PN1501 Just after 8:00 in the morning on September 27, 1864, a train pulled into the depot at Centralia, Missouri. The town held maybe 500 people. The platform was dusty, and the air smelled like goldenrod and late summer heat. On board were 23 Union soldiers, mostly boys from the 100th Missouri militia, heading home on … Read more
When Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, he was a symbol of strength and power. He was tall, handsome and athletic, and he excelled in physical feats. By the time he approached death in January 1547, he was a shadow of his former self. His waist measured 52 inches and his chest around … Read more
In the final months of World War II, Adolf Hitler turned against the men who had once led his armies. His distrust of the German High Command became total, and even his most decorated officers were dismissed, accused, or condemned as the Reich collapsed. After the capitulation in May 1945, Germany's generals faced an uncertain … Read more
In December 1944, during the frozen misery of the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers of General George S. Patton Jr.'s Third Army found a wounded German SS officer slumped against a shattered oak tree. He was bleeding into the snow, but it was not his wounds that stopped them. Around his neck hung a necklace … Read more
The concentration camp system of the Second World War was run by SS commandants who imposed reigns of terror, brutality, and mass killing. Some camps were so large that different commandants ran specific parts of the site. Yet many of these men were married, and their wives sometimes lived with them just a short distance … Read more
Zanim ktokolwiek na świecie usłyszałby o tym, co się wydarzy, zanim czyjekolwiek oczy zdążyłyby to dostrzec, zapadała cisza. Nie ta przyjemna, sycąca cisza, która kończy udaną kolację. To było coś gęstszego, cięższego, jakby powietrze wokół nas zastygło w oczekiwaniu na wyrok. Kiedy Maverick Miller wstał zza stołu, poczułam to. Cała moja ostrożność, wyczulona przez lata … Read more
After the liberation of the concentration camps, the full extent of Nazi horrors was finally exposed to the world. People demanded justice for the unspeakable atrocities committed during World War II. Millions of lives were lost in the death camps. Holocaust survivors who had witnessed and experienced the Nazis' barbarism firsthand wanted those responsible to … Read more
Wyatt Earp and his posse rode into the Whetstone Mountains with revenge driving every step. Morgan Earp had been shot dead days earlier, and Wyatt was hunting the men he held responsible. When the group reached a remote water source on March 24, 1882, they found armed cowboys — and Earp later claimed he recognized … Read more
On July 12, 1864, Fanny Kelly was 19 years old, standing beside a wagon at Little Box Elder Creek in what is now central Wyoming. Within minutes, three of the men she loved would be shot dead on the ground beneath her feet. Her adopted daughter would be dragged onto a horse. She would begin … Read more
On April 16, 1945, American military police knocked on the doors of grand villas across Weimar, Germany. They delivered identical orders to the doctors, lawyers, professors, and politicians' wives who answered: put on your coats, you're taking a walk with General Patton. Nobody told them where they were going. Nobody told them what they would … Read more