l2910 On the morning of December 12, 1910, a 25-year-old woman left her family’s mansion on East 79th Street in Manhattan, telling her mother she was going shopping for a dress. She carried about $25 in her pocket and wore a fur muff against the winter chill. She was educated, beautiful, and heir to one of … Read more
In 1985, a father-and-son team in Rochester, New York, launched a cola with 72 milligrams of caffeine per 12-ounce can—the legal maximum allowed by the FDA—and sweetened with real cane sugar. Joseph Rap, a retired bottler with four decades in the soft drink business, and his son CJ had spent six years testing more than … Read more
The Patton family never denied the existence of Jean Gordon. What they denied, for decades, was what she meant. Three official parties predicted how the story would end. The military believed the scandal would die with Patton. The family believed silence would preserve the official narrative long enough for the alternative version to stop feeling … Read more
In 1876, the United States sent one of its most celebrated officers to Montana to end Sitting Bull’s resistance. As George Custer crested a ridge, he saw far more encampments than expected. Undaunted, he lifted his hat and shouted, “Hurrah, lads. We’ve got them. ” He was approaching one of the largest Native American war … Read more
Los Angeles officials confirmed the body that arrived at the city morgue with a toe tag reading “unknown,” number 81,128. The disheveled figure curled in a cold-storage drawer seemed impossible to identify as Marilyn Monroe, the most celebrated sex symbol of the 20th century. She was found dead with the telephone receiver still in her … Read more
Walter James Bolton was born on August 13, 1888, in the small farming community of Mangamahu, about 50 kilometers from the city of Wanganui on New Zealand’s North Island. A polite child, he went to work on a local farm after finishing school, as many young men did at the start of the 20th century. … Read more
In September 2014, three men who had never worked for Coca-Cola pooled their own money and rented a billboard directly across the street from the company’s world headquarters in Atlanta. The sign was simple: a plea to bring back Surge, a neon green citrus soda that had been discontinued for 11 years. Fourteen days later, … Read more
Caroline Matilda was barely out of her early teenage years when she was sent away to become a queen. Almost immediately, she found herself trapped in a marriage that turned into a nightmare. Then she fell in love with another man, the king’s own physician. Their secret relationship unleashed whispered accusations, political conspiracies, and one … Read more
In the first weeks of their combat over occupied Europe, American fighter groups flying the P-47 Thunderbolt suffered heavy losses, often with little to show in return. German fighter pilots, who had honed their tactics since 1939, classified the heavy American fighter as a second-rate machine by every professional measure they applied. They studied its … Read more
Willard Erastus Christiansen lived a double life across the American West, moving between both sides of the law under aliases including Matt Warner, Ras Lewis, and the Mormon Kid. Born in Ephraim, Utah, in 1864 to a Danish father and German mother who had converted to Mormonism, his early years gave no hint of the … Read more