l2910 Jimmy Bryant didn’t just play the guitar. He attacked it with a speed and aggression that made him the fastest guitarist of his era, a virtuoso whose technique anticipated the rise of rock and roll and the shredders of the 1980s by decades. But his astonishing speed was born from trauma, the defining trauma of … Read more
Kun astuin sisään maalaistalon ovesta, jonka edesmennyt vaimoni Lena oli kieltänyt minua lähestymästä koko 23 avioliittovuotemme ajan, Magdalena Vasquez nousi keittiöntuolilta. Hän katsoi minua noin neljä sekuntia sanomatta mitään. Sitten hän sanoi odottaneensa minua. Lena oli kertonut hänelle yksitoista viikkoa ennen kuolemaansa, että minä lopulta astuisin tuosta ovesta sisään, ja että kun se tapahtuisi, Magdalenan … Read more
George Burns had already lived an extraordinary life before he reached his final milestone. The vaudeville star, born January 20, 1896, built a legendary partnership with his wife Gracie Allen, dominating radio, television, and film for decades. After Gracie’s death, he reinvented himself and won an Oscar at age 80 for The Sunshine Boys. He … Read more
Born in Hungary in 1849, Mary Katherine Horony would become known to history as Big Nose Kate, the woman most often remembered simply as Doc Holliday’s companion. But her life involved far more than her famous and volatile relationship with the tubercular gambler and dentist. Kate was born on November 9, 1849, in Rév-Komárom, Hungary, … Read more
A song that became one of the most beloved wedding anthems of all time did not begin as music at all. “We’ve Only Just Begun” first captured public attention as a soundtrack for a California bank commercial in 1970. Songwriters Paul Williams and Roger Nichols wrote a quiet, cheerful tune for a television advertisement depicting … Read more
In September 1327, a deposed English king died inside a small stone chamber at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. The official record attributed the death to natural causes, but witnesses and chroniclers spoke of murder, and the mystery has never been fully resolved. The death of Edward II, and the family that held him prisoner, became … Read more
A 22-year-old Union private was shot just below his right collarbone on July 2, 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg. The bullet tore through his lung and exited his back, collapsing the lung instantly. Surgeons at a makeshift hospital on Baltimore Pike did not expect him to survive. His name was Adalbert Clinton Sherman, a … Read more
The 1962 royal premiere of *Lawrence of Arabia* at the Odeon Leicester Square in London almost never happened. Days before the screening—set for December 10th, with members of the royal family expected and the world’s press assembled—one of the only existing 70mm prints was severely damaged in transit. Producer Sam Spiegel’s team coordinated an international … Read more
On the last night of 1897, a family stood outside a closed bedroom door in a seaside mansion on the Maine coast, waiting for news they already feared. Inside was Lucille Pulitzer, the 17-year-old eldest daughter of Kate Davis Pulitzer and her husband Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper magnate whose name is still spoken aloud each … Read more
For more than a decade, Carol Wayne was a beloved regular on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, known for playing the innocent “Tea Time Movie” sidekick who delivered double entendres with a perfectly blank face. But by 1984, her career had collapsed. She had filed for bankruptcy, was struggling with substance abuse, and had … Read more