Blog Biz

The American soldiers who walked into Dachau in the spring of 1945 had known they were marching toward a concentration camp, but knowing and seeing were two different things. What they found inside and around the camp grounds led some of them to open fire on the SS men who had been captured there. By … Read more

In the autumn of 1868, in the farmlands of western Pennsylvania, a nine-year-old boy named Timothy Vale survived the fire that destroyed his family’s home and killed his parents. When neighbors reached the charred farmhouse on the morning of October 3rd, they found the bodies of Elias and Mary Vale near the hearth, their hands … Read more

On the morning of June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led five companies of the U. S. 7th Cavalry into a valley that would become his grave. The Battle of the Little Bighorn, often remembered as Custer’s Last Stand, was a devastating defeat for the U. S. Army and a defining moment in … Read more

Darius Nash Couch was born on July 23, 1822, on his family’s farm near Southeast in Putnam County, New York. He was the second of three children born to Jonathan and Elizabeth Couch, and his grandfather Thomas Couch had fought in the Revolutionary War. After attending local schools, Couch secured an appointment to the United … Read more

On a Saturday afternoon in June 1997, two sisters left their apartment in Muncie, Indiana, and walked three blocks to a corner convenience store. Brenda Shafer, 24, carried a ten-dollar bill and a list of four items. Her sister Gina, 19, wore her favorite green jacket and had come along simply for the walk. They … Read more

Linda Kozlowski walked into an audition room as an unknown. Within months, she was starring opposite one of the biggest new stars on Earth. Within a year, she had a Golden Globe nomination. Within five years, she married her co-star, raised their son, and lived a life that resembled a fairy-tale ending. Then she disappeared. … Read more

In 1961, White House employees under Jackie Kennedy signed a pledge. America interpreted their silence as loyalty. It was not loyalty. It was a written promise not to write about the White House, and the paper had no legal force. Her real design consultant was from Paris, and Washington hid his role. Then the press … Read more

On July 22, 1969, a 32-year-old woman in a pale coat and dark glasses walked down the aisle of St. Vincent’s Church in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, toward a closed casket. The woman inside was 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, who had died four days earlier in a car submerged in the water off Chappaquiddick Island. The man … Read more

On the morning of October 3, 1879, Junia Crowley walked out of her farmhouse in the far southeastern corner of Stillwater County, Kansas, crossed a half acre of browning bluestem grass, and stopped at the edge of a shallow draw the family called Blackroot. At its head stood a curb of dressed stone, about six … Read more

On the night of July 25, 1989, sixteen-year-old Fawn Marie Cox came home from her shift at Worlds of Fun amusement park in Kansas City, Missouri. She was saving her tip money to buy a car before her senior year of high school, and she was exhausted. By sunrise, she would be dead, strangled in … Read more