Blog Biz

Im Herbst 1865 wurde ein Wanderarzt namens Corin Latham in ein Tal in den westlichen Bergen Carolinas gerufen, um einen Jungen zu untersuchen, der nicht aufgehört hatte zu zittern. Der Junge war elf Jahre alt, das zweitjüngste von sechs Kindern der Familie Alderdle. Als Latham die Hütte erreichte, zitterte der Junge seit neun Stunden ununterbrochen. … Read more

On February 18, 1851, along the banks of the Gila River in the Arizona desert, fourteen-year-old Olive Oatman watched her family die. In roughly ninety seconds, her father, mother, and four siblings were struck down with war clubs by a group of about nineteen Yavapai warriors. Royce Oatman had knelt in the sand, exhausted after … Read more

The Gestapo had been the most feared secret police in Europe, enforcing Nazi rule through intimidation, surveillance, and terror. When the Third Reich collapsed in the spring of 1945, that power vanished almost overnight. As Allied forces closed in on Berlin, the institution that had relied entirely on the Nazi state dissolved within weeks. Officers … Read more

In London at the start of 1867, Máximo and Bartola were paraded before a paying audience in a church. Both were fully grown adults by then, and the old story that had made them famous had worn thin. So their handlers rebranded them as the Aztec Lilliputians, after the tiny inhabitants of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s … Read more

In December 1944, on a frozen field in northern France, Bing Crosby stood before roughly one hundred thousand battle-weary soldiers. It was the eve of the Battle of the Bulge. When he began to sing White Christmas, his famous baritone trembled and he fought back tears, aware that many of the young men before him … Read more

The American Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865, cost more than 600,000 lives and redefined the United States. At the center of that firestorm stood the generals who made split-second decisions that decided battles, campaigns, and ultimately the fate of the nation. Judged strictly by results, five men stand above the rest, drawn from … Read more

The divorce filing had already been explosive. When Lita Grey Chaplin went to court in 1927, she accused her husband, Charlie Chaplin, of seduction of a minor and detailed disturbing allegations about their marriage. Women’s organizations across California publicly called for a boycott of his films. Chaplin, at the height of his power as the … Read more

He was born Josiah Horner in Indiana in 1849, the son of a Confederate soldier, and by his mid-teens he was already shedding that identity for another. As a boy he ran away from home and attached himself to a Union officer’s unit, an early sign of an instinct that would define his life: Joe … Read more

Sawney Bean was said to have been born in East Lothian, Scotland, sometime in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Almost nothing is known about his origins, except that his father worked as a ditch-digger and hedge trimmer. The son apparently tried to learn the trade himself but had little success. He also worked … Read more

Min datter og hendes mand efterlod mig på en krydstogtskaj i Miami med et selvtilfreds smil og ordene: “Klare dig selv, gamle mand. ” Hvad de ikke vidste, var, at jeg ejede det shippingfirma, der havde bygget halvdelen af den terminal, og at de netop havde fejlet den eneste prøve, der nogensinde havde betydet noget … Read more