“Don’t give it to her.” The sergeant’s hand closed around Corporal Jimmy Hayes’s wrist. In Hayes’s other hand— a Hershey bar. In front of him— a German girl. Maybe seven years old. Blond pigtails. Shoes with holes in them. Cheeks hollow from hunger. She didn’t speak English. She didn’t need to. She simply held out … Read more
A woman buried in a Tuscan villa graveyard has a grave whose location was never made public. That obscurity is fitting, because almost nothing written about Marie Boozer during her lifetime—or in the 90 years after it—was entirely true, either. She was called the most beautiful woman in the Confederacy. She was also called a … Read more
On February 18, 1851, 14-year-old Olive Oatman watched as nearly her entire family was slaughtered by a group of Native American warriors along the banks of the Gila River in present-day Arizona. Only Olive and her eight-year-old sister, Mary Ann, were spared, and they were forced to march barefoot for four days to their captors’ … Read more
The private stood in front of six officers— and told them the forest was going to kill them. Nobody believed him. One captain laughed. Two others joined in. The colonel looked down at the map— then back at the twenty-two-year-old rifleman with mud frozen to his boots. “You saw German troops?” “No, sir.” “Armor?” “No, … Read more
After decades of banishment and scandal, Lettice Knollys was finally granted an audience with her former friend, Queen Elizabeth the First. But their long-awaited meeting was utterly heartbreaking. A woman in power is always a threat, but that went double for Elizabethan England. So when beautiful, wealthy, and educated Lettice Knollys managed to snag the … Read more
The German prisoner stepped off the train— looked across the green mountains of Oregon— and thought he had been sent to heaven. That was the terrifying part. Not because he was free. He wasn’t. There was barbed wire behind him. American guards carried rifles. The letters PW were painted across his uniform. Germany was collapsing … Read more
At 9:47 p. m. on April 28th, 1945, in the Fuehrer Bunker beneath Berlin, Adolf Hitler was clutching a BBC transcript with trembling hands. The broadcast had just confirmed his worst suspicion. Heinrich Himmler, his Reichsfuehrer SS, had attempted to negotiate a separate surrender with the Western Allies behind his back—and had been publicly rejected. … Read more
At 8:15 in the morning— Hiroshima disappeared beneath a flash of light. A single American bomb had fallen for forty-three seconds. Then the sky became fire. By the end of the day, tens of thousands of people were dead. Seven thousand miles away— ten German scientists were sitting inside an English country house. Eating breakfast. … Read more
On the morning of October 5, 1892, the Dalton Gang rode into Coffeyville, Kansas, with a plan no outlaw had ever dared attempt: robbing two banks at the same time. By noon, four gang members were dead in a dusty alley, and the town had paid a brutal price for its resistance. The Dalton Gang … Read more
Most people assume Wyatt Earp is buried in Tombstone, Arizona, close to the gunfight that made him a Wild West legend. Instead, his ashes rest in a Jewish cemetery near San Francisco, beside his longtime partner, Josephine Marcus. The grave at Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, California, surprises visitors because it reflects the … Read more