The dangers of time travel You have to admit you’ve at least thought about it before. What would it be like to fly back in time with a time machine? What would you want to see? The dinosaurs? The life of Jesus Christ? A historical event you’ve been...
The night before she died, Dorothy Kilgallen participated in the television show “What’s My Line” and correctly guessed the contestant’s occupation. The young woman sold dynamite. Kilgallen, a crack investigative and crime reporter, was sitting on a...
Real quick now: What are the first things that come to your mind when you think of the Texas frontier? Cowboys? Check. Rangers? Check. Indians? Check. Mexicans? Check. But how about paleontologists? Did you think about them, too? Fossil hunters...
Germany as a haven after the Lincoln assassination One of the lesser known aspects of the Lincoln assassination is the aftermath that played out in Germany. All the surviving occupants of the presidential box at Ford’s theater ended up moving to...
The lives of our forefathers send ripples through the generations, shaping who we are today. If one of those forefathers happened to be a U.S. President, he shaped both national and familial history. And if that forefather was assassinated in...
A royal funeral makes criminal history Black plumes bounced on the horses’ heads as they pulled the hearse through the rain and mud. The muffled hoofbeats foreshadowed change. Neither horse nor guard nor mourner could know the path before them led...
Hot evidence in a cold case New evidence in a 130-year-old unexplained death? It’s unusual, but it can happen. In the case of the mysterious death of Bavaria’s King Ludwig II, the new evidence takes the form of Dr. Gudden’s death mask. Munich’s...
You don’t need a pistol to rob a bank. A pen will do nicely, too. As the American Civil War drew to a close, a 19th-century forgery conspiracy proved that point quite nicely. Dressed as elegant businessmen, the crooks robbed banks with pen and paper...
Watergate burglary of the 19th century It was 2:00 a.m. on December 14, 1874 when the burglar alarm went off. None of the residents in Holmes van Brunt’s house on Long Island could have known that the clanging alarm would earn its place in the...
As the executioner’s sword lobbed the man’s head off in an arching crimson spray, the crowd lunged forward. It wasn’t the sensationalism of a violent death that drew all the people clutching their white handkerchiefs. It was the blood. Bubbling from...
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