Wyatt Earp, one of the most famous lawmen of the American Old West, is not buried in Tombstone, Arizona. His cremated remains rest in a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California, inside the family plot of his longtime companion, Josephine Marcus Earp. The location stands in stark contrast to the frontier image the public associates with … Read more
One of the most feared figures of the Civil War era was never a traditional soldier. William Clark Quantrill led a band of irregular Confederate guerrillas whose tactics blurred the line between warfare and terrorism, and whose name remains synonymous with atrocity in parts of the American West. Quantrill was born on July 31, 1837, … Read more
On January 12, 1948, a 44-year-old historian died of cancer in a hospital in Hanover. His name was Hans Gerd von Rundstedt. Weeks earlier, his father had been allowed to leave a British prison camp to sit at his bedside before being taken back to England. That father was Gerd von Rundstedt, the German army’s … Read more
The 1870s in Texas saw John Poe trade buffalo hunting for a badge, building a reputation as a lawman. His steady aim and endurance on the trail carried into his later work keeping the peace. William Clark Quantrill left a violent mark on the Civil War. Leading Quantrill’s Raiders, he organized swift mobile strikes against … Read more
In September 1940, as London endured nightly bombing raids and the Royal Air Force battled German bombers overhead, Nazi intelligence officers in Berlin were studying maps of Britain and searching for weaknesses. Some believed victory might come not through force alone, but through politics. Files prepared by the SD, the Nazi intelligence service, explored how … Read more
Roman Emperor Caligula once reportedly burst into laughter during a dinner party, and when asked why, he replied that he had just realized he could give the order to have every guest’s throat cut. The anecdote captures the blend of cruelty and unpredictability that defined some of history’s most notorious rulers and criminals. Tsar Nicholas … Read more
Doc Holliday is remembered as one of the Old West’s deadliest gunmen, but the documented record of what he carried during the 1881 gunfight in Tombstone is far less precise than the legend. At the famous confrontation, he was connected to two very different weapons: a nickel-plated revolver and a short Wells Fargo shotgun. Neither … Read more
In the late summer of 1885, long before Arizona achieved statehood, the Pritchett family worked a remote farm in the Arizona Territory, roughly a day’s ride north of the Mexican border. The household consisted of Pa, six daughters—Rose, 30; Daisy, 28; Lily, 26; Iris, 24; Violet, 22; and Fern, 18—and a small herd of cattle … Read more
In the Old West, a saloon was governed by an unwritten set of rules, and breaking them could cost a man his life. These weren’t matters of fines or jail time; a single misstep could result in being shot before finishing a drink. The code of conduct was strict, and survival depended on knowing and … Read more
Princess Stephanie of Belgium’s marriage to Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria ended in one of the most infamous tragedies in European royal history. In January 1889, Rudolf and his teenage mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, were found dead at the imperial hunting lodge in Mayerling, each with a gunshot wound to the head. What appeared to … Read more