. It belonged to Charles Cousens, a major with the 2/19th Battalion who had been taken prisoner at Singapore six months earlier. Before the war, he had been one of the best-known announcers on Sydney’s Radio 2GB. Four years later, … Read more
An eyewitness account of the final moments of Confederate Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill has been brought to light in a detailed narrative written by the man who rode beside him when he was killed. The account comes from Sergeant George Washington Tucker Jr. , a courier and trusted aide who was at Hill’s side … Read more