For nearly 60 years, Dolly Parton was married to a man the public almost never saw. No red carpets, no award show close-ups. In more than half a century of fame, there are barely a handful of photographs of Carl Dean that anyone can point to. Every time an interviewer asked about him, Dolly smiled … Read more
Es war der 17. Januar 1945, als an der Ostfront ein einzelner deutscher Soldat eine Beobachtung machte, die das Kräfteverhältnis im Kampf gegen den sowjetischen Schwerpanzer IS-2 für einige Wochen grundlegend verändern sollte. Oberfeldwebel Johann Kessler saß nach einem verlustreichen Gefecht auf einem umgestürzten Baumstamm und reinigte sein Gewehr. Seine Einheit hatte acht deutsche Panzer … Read more
On August 4, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. It was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon’s 14th birthday. She spent the evening at the Colosseum Theater in London. By the time the party was over, the country was at war. By the following summer, her family’s house in Angus had been converted into a hospital, and she was … Read more
In a letter written a decade after the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General John Bell Hood offered a rare, deeply personal account of the assault on Little Round Top—describing how he protested the orders three times before reluctantly sending his men forward. The letter was sent to General James Longstreet in 1875, who had reached … Read more
On January 14, 1979, Tommy DeSimone walked out of his house in Queens, New York, and got into a car with two men he knew. He was 28 years old. He believed he was on his way to becoming a made man in the Lucchese crime family. Instead, he was driving to his execution. His … Read more
In March 1945, near the Rhine River, a captured German command post served as a holding area for prisoners of war. Rain fell steadily on the roof as roughly 30 prisoners sat on long wooden benches inside. One man, however, refused to sit with the others. A young American soldier, Private First Class Thomas Jenkins, … Read more
The final months of World War II in Europe were defined by desperation. As the war turned decisively against Germany, the Nazi regime scraped together every available resource to defend the homeland. Elderly men were pulled from their homes and handed weapons to face the advancing Soviet Army. Anyone perceived as unwilling to fight was … Read more
The meeting at Windsor was supposed to be a routine family trusteeship session. It ended as something else entirely. Princess Anne did not raise her voice when she called the Queen a puppet. She set down the paper she was reading, waited for Camilla to finish her sentence, and then said it across a polished … Read more
In the autumn of 1959, in a hospital room in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, an elderly man lay in a bed, unable to move. He had undergone surgery that opened his throat. The voice that had once sentenced thousands of people to slow, screaming deaths was gone forever. Cancer was consuming him from within. Every swallow … Read more
Frances Ruth Burke Roche was born on January 20, 1936, at Park House on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The house had been leased to her parents by King George V, placing her family within the royal orbit from the moment of her birth. Her father, Maurice Roche, was the fourth Baron Fermoy, and her … Read more