Mordecai Granger, a 47-year-old logger living alone on the edge of the remote Appalachian settlement of Ashenvale, spent the autumn of 1887 watching his neighbors gather around an abandoned town well in the dark, moving in perfect, silent synchronization as they struck the ground with tools—even though the earth never showed a mark. The well … Read more
BUDAPEST — In the shattered aftermath of World War II, across the ruins of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, a brutal and deliberately humiliating form of public execution was resurrected to punish those accused of betraying their nations — and among the condemned, women were marched before enormous crowds to die on wooden posts in spectacles designed … Read more
At 3:10 a.m. on August 21, 1942, some 900 Japanese soldiers burst out of the jungle darkness at Guadalcanal, shouting "fix bayonets," and charged straight into the American Marine line dug in behind barbed wire along a shallow stream known as Alligator Creek. The man who sent them was Colonel Kiyonao Ichiki. He was 50 … Read more
In the autumn of 1888, a party of surveyors was mapping a spur of the Great Smoky Mountains for a railroad company that would never lay track. Above a place the locals called Salt Fork Hollow, they found a door set into the side of the mountain. The door hung on iron hinges hammered by … Read more
During the Second World War, the Third Reich established a vast network of concentration camps and extermination camps with one ultimate goal: mass murder. Many guards at these sites earned notorious reputations for their cruelty. Joseph Kramer, known as the Beast of Belsen, was commandant of Bergen-Belsen and became infamous for brutal treatment and conditions … Read more
The green sequined costume Marilyn Monroe wore in the 1956 film "Bus Stop" was one of the most memorable outfits of her career. Designed by Fox costume designer William Travilla, it was a form-fitting, shimmering ensemble worn during the saloon singing scene where she performed "That Old Black Magic." The costume was carefully preserved after … Read more
A convicted Nazi concentration camp guard who brutalized prisoners with a whip, kicked dying women in the face, and coerced young female inmates into sexual relationships in exchange for food and medicine died alone and forgotten in a West Berlin hospital kitchen — her name barely a footnote in the annals of Holocaust justice. Anneliese … Read more
In the summer of 1961, Peter Lawford's beach house in Santa Monica had become an unofficial West Coast White House. It was a place where Hollywood glamour met political power, where movie stars and senators mingled at parties that lasted until dawn. At the center of it all, increasingly visible and increasingly controversial, was Marilyn … Read more
High on a mountain that appears on no modern map, an old woman keeps a fire, a shotgun, and a rule. She will not open her door after dark. Not for any voice. Not for any face. Not for anyone she has buried. She calls herself Verly, and she would not give a last name. … Read more
BASTOGNE/ARDENNEN — Es war ein Manöver, das Militärexperten beider Seiten für schlichtweg unmöglich hielten: Innerhalb von nur 72 Stunden wandte General George S. Patton seine gesamte 3. US-Armee um 90 Grad nach Norden, um 10. 000 eingeschlossene amerikanische Fallschirmjäger vor der drohenden Vernichtung zu bewahren. Am Morgen des 16. Dezember 1944 hatten mehr als 200. … Read more