In 1931, Mahatma Gandhi walked through the grim industrial towns of Lancashire, England, to face the British mill workers whose livelihoods his boycott movement had destroyed. The British government feared he would be lynched by the angry unemployed crowds. Instead, the workers came out in thousands and cheered him. Gandhi told them he was not … Read more
In December 1944, a military court convened inside a damp stone schoolhouse near Metz, France. The winter air inside was cold enough that breaths turned to white mist. Six Black American soldiers sat on a wooden bench, their uniforms clean and their faces pointed straight ahead. They had come to tell the truth about what … Read more
In February 1962, Marilyn Monroe purchased a Spanish Colonial-style home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles for $75,000. It was the only property she ever owned independently, offering a private sanctuary from the pressures of Hollywood. The year 1961 had been especially difficult for the star of *Some Like It Hot*. Despite her celebrated … Read more
In June of 1970 at Royal Ascot, a princess not yet 20 and a cavalry officer of 30 were seen together often enough that the whole enclosure understood what it was watching. He was the most eligible man in the Household Cavalry, and for one season the queen’s only daughter wanted him. But Andrew Parker … Read more
On a crisp November evening in 1930, as the Great Depression gripped the nation, New York City’s elite gathered at the Ritz Carlton Hotel to celebrate the 18th birthday of Barbara Hutton, heiress to the monumental Woolworth store fortune. Guests from the most illustrious families of the age—the Astors, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and Rockefellers—were greeted by … Read more
In March 1945, General George S. Patton’s Jeep moved slowly through a recently captured German town. It was a routine inspection of the Third Army’s advance. A column of German prisoners was being marched along the same road. They were herded toward a collection point by a small detail of American guards. Most of the … Read more
On the afternoon of October 20, 1968, on a small island in the Ionian Sea, a Greek Orthodox priest prepared a small candlelit church for a wedding. The church was called Panagitsa, meaning the Little Holy Virgin Church. Rain fell on the island of Skorpios that day. Outside the courtyard, about 50 journalists who had … Read more
# A Friendship That Outlasted a Throne: The Story of Prince Philip and Hélène Cordet In the autumn of 1986, an elderly man traveled halfway around the world to sit in an office in Beijing, across from a university professor rumored to be his son. The man was the husband of the Queen of England. … Read more
Clint Eastwood was 62 years old when the screenplay for *In the Line of Fire* reached him, and he nearly turned it down. He believed the part of a Secret Service agent should go to a younger actor. Instead, the production rewrote the character to embrace his age, giving Frank Horrigan aching knees, a slower … Read more
A Union officer who survived the bloodshed at Gettysburg spent years fighting out West with the Buffalo Soldiers, only to be dishonorably discharged after showing up to roll call appearing intoxicated. He insisted he had been drugged, and his fight to clear his name took decades to resolve. Major William H. Hugo was serving with … Read more