Utterly interesting

In the quiet hours before dawn on 13 June 1977, the peaceful summer routine at Camp Scott in Mayes County, Oklahoma, was shattered by a...

In the mid-19th century, at a time when the United States was rapidly expanding its borders and solidifying its national identity, a...

In the Berlin district of Spandau, a red‑brick compound once loomed behind layers of concrete walls, barbed wire, and armed watchtowers. Constructed in 1876 during the German Empire, the prison’s quiet beginnings as a military detention centre would give way, over the following century, to a darker renown.

Frankie Yale was the dapper Brooklyn mobster who showed a young Al Capone how to run rackets, collect debts, and build a criminal empire. From speakeasies and bootlegging to betrayal and gangland murder, Yale’s story reveals how the American Mafia learned to mix business with brutality.

When people think of the Empire State Building, they picture a towering, steel-framed icon slicing into the Manhattan skyline. But behind...

In the early summer of 68 CE, the last direct descendant of Julius Caesar and Augustus lay trembling in a suburban villa outside Rome,...

What if I told you that one of the largest human gatherings ever recorded for a concert—an estimated 1.5 million people—took place not in...

On 15 September 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four Black schoolgirls. The attack shocked the nation, galvanised the civil rights movement, and revealed the deadly cost of racism in America. Read the full story of tragedy and justice.

In the summer of 1980, John Lennon , former Beatle, cultural icon, and self-described househusband, undertook a journey that would...

On 6 October 1966, a date acid enthusiasts half-jokingly refer to as 'The Day of the Beast,' California became the first US state to...

No one ever truly knows the consequences of their inventions—at least, not until it’s too late. But some warning signs are hard to...

In the quiet hours following death, long before photography could capture a likeness, artisans turned to wax and plaster to preserve the...

Ruins of San Francisco, Nob Hill in foreground, viewed from Lawrence Captive Airship, 1,500 feet elevation, May 29, 1906 — 41 days after...

The Dubrovka Theatre, located in a working-class district of southeast Moscow, was hosting its 129th performance of Nord-Ost , a musical...

In 1997, amidst a storm of lawsuits, congressional hearings, and public outrage against the tobacco industry, an odd little product...

It was a grey June morning in 1870 when a solitary hearse slipped unnoticed through the streets of London. Few would have suspected that...

Long before the age of biometric passports and full-body scanners, some travellers took a more... unconventional route to their...

If you chat to anyone who grew up in the 1940s or 1950s, chances are they’ll remember the grim terror that was polio. It was a disease...

In the great sweep of twentieth-century history, World War II produced its share of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents, figures who...

On the morning of 7 May 1915, as the RMS Lusitania  cut through the waters off the coast of Ireland, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt stood on...

Lt Col Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, SAS, in the desert near Kabrit, 1942. “Wild maybe, but he was definitely someone you would want on...

“What I want is an off-the-shelf sex partner. Slave. There’s no way around it.” — Leonard Lake It started, as so many grim tales do, with...

On a quiet suburban street in St. Louis, Missouri, a red-brick Colonial house on Roanoke Drive stands bathed in the mundane charm of...