The Mi-24 Hind is often described as the meanest-looking helicopter ever built, and it was certainly one of the most capable. It first appeared on the world stage in 1972 and was both respected and feared. The Hind was fast, agile, heavily armed, and heavily armored. Its armor was bullet-resistant up to 12.7 millimeter caliber … Read more
On the night of July 8, 1961, a red Corvette sped down Lenox Avenue in Harlem and slammed into the back of a Cadillac stopped at a red light at 125th Street. The crash was loud, metal on metal. The rear of the Cadillac crumpled. The Cadillac belonged to Bumpy Johnson, the Harlem underworld figure … Read more
For Michael Franzese, the answer depends entirely on which stage of his life you mean. He breaks his time in the Colombo crime family into three distinct phases: his years as an associate, his years as a formally inducted soldier, and his years as a caporegime, or captain. Each phase looked different. Each came with … Read more
Three days after the shooting stopped, they found him with his eyes open. Two bullets had struck George Armstrong Custer, one through the chest and one through the temple. Around him on a bare Montana hilltop lay roughly 40 more men in a rough, broken circle, stripped of clothing, some mutilated beyond recognition in the … Read more
In February 1950, a low-level mobster named Vincent Romano walked into the Seavoy Ballroom in Harlem and insulted the wife of Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson in front of a crowd of killers. Three days later, his body was pulled from the East River. No one was ever charged. No one ever would be. The story begins … Read more
It was late morning on June 27, 1876, and a young lieutenant was walking across a hill in Montana Territory that smelled like a slaughterhouse. The grass was trampled, the sun already high. Bodies lay everywhere, hundreds of them, stripped, swollen, and cut in ways he would never be able to describe in his official … Read more
Former mob boss Michael Franzese says he has traveled the world, visiting Southeast Asia, Europe, Australia, and across America, and that everywhere he goes he gets the same three questions. The first is where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. The second, which he calls unfortunate, is whether he ever killed anyone. The third is where all … Read more
On September 30, 1938, Adolf Hitler stood at the peak of his influence in Munich, Germany. With the stroke of a pen, he secured the Sudetenland without firing a single shot. The Munich Agreement, also signed by Britain and France, left Czechoslovakia betrayed and weakened, its borders stripped and its defenses shattered. Just months earlier, … Read more
George S. Patton was one of the most famous American generals of World War II. His celebrity has endured for more than 70 years, placing him alongside Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur as household names. Patton led armies to victory in North Africa, Sicily, France and Germany. In the final campaign, his forces raced … Read more
Pamela Beryl Digby was born on March 20, 1920, at Farnborough in Hampshire, the eldest daughter of a family whose blood was old and whose money was thin. Her father, Edward Kenelm Digby, was the 11th Baron Digby, master of Minterne, a handsome house set in the green folds of Dorset. It was the picture … Read more