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Frankie Yale: The Brooklyn Don Who Taught Capone the Game
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.
The Men Who Built the Sky: The Untold Story of the Empire State Building’s Fearless Workers
When people think of the Empire State Building, they picture a towering, steel-framed icon slicing into the Manhattan skyline. But behind...
The Death of Nero: Rome’s Last Julio-Claudian Emperor Meets His End
In the early summer of 68 CE, the last direct descendant of Julius Caesar and Augustus lay trembling in a suburban villa outside Rome,...
Metal in Soviet Russia: Monsters of Rock 1991
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...
The Birmingham, Alabama Church Bombing That Killed Four Black Schoolgirls
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.
The Merchant of Death and the Weight of Legacy: Alfred Nobel’s Wake-Up Call
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...
The Last Impression: 26 Death Masks (Some Well Known, Some Not)
In the quiet hours following death, long before photography could capture a likeness, artisans turned to wax and plaster to preserve the...
Photographs and Eyewitness Accounts of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Ruins of San Francisco, Nob Hill in foreground, viewed from Lawrence Captive Airship, 1,500 feet elevation, May 29, 1906 — 41 days after...
The 2002 Moscow Theatre Siege: A Tragedy in Three Acts
The Dubrovka Theatre, located in a working-class district of southeast Moscow, was hosting its 129th performance of Nord-Ost , a musical...
Bravo, Lettuce, and Lungfuls of Hope: The Curious Tale of Puzant Torigian’s Herbal Cigarette Crusade
In 1997, amidst a storm of lawsuits, congressional hearings, and public outrage against the tobacco industry, an odd little product...
Charles Dickens and the Secret History of His Final Resting Place
It was a grey June morning in 1870 when a solitary hearse slipped unnoticed through the streets of London. Few would have suspected that...
The Bizarrely Successful History of People Mailing Themselves in Boxes
Long before the age of biometric passports and full-body scanners, some travellers took a more... unconventional route to their...
How Jonas Salk Helped Tame Polio: A Story of Braces, Iron Lungs and Unpatented Suns
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...
The Silent Sacrifice of Irena Iłłakowicz: Poland’s Forgotten Spy Heroine
In the great sweep of twentieth-century history, World War II produced its share of spies, saboteurs, and secret agents, figures who...
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt: The Gilded Age Millionaire Who Died a Hero
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...
The Relentless Fury of Paddy Mayne: War Hero and SAS Founder.
Lt Col Robert Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne, SAS, in the desert near Kabrit, 1942. “Wild maybe, but he was definitely someone you would want on...
The Real Story Behind The Exorcist: The Strange Case of Ronald Hunkeler
On a quiet suburban street in St. Louis, Missouri, a red-brick Colonial house on Roanoke Drive stands bathed in the mundane charm of...
Take The Utterly Ridiculous Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote (1964)
In his 1938 novel The Unvanquished , William Faulkner portrays Colonel Sartoris as a figure emblematic of post-Civil War Southern...
The Tulsa Race Massacre: When Black Wall Street Burned in 1921
In the early summer of 1921, Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a place of contradictions. It was a city on the rise, oil-rich, bustling with new...
L.A. Woman: Why The Doors’ 1971 Raw, Ragged and Final Triumph is Their True Masterpiece
By 1970, The Doors were teetering on the edge. The past five years had been a whirlwind: hit records, sold-out tours, obscenity trials,...
Autochrome Lumière: When the World First Turned to Colour in the Early 1900s
These days, we don’t give colour photography a second thought. It’s everywhere. From the high-res selfies on your phone to vintage film...
How the CIA Helped Kill a Dictator—And Failed to Kill Another
In the early years of the Cold War, the CIA dreamed of a Caribbean sweep, one bullet for Trujillo, another for Castro. Only one found its...
Ian Fleming’s Jamaica: The Island That Made 007
In the summer of 1943, as Allied forces plotted the downfall of Hitler and Mussolini, a little-known episode played out in the Caribbean....
The Monk That Lived For 82 Years And Died Without Ever Seeing A Woman.
It’s one of those stories that sounds more like legend than fact, yet tucked away in the quiet, windswept monasteries of Mount Athos, it...
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