PN1501 The Old West of popular imagination—clean streets, clear-cut heroes, and dramatic showdowns—largely ignores a far messier reality. Behind the famous lawmen and dusty legends lay a complex world where moral lines blurred, money often dictated justice, and many of the people who built the frontier were written out of the story entirely. Lawmen and outlaws … Read more
Wyatt Earp remains the best known of all the frontier lawmen of the American West. Soft-spoken and possessed of nerves of steel, he survived countless gunfights through extraordinary patience and a resolute manner. But Earp was not only the famous lawman of Dodge City and Tombstone fame. He was also a buffalo hunter, miner, car … Read more
The names Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have become as familiar as Romeo and Juliet. Their story has inspired countless books, songs, and movies. During their lifetime, they were blamed for almost every high-profile robbery in Texas and neighboring states, and a special unit was even created to catch them. For several years, all they … Read more
In March 1940, Nazi Germany approved the creation of a special combat unit made up exclusively of men serving prison sentences for poaching and related crimes. The decision followed consultations between Adolf Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler. The unit was intended to fight partisans in mountainous areas. Before long, murderers, psychopaths, sexual deviants, and … Read more
Maria Antonia of Austria was born on January 18, 1669, in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Her father was Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia. Her mother was Margaret Theresa of Spain, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain and Mariana of Austria. Both of her parents came from … Read more
On the morning of April 30, 1942, at Royal Air Force Duxford in Cambridgeshire, a Rolls-Royce test pilot named Ronnie Harker stood on a damp concrete apron studying an aircraft he had never flown. It was American, shipped across the Atlantic in pieces in a wooden crate stamped with the address of a factory in … Read more
In March 1945, a captured German Panzer general was brought to Third Army headquarters. He was tall and rigid, the kind of Wehrmacht officer who still believed Germany could win. His uniform was immaculate despite days in captivity, and his Iron Cross was still pinned to his chest. Intelligence officers wanted to interrogate him about … Read more
Millions of Americans romanticize the Wild West as an era of rugged cowboys, untamed spirits, and trailblazing pioneers, but historians and health experts are now warning that the frontier’s legendary hygiene habits were far deadlier than any gunfight ever staged on a dusty main street. From whiskey consumed as a full meal to cocaine-based toothache … Read more
MINNESOTA TERRITORY, August 1862 — A survivor of the Dakota uprising has provided a harrowing first-person account of the violence that swept across southwestern Minnesota this summer, describing the murder of her family, her abduction by warriors, and the brutal sexual assaults she endured while held captive, in testimony that has now emerged from a … Read more
Colonel William Crawford, a veteran frontier commander leading a 465-man militia expedition against British-allied Indian towns along the Sandusky River, was burned alive at the stake, his bones reduced to “almost ashes,” according to the harrowing eyewitness account of Dr. John Knight, the expedition’s surgeon, who escaped captivity after bludgeoning his guard and walking nearly … Read more