In 1975, Pepsi launched an aggressive marketing strategy aimed directly at Coca-Cola’s dominance of the American soft drink market. The campaign, known as the Pepsi Challenge, sparked a decade-long advertising war between the two beverage giants that would become known as the Cola War. At the time, Coca-Cola controlled roughly 60 percent of the American … Read more
By the late 1980s, Pablo Escobar controlled as much as 80 percent of all cocaine entering the United States. His personal fortune was estimated at $25 billion, and Forbes magazine listed him among the richest people on the planet. His approach to authority became a philosophy known across Latin America as "plata o plomo" — … Read more
WASHINGTON — A family portrait taken in a Charleston photography studio in 1899 has stunned historians and geneticists after a routine high-resolution scan revealed that the youngest child in the photograph had six fully formed fingers on his right hand — a detail that had gone unnoticed for 124 years. The discovery, made in January … Read more
They were the women who had it all: the wives and mistresses of Nazi Germany's leaders. They lived gilded, luxurious lives at the expense of the state, were held up as symbols of perfect German womanhood, and often wielded considerable influence behind the scenes. So what happened to them and their children when their husbands … Read more
On July 16, 1999, at 8:38 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, a Piper PA-32R-301 Saratoga II received FAA clearance for takeoff from Essex County Airport in Fairfield, New Jersey. The pilot was John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., 38 years old. He held a private pilot certificate and had logged 310 hours of total flight experience. He was … Read more
In the autumn of 1944, First Lieutenant James Walker was assigned as a liaison officer to the 761st Tank Battalion, the Black Panthers, part of General George Patton's Third Army. Walker had grown up in rural Georgia, raised to believe that white men stood above black men in every way that mattered. The army had … Read more
On December 22, 2016, inside Montreal's Alexis Nihon complex, shoppers were thinking about Christmas lists and food court coffee. Then a small team of Canadian officers moved in with quiet purpose. No sirens, no Hollywood sprint. Just a hand on an elbow and a sentence spoken low. The man they took into custody was 73 … Read more
Before sunrise on April 9, 1984, hundreds of federal agents moved across New York, New Jersey, and Illinois without sirens or warnings. They struck homes, bakeries, and pizza parlors simultaneously. In Queens, agents stormed Catalano Brothers Bakery on Knickerbocker Avenue while the ovens were still cold. In New Jersey, they kicked in doors at small … Read more
When Lyndon Baines Johnson died of a heart attack at his Texas ranch on January 22, 1973, the American public watched a carefully orchestrated display of national mourning. Flags flew at half-mast, foreign dignitaries filled Washington National Cathedral, and military escorts carried the casket back to the family cemetery in Stonewall, Texas. The eulogies painted … Read more
On December 22, 2016, inside the Alexis Nihon complex in downtown Montreal, shoppers were thinking about Christmas lists and food court coffee. Then a small team of Canadian officers moved in with quiet purpose. There was no Hollywood sprint and no sirens, just a hand on an elbow and a sentence spoken low. Eight years … Read more