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A surgeon opened the chest of a dead queen in a Carpathian castle in July 1938 and removed her heart, exactly as she had ordered five years earlier. Marie, the last Queen of Romania, was 62 years old. Her written will, still kept today in a special collections room at Kent State University in Ohio, … Read more

In 1975, Larry John Wilson walked into a room filled with the emerging gods of outlaw country music: Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and a young Steve Earle. A documentary crew for the now-legendary film *Heartworn Highways* was rolling. When Wilson began to sing, the rowdy room fell silent. Wilson was a quiet, bear-like man … Read more

In August 1972, the most powerful horseman in America went shooting in Scotland and came home sick. Two weeks later, Arthur Bull Hancock was dead at 62, and his will did something nobody expected. It did not name an heir. It handed that decision to three men outside the family. They met and passed over … Read more

Esther Rolle, best known as the sharp-tongued Florida Evans on “Maude” and “Good Times,” died on November 17, 1998, at Brotman Memorial Hospital in Culver City, California. She was 78. The actress had suffered from diabetes and had been undergoing dialysis for several months before her death. Born November 8, 1920, in Pompano Beach, Florida, … Read more

Columbia Pictures turned Chic Young’s beloved comic strip into one of Hollywood’s longest-running B movie franchises, producing 28 Blondie films over 12 years. The series began in 1938 and ended in 1950, offering cheerful domestic comedy to audiences coping with the Great Depression and World War II. While the movies were reliably warm and funny, … Read more

In January 1948, a 15-year-old girl walked to the altar in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, and married a man six years her senior. She was already in love with him. Within months, she was pregnant. Her name was Loretta Webb, and she would go on to become Loretta Lynn, one of the most iconic figures in … Read more

For decades, the Lima State Hospital in Allen County, Ohio, held a singular place in American institutional history. Described by some as the finest building of its kind anywhere on Earth, the massive facility opened in July 1915 with 575,000 square feet of space, barred windows, seven towers, and 70,000 cubic yards of poured concrete. … Read more

At 8:30 a. m. on April 29, 2008, a hospital worker in Goldsboro, North Carolina, entered a dayroom carrying a breakfast tray and found a man sitting alone on a chair. The man, 50 years old, had been in that chair since 10 p. m. the previous evening. The worker patted his shoulder twice. The … Read more

Mae West built one of the most provocative careers in American entertainment, but the persona she presented to the public concealed a personal history she spent decades denying. The actress, who became a global symbol of sexual confidence and bold humor, was hiding a secret marriage that only came to light at the height of … Read more

In February 2018, a construction excavator in Sugar Land, Texas, unearthed a human bone at the site of a new career and technical school. By summer, archaeologists had recovered 95 bodies from beneath the building site. All were African American, buried between 1878 and 1911. They were not slaves—emancipation had come decades earlier. They were … Read more