PN1501 The first documented quick-draw gunfight in the American West took place not in a dusty frontier town, but in Springfield, Missouri, on July 21, 1865. The confrontation between Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt began over a gambling dispute and escalated into a deadly duel that would cement Hickok’s legend. Tutt, a local gambler, had … Read more
In 1956, a young man in Buenos Aires began dating a girl named Sylvia Hermann. He did not know that her father, Lothar Hermann, was a half-Jewish German lawyer who had survived the Dachau concentration camp. The young man spoke openly about his father’s role in the Nazi regime. Four years later, Israeli agents pulled … Read more
Historians have spent decades trying to separate fact from legend when it comes to Billy the Kid, and new research continues to raise questions about the outlaw’s early life that the classic frontier stories never addressed. One of the most persistent mysteries concerns his mother, Catherine McCarty, whose background and family connections remain clouded in … Read more
Stoję za mikrofonem, a przede mną nie jest tłum obcych. To jest tłum, który zna każdą brudną sprawę tej rodziny, każdycień sekret, każdą drobną zdradę opakowaną w uśmiech. I mimo to wszyscy przyszli, bo na Południu lojalność wobec rodzinnego stołu to religia sama w sobie. Światła wiszących latarni kładły się na gościach, a ja czułam … Read more
Frank Stilwell wasn’t the most famous outlaw in the American West, but his name is tied to one of the darkest chapters in the history of Tombstone. He was a saloon owner, a livery stable operator, and a former deputy sheriff, as well as a close companion of the Cochise County cowboys. To some, he … Read more
On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, marking the beginning of the Second World War. After defeating the Polish Army, the Germans ruthlessly suppressed the Poles, whom they considered racially inferior. In the weeks following the attack, German SS, police, and militia units shot thousands of Polish civilians, including many members of the nobility, … Read more
Few German generals impressed Hitler and the Nazi leadership in the final months of World War II as much as Ferdinand Schörner. His reputation rested less on tactical brilliance than on brutality. Schörner stood apart from nearly all of Hitler's senior army commanders because of his humble origins. Born in Munich in 1892 to a … Read more
In May 1945, outside Frankfurt, an American soldier at a checkpoint noticed a girl approaching. She looked about 15 years old, thin and exhausted, her dirty clothes hanging loose on her frame. She was carrying a baby. The soldier raised his hand. Stop. The checkpoint was closed to civilians. But the girl kept walking, slowly, … Read more
In April 1945, as General George S. Patton's column moved through a small German town, a woman appeared at a checkpoint on the main road. She was not a refugee and she was not asking for passage. She had walked from a building three streets away, an orphanage that had stood on the same site … Read more
In April 1945, the Third Army was 12 miles from the end of the war in Europe. Among the many Americans serving in its ranks was Lieutenant Margaret Chen, a Red Cross nurse who had been in Europe since June 1944. She had spent 10 months in field hospitals, working through the night when it … Read more