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By late April 1945, the Third Reich existed mostly on paper. Soviet forces had reached Berlin, the Western Allies were pushing through Germany, and the man who once commanded millions controlled little more than a few city blocks beneath the Reich Chancellery. The Führerbunker had been built in two phases, first in 1936 and then … Read more

The popular image of the Old West—constant gun battles, lawless towns, and heroic white cowboys riding into the sunset—is largely a Hollywood invention. In reality, much of life on the frontier was more practical, more diverse, and often far less dramatic than the films suggest. While conflicts and violence did occur, the notion that the … Read more

In the summer of 1940, Hermann Göring flew to the Pas-de-Calais and asked his top flight commanders what they needed to finish off the RAF. One of them answered with a single request: a squadron of Spitfires. The remark ended the meeting and started a feud. The pilot who said it was Adolf Galland, and … Read more

Nelson Rockefeller, the billionaire heir, four-term New York governor, and former vice president, died on January 26, 1979, in a way that shattered the carefully constructed image he had maintained for decades. The 70-year-old suffered a massive heart attack at a private townhouse on West 54th Street in Manhattan, not at his office as his … Read more

On the evening of April 23, 1911, a woman in British Malaya shot a man six times on the veranda of her home. The shooting itself was not in dispute. What divided the public, the press, and the courts was whether Ethel Proudlock, the wife of a respected school administrator, had acted in self-defense or … Read more