PN1501 Marie Catherine Laveau is believed to have been born in 1801 in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Her mother was Margarite de Cantrell, a freed slave, and her father was Charles Laveau, the illegitimate son of a surveyor and politician who became mayor of New Orleans. Both of her parents were free people … Read more
Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy-Carignano was born in Turin, Italy, on September 8, 1749. She was the daughter of Louis Victor of Carignano and Landgravine Christine of Hesse-Rheinfels-Rotenburg, both of whom were descended from European royalty. She was said to have a pretty head with luxuriant blonde hair that, when it broke free of its … Read more
On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn knelt on the scaffold and gave a calm, composed speech. She said nothing bad about the king who was about to kill her. Somewhere inside the palace, Jane Seymour was already waiting to become queen by morning. History has long called Anne the seductress who destroyed a marriage, and … Read more
Uporządkowałam twarz w jego ramionach, a on trzymał mnie tak, jakby bał się, że zniknę, gdy tylko mnie puści. To była pierwsza chwila od bardzo dawna, kiedy czułam, że mogę odetchnąć. On też to czuł, widziałam to w jego oczach. Ale w tle dudnił mi jeszcze dźwięk tamtego budynku, a teraz tutaj, w naszym korytarzu, … Read more
In August 1866, families on the Texas frontier faced violence from multiple directions. Two attacks on the same day, hundreds of miles apart, illustrate the dangers settlers encountered in the months after the Civil War. The better-known episode is the massacre of the Box family in Montague County, in northern Texas. James J. Box lived … Read more
In the county of Norfolk, a few miles south of Norwich, sits the small village of Ketteringham. Like thousands of villages across Great Britain, it has its own sign. But this particular sign is unique, because it was carved by a former Waffen SS soldier who was also an Englishman and a traitor. His name … Read more
In the early 1860s, the western frontier of Texas was a place of promise and peril. One family's story, near Mason, Texas, became a lasting legend of the Comanche wars. It began in Fredericksburg in the late 1850s, at the far edge of the German settlements in the Apache Hill Country. John Todd stopped his … Read more
The story of the Bard family offers a stark window into the violence that defined the western Pennsylvania frontier during the French and Indian War. Between 1754 and 1763, the French allied with Native tribes including the Delaware and Shawnee, who launched attacks on English colonists living along the western border near the Allegheny Mountains. … Read more
In August 1866, as Texas settlers were still reeling from the end of the Civil War, a series of American Indian raids along the western frontier brought tragedy to families in Montague County and far to the southwest in Menard County. Among the most harrowing was the attack on the Box family, a story preserved … Read more
The final years of King Henry VIII are remembered for executions, dissolved monasteries, and a break with Rome that reshaped English religion. But the medical records and eyewitness accounts of his last months describe something far more disturbing than political tyranny. They describe a man rotting from the inside out. Henry's decline began with a … Read more