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On September 24, 2021—exactly 50 years to the day after two boys found Maureen Brubaker Farley’s body in a wooded ravine near Cedar Rapids, Iowa—police finally confirmed who killed her. The answer was a name that had been on investigators’ suspect list since the very first weeks of the case. George M. Smith, a diner … Read more

In 2023, historian Dr. Elena Wells discovered a striking photograph while preparing an exhibition on Boston’s industrialist families. The sepia image, dated June 15, 1910, shows Richard Matthews, a successful textile merchant, standing with his wife Elizabeth and their three children in their Victorian parlor. The family’s fine clothing, Persian rugs, and mahogany furniture attested … Read more

She could not read a single word. Yet she raised the boy who would become Abraham Lincoln, the president who held a fractured nation together. She gave him everything she had—a floor, a book, a name. And in their final farewell, she told him to his face that his enemies would kill him. He smiled … Read more

In September 1942, a 29-year-old man walked into the gymnasium of St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey, to meet the football team he would coach for the first time. His name was Vince Lombardi. That same month, American men his age were shipping off to military service across the country, with the draft … Read more

Ralph Wagner described a moment that stayed with him for decades, recalling a conversation with Vito Genovese that ended with a kiss and a warning. Wagner said Genovese compared a situation to buying a barrel of apples, noting that one touched apple must be removed before it spoils the rest. After making that point, Genovese … Read more

The Widener family had already booked their return passage on the Titanic when Harry Widener wrote home with excitement about the new ship, the largest and most luxurious vessel ever built. He was looking forward to the return crossing. Eleanor Widener, his mother, had just completed Miramar, the family’s new summer estate. She had not … Read more

Meline Khan was one of comedy’s most brilliant performers, a woman who could command a stage with a single raised eyebrow and whose untimely death left a hole in the world of entertainment that has never quite been filled. Yet behind the laughter she provoked, Khan wrestled with deep insecurities and private demons that stood … Read more

On the night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson made a decision that would echo through American history. Without orders from Washington, he moved his small Union garrison from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. This clandestine move, carried out in the darkness, may well have been … Read more

In 1869, Joseph Campbell and Abraham Anderson opened a small canning operation in Camden, New Jersey, packing tomatoes, vegetables, jellies, and minced meat. Anderson left within a few years, and by 1894, Campbell himself had retired, leaving the presidency to a man named Arthur Dorrance. The business was stable and profitable, but nothing about it … Read more