In 1911 a Wyoming warden built a baseball team from murderers and thieves. They never lost a game, but their star still went to the gallows.

Eugène-François Vidocq was a thief, forger and serial prison escaper who became the world's first detective. Here's his frankly ridiculous life story.

Maud Allan was the Salome dancer who wowed Edwardian London, hid a hanged murderer brother and saw her sexuality put on trial at the Old Bailey in 1918.

On 13 November 1956, readers of the Danish weekly Billed Bladet opened their copies and found a teenage girl staring back at them from the cover. Red hair, freckles, a quilted jacket, and a Soviet submachine gun slung over her shoulder. She wasn't smiling. She looked serious and steady, like she knew exactly what she was doing there. Across Europe, people looked at that photo and saw the whole Hungarian Revolution in one face. What nobody realised was that by the time the mag

Dylan Thomas didn't die of 18 whiskies. Here's the story of his last weeks in New York, his lover Liz Reitell and the people who failed to save him.

In 88 seconds in 1979, Klansmen and Nazis shot dead five protesters in Greensboro while police stayed away. Here's what happened and who knew it was coming.

Myrna Darby was a Ziegfeld Girl at 18 and dead at 21. The scandal, the jilting millionaire, the gangster who paid her bills and the sunburn blamed for it all.

Edith Thompson and Freddy Bywaters were hanged at the same moment in 1923 for killing her husband. But was Edith executed for murder or for her love letters?

Jean-Claude Romand faked a WHO career for 18 years and lived off his family's savings. When the lie was about to collapse, he killed his wife, kids and parents.

Greg Scarpa killed for the Colombo family while secretly working for the FBI. The true story behind By Any Means, from Mississippi to a rogue agent.

In April 1999 David Copeland bombed Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho in just 13 days. Here's how a 22-year-old neo-Nazi was caught and where he's locked up today.

Inside Bohemian Grove, the men-only redwood camp where presidents and tycoons burn an effigy before a giant owl. Its rituals, members and scandals explained.

Handfasting wasn't quite the year-and-a-day trial marriage you've heard about. Here's the real history, from riverside fairs to Jim Morrison's blood vows.

Bessie Stringfield was the first Black woman to ride solo across America. She did it eight times, raced men in disguise and carried WWII dispatches.

Who was John Peel? From Dallas and pirate radio to 4,000 Peel Sessions, here's how one DJ broke punk and indie and why his influence still lingers.

In 1994 Susan Smith told America a Black carjacker took her boys. Nine days later she confessed. Here's the lie, the lake, the letter and where she's at today.

Picture it. You've spent half the night digging up a fresh grave, you finally prise open the lid and the corpse you came to steal greets you with a face full of lead shot. That was the whole point of the coffin torpedo, a gadget designed to turn the dead into their own bodyguards. It sounds like something out of a cartoon, and in some ways it was. But it came out of a very real panic in 1870s America, and at least one newspaper swore it had blown a body snatcher to pieces. Qu

Mandy Rice-Davies was 18 when one cheeky line made her famous. The real story of the Profumo showgirl, from Rachman and Holloway to Tel Aviv nightclubs.

Edith Garrud stood under 5ft but threw policemen, trained the suffragette Bodyguard and hid protesters' weapons in her Soho dojo. Her full story.

On 20 October 2011 Colonel Gaddafi fled Sirte in a doomed convoy, hid in a drainage pipe and died in rebel hands. Here's how his last day unfolded.

Four young people were jailed for the 1974 Guildford pub bombings on beaten-out confessions. How police buried the evidence and who really planted the bombs.

Who is Katherine Knight? The abattoir worker who murdered John Price in 2000 and became the first Australian woman jailed for life without parole.

For nearly six years, the answer to "what's the most expensive guitar ever sold?" was a scuffed 1959 Martin that Kurt Cobain played on MTV. Then, on a single evening in March 2026, the record fell three times in a row, in the same room, to three guitars that had all belonged to the same late American football team owner. The list below is the current top 10 at public auction, with what each one sold for, who played it and how it ended up under the hammer. Some of these storie