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Im Herbst des Jahres 1881 unternahm eine Frau namens Nettie Boggs eine Reise, die sie für den Rest ihres Lebens zu vergessen versuchte. Sie war dreiundvierzig Jahre alt, breitschultrig, mit ruhigen Händen, und sie hatte in den Hügeln des Owsley County in Kentucky Kinder zur Welt gebracht, solange die Menschen dort zurückdenken konnten. Sie hatte … Read more

On June 25, 1876, more than six hundred United States Army soldiers rode in columns toward the valley of the Little Bighorn River in southern Montana. By the following morning, over 260 of them were dead, including their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Every man under his direct command had been killed. Not … Read more

In September 2009, a federal bankruptcy court in Rochester, New York, received a Chapter 11 filing from the Jolt Company, Inc. The company had not been beaten by Coca-Cola or Pepsi, nor banned by regulators, nor abandoned by consumers. It was undone by 90 million cans. The founder, the man who built the brand from … Read more

In the summer of 1853, the slums of Glasgow were a world away from the city’s proud shipyards and grand cultural institutions. The Industrial Revolution had made Glasgow a powerhouse of trade and manufacturing, drawing thousands of people into its crowded tenements. For the working poor, life meant cramped rooms, shared walls, and the constant … Read more

On the morning of July 2, 1863, Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, a lieutenant colonel in Britain’s Coldstream Guards, climbed a tree on a low ridge south of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was not spying. He was a guest of the Confederate Army, an observer with a notebook and a sharp eye, and from his perch he … Read more

Susan Hayward arrived in Hollywood as a Brooklyn girl with a limp, a determination to succeed, and a name that was not even her own. Born Edythe Marrenner on June 30, 1917, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, she grew up in a tenement where money was always short. Her father worked as a transportation … Read more

In March 1847, a Savannah cotton merchant named Charles Dennison stopped to water his horse beside a small plantation in rural Central Georgia. As the morning fog lifted, he saw something that stopped him cold: children emerging from the slave quarters with pale skin and unmistakably European features. Twelve of them, ranging from toddlers to … Read more

In 1903, a survey team for the Ordnance Survey broke through the sealed basement of a former convent at Pembley, near the river Derwent. They were mapping foundations for a planned railway extension. Behind a bricked-up doorway in a chamber closed for an estimated eighty to one hundred twenty years, they found fourteen women seated … Read more

In July 1976, a government report landed on the desk of Sir Angus Ogilvy in his study at Thatched House Lodge, the grace-and-favour home inside Richmond Park that he shared with his wife, Princess Alexandra, the Queen’s cousin. The report was bound, printed, and addressed to Parliament, and his name appeared on page after page … Read more

In war, women faced disadvantages that men did not, and the racial doctrines of Nazi Germany made that imbalance immeasurably worse. By dehumanizing entire populations, the regime instructed its soldiers to treat so-called non-humans without conscience, pity, or even discomfort. The consequences for women in occupied territories were brutal, systematic, and often fatal. The roots … Read more