The trapdoor opened under Thomas Ketchum in Clayton, New Mexico, on April 26, 1901. The rope took his head clean off. The body fell one direction, the head another. Photographers were already set up. The movies gave audiences the clean drop and the cut to black. The frontier gave something else entirely. What follows comes … Read more
Two documents written days before the Battle of the Little Bighorn expose the fatal command failures that doomed Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. The June 25, 1876, engagement, in which Custer and his men were annihilated by a united force of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho fighters, has been studied for nearly 150 years. … Read more
The boy did not own a razor. He had never needed one. At 14 years old, he marched away from his family’s farm in Caldwell County, North Carolina, with the 26th North Carolina Infantry, carrying a haversack packed by his mother with cornbread, two pairs of socks, and a Bible. She did not cry where … Read more
A newly surfaced letter is adding fuel to long-standing rumors that Marilyn Monroe was romantically involved with a member of the Kennedy family. The letter was written to Monroe by Jean Kennedy Smith, the sister of New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In the letter, Jean Kennedy Smith writes, "Understand that you and Bobby are … Read more
In the summer of 1944, inside a bunker buried under the pine forests of East Prussia, a German intelligence officer closed a file and made the most costly mistake of the Second World War. On the cover he wrote a single word: "Expected." Within thirty days, that one word would contribute to the deaths of … Read more
Vito Genovese was born on November 21, 1897, in Italy, to Felice and Nunziata Genovese. His parents were not wealthy, and like millions of other Italians at the time, they decided to seek a better life in the United States. In 1905, his father went to New York alone to work, sending money back to … Read more
George Herendine, a scout who rode with George Armstrong Custer’s column in 1876, provided a firsthand account of the march to the Little Bighorn, disputing many popular narratives about the famous battle. Herendine stated that considerable falsehood about the fight had spread through the Herald and other publications. He remained with Major Marcus Reno for … Read more
Bastogne, Belgien – Es war der 26. Dezember 1944, 16:45 Uhr, als die ersten Sherman-Panzer der 4. US-Panzerdivision durch den Schnee rollten und den Belagerungsring um Bastogne durchbrachen. 10. 000 amerikanische Fallschirmjäger der 101. Luftlandedivision, seit acht Tagen eingekesselt, dem Tod näher als dem Leben, waren gerettet. General George S. Patton hatte das Unmögliche wahr … Read more
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer rode toward his death on June 25, 1876, leading roughly 210 troopers of the 7th Cavalry into a Lakota and Cheyenne village along the Little Bighorn River that numbered in the thousands. The attack, meant to be a decisive strike, became one of the most devastating defeats in U. S. … Read more
The wives of Nazi Germany’s most powerful men lived at the center of a regime built on terror, and when the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, their privilege curdled into punishment, isolation, and in some cases, acts of horror that still shock historians today. From Magda Goebbels’ murder of her six children in Hitler’s bunker … Read more