On a foggy Kentucky morning, the body of Confederate Brigadier General Felix Kirk Zollicoffer lay in the mud, surrounded by curious Union soldiers. The Battle of Mill Springs was still raging on January 19, 1862, when a federal officer demanded to know why the men were not tending to the wounded. One soldier pointed to … Read more
In 1964, the FBI captured a remarkable conversation between two Philadelphia mobsters discussing the inner workings of the Mafia, thanks to a hidden microphone installed at the home of an informant. Rocco Scapiti, a made man in the Philadelphia crime family, had become an active FBI informant in 1963 after being inducted into La Cosa … Read more
Captain William Judd Fetterman was a decorated Civil War veteran who had led thousands of men through four years of the bloodiest combat the American continent had ever produced. When he arrived at Fort Phil Kearny in the frozen Wyoming Territory in November 1866, he carried with him the confidence of a man who believed … Read more
Rain in the Face, the famed Hunkpapa Lakota warrior and leader, played a significant role in the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry suffered a crushing defeat. Renowned for his ferocity and bravery, Rain in the Face carried a bitter personal hatred toward Custer, whom … Read more
The body of Alexander the Great was not yet cold when the men who had sworn to protect his legacy began tearing it apart. Inside the palace at Babylon in June 323 BC, his generals stood in a ring, hands on their swords, measuring the distance to each other’s throats. The man who had conquered … Read more
On the morning of April 3, 1882, in St. Joseph, Missouri, a small wooden house sat on a hilltop at 1318 Lafayette Street. Inside, a man finished his breakfast. He wore a clean white shirt and two holsters, having carried pistols for seventeen straight years. Noticing dust on a framed picture above the fireplace, he … Read more
On September 29, 2010, Tony Curtis died at his home in Henderson, Nevada. The 85-year-old actor, long battling chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, was surrounded by his paintings and personal belongings in the bedroom he loved, his wife Jill at his side. Cardiac arrest ended the life of a man who had spent decades constructing the … Read more
It was just before six in the evening on January 5, 1757, when a man who did not belong at the Palace of Versailles managed to approach King Louis XV of France and drive a small knife into his side. The wound was superficial. The king’s thick winter coat and vest had absorbed most of … Read more
A wounded Union lieutenant from the 142nd Pennsylvania Infantry, Jeremiah Hoffman, was shot in the hip during the first day of fighting at Gettysburg and carried by horseback to the Lutheran Theological Seminary while the building and its grounds were still under Union control. By the end of that day, Confederate forces had seized the … Read more
Distribution proved to be one of the greatest logistical failures of the Confederacy, and the strain of war exposed just how fragile the southern railroad system really was. While the North could rely on roughly 22,000 miles of track, the South had only 8,541 miles. That limited network was divided among 113 small railroad companies, … Read more