Blog Biz

On the morning of January 14, 1979, Thomas DeSimone stood before a mirror in his childhood home in Ozone Park, Queens, adjusting a tie that cost more than most people’s monthly rent. At thirty-two, six-foot-two and 225 pounds, he cut the figure of a man about to receive something he had wanted his entire criminal … Read more

In the summer of 1905, a wedding party gathered on the steps of a Methodist church in Pittsburgh. Margaret Whitmore, radiant in white lace, stood beside her groom, Thomas Anderson, while family and friends crowded around them for a formal photograph. The sepia image, preserved for over a century in a box of donated photographs, … Read more

On February 14, 2017, a team from the private company Sierra Deep Scan was running technical tests on a new high-resolution sonar system in the waters off Rubicon Point on the western shore of Lake Tahoe. The device was designed to map bottom topography in detail, and the operators were calibrating sensors over the steep … Read more

On July 2, 1863, General John Bell Hood reached the heights of Gettysburg with his staff just after sunrise. His division was ordered into an open field nearby, where the men stacked their weapons and waited for instructions. In the first hours of that morning, Hood joined Generals Robert E. Lee and A. P. Hill … Read more

The afternoon of June 25, 1876, along the dusty ridges above the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory, time ran out for Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and roughly 210 men riding with him. There was no grand, drawn-out epic, no heroic last stand as the paintings would later show. For most of those soldiers, … Read more

Around eleven o’clock on the morning of August 9, 1864, a stranger handed a dockworker a wooden candle box at City Point, Virginia, and said the captain was waiting for it on board a ship. The dockworker took it. Why wouldn’t he? Boxes passed from hand to hand all day, every day. Hardtack, saddles, powder, … Read more

On the evening of March 17, 1956, the Lenox Lounge on 125th Street in Harlem was moving at its usual pace. Cigarette smoke hung in layers under the lamps. Glasses clicked against the bar. In the back corner, at the table that belonged to one man only, Bumpy Johnson sat with his two closest associates, … Read more

In September 1959, Harlem was the center of the most sophisticated criminal enterprise in Upper Manhattan. Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson had spent two decades building an institution that generated revenues rivaling legitimate corporations, with policy numbers, real estate, and a protection network that operated like a professional service. At the operational center of this empire sat … Read more

Just before dawn on June 17, 1944, the jungle on the island of Saipan trembled. Diesel engines revved, tracks clattered over broken coral, and in the darkness, 44 Japanese tanks formed into columns. Type 95 light tanks and heavier Type 97s moved out under barking commanders, crews believing this was their chance to shove the … Read more

In April 1997, Victoria Gifford Kennedy and her husband Michael Kennedy issued a joint statement announcing their separation after 16 years of marriage. The statement was described as amicable. It requested privacy. It was carefully worded, the way statements written by lawyers are. Nothing was admitted, nothing was denied, and nothing was said that could … Read more