Blog Biz

The first weeks of the new reign in Norway had already tested the royal family in ways nobody had foreseen. King Haakon and Queen Mette-Marit had barely settled into their new roles when the country was struck by two bereavements. The nation said farewell to King Harald, and soon afterward his sister, Princess Astrid, also … Read more

In July 1939, a thirteen-year-old girl stood at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and watched an eighteen-year-old cadet leap over tennis nets, eat a plate of shrimp with the appetite of a growing boy, and move through the afternoon with a careless confidence she had never once been allowed to possess. Princess Elizabeth, the … Read more

Charles VII of France ended his life the way he had begun it, in weakness and humiliation, but the two decades between were among the most dramatic in French history. When he was born, he was the eleventh child of a mad king, so far from the throne that no one expected anything of him. … Read more

In December 1976, a television movie showed a boy named John Curtis running home from school, humiliated, because his mother had hung his wet bedsheet from an upstairs window for the neighborhood to see. The film was called The Loneliest Runner, and it was not an invention in the usual sense. Michael Landon wrote it, … Read more

On September 21, 2004, a single gunshot changed Connie Culp’s life forever. The blast from her husband’s firearm tore away her nose, cheeks, mouth, and right eye, leaving her face destroyed beyond anything modern medicine had ever repaired. Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip, and chin remained intact. Hundreds of fragments of lead and … Read more

Hans Kammler walked through Auschwitz in 1943 like a foreman checking a construction site. He pointed out flaws, demanded improvements, and complained that the new gas chambers were not being used to full capacity. The design called for 2,000 people per session. They were only killing 1,500. Survivors who saw him that day remembered a … Read more

In the spring of 1879, Silas Vellacott died the way he had always said he wanted to go—working, out in the timber stand, when a tree came down at the wrong angle. He was fifty-three years old, and he had spent twenty-eight years on a farm cut into a narrow Appalachian hollow where the mountains … Read more

On December 2, 1892, Jay Gould died, leaving behind an estate valued at 72 million dollars, a sum approaching 2. 5 billion in today’s money. He was the most feared financial figure of the Gilded Age, controlling 10,000 miles of American railroads, roughly a tenth of the entire national network, along with Western Union. He … Read more

Just two days after the funeral of the King of Norway, his older sister, ninety-four-year-old Princess Astrid, passed away quietly. She had lived through the reigns of four kings and had been at her brother’s side from his birth until his death. But few people knew the remarkable story of her life. How did she … Read more

Oggi compio trentadue anni e mio marito, per la prima volta in sei anni di matrimonio, ha organizzato tutto da solo. Già questo avrebbe dovuto dirmi qualcosa. Marcus non è uno che organizza. È il tipo di uomo che dimentica di comprare il latte anche quando gli mando la foto del cartone vuoto. Il tipo … Read more