In the fall of 1937, a 61-year-old physician named Josiah Redfern sat alone in an empty lecture hall on the top floor of a building on Sycamore Street in Cincinnati, Ohio, sorting glass specimen jars that no one had asked him to preserve. The building housed the Eclectic Medical Institute, one of the last schools … Read more
The widow of a Kentucky farmer received the Medal of Honor on his behalf at the White House on June 26, 2018, in recognition of one of the most extraordinary individual actions of World War II. Pauline Conner, then 89 years old, stood beside President Donald Trump as the military formally honored her late husband, … Read more
In the years immediately following the Civil War, General George H. Thomas made a series of decisions that revealed a side of him rarely seen in military histories. A fellow officer who served under him in the Army of the Cumberland later recorded how the man known as the “Rock of Chickamauga” refused personal honors, … Read more
It was just after eight in the morning on May 19, 1536, when a woman in a dark gown stood at the narrow window of a stone chamber in the Tower of London, looking down at an empty wooden platform built for her. Anne Boleyn was, by law and ceremony, the Queen of England. In … Read more
Tom Landry was on a golf course in the Texas Hill Country when he saw the plane coming. He did not need anyone to tell him what it meant. When the aircraft landed and two men stepped out—Jerry Jones, who had owned the Dallas Cowboys for less than 24 hours, and Tex Schramm, the general … Read more
Microphones were concealed inside the light fixtures of a California resort hotel, their wires running through hollow walls, down an elevator shaft, and into a small ground-floor room where two soldiers wearing headsets transcribed what Japanese prisoners of war were saying to one another upstairs. According to the Army’s report on the facility, every building … Read more
Marie Osmond received the kind of late-night phone call no parent ever expects when her 18-year-old son died by suicide in Los Angeles on February 26, 2010. The loss devastated the entertainer, who had spent her entire life performing in front of millions, but it also forced into public view a private reality that had … Read more
A consistent image carved into stone across ancient civilizations has been documented for roughly five thousand years, yet mainstream archaeology has long classified it as decorative art. Now, researchers applying quantitative geometric analysis have concluded it likely represents a real physical object. The image in question resembles a handbag: a rounded base, a flat top, … Read more
In early September 1868, settlers around Colorado City faced a new wave of deadly raids as bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors swept through the region. The attacks came after the U. S. government had supplied the tribes with arms and ammunition under the promise they would be used only for hunting—a promise that was … Read more
Angie Dickinson, the iconic actress of Hollywood’s golden era, spent decades in the spotlight as a star of film and television. But behind her celebrated career and high-profile marriage to composer Burt Bacharach lay a private struggle that would define her life far more than fame ever did. Her only child, Lea Nikki Bacharach, was … Read more