Past Imperfect

A nighttime German barrage on Allied trenches at Ypres

Fritz Haber’s Experiments in Life and Death

The German chemist helped feed the world. Then he developed the first chemical weapons used in battle

A Bolivian donkey of the 1850s. From Herndon and Gibbon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (1854).

Run Out of Town on an Ass

According to legend, Queen Victoria, informed of an early president's angry insult to her ambassador, struck Bolivia off the map. But is it true?

Etta Shiber

“I Was Looking Forward to a Quiet Old Age”

Instead, Etta Shiber, a widow and former Manhattan housewife, helped smuggle stranded Allied soldiers out of Nazi-occupied in Paris

Indian soldiers in the service of the East India Company-who outnumbered British troops in India five to one–loading cartridges.

Pass it on: The Secret that Preceded the Indian Rebellion of 1857

British officials were alarmed at the rapid distribution of mysterious Indian breads across much of the Raj

Hedy Lamarr in a 1942 publicity photo

Team Hollywood’s Secret Weapons System

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels makes a point.

Hitler’s Very Own Hot Jazz Band

Captain Lawrence "Titus" Oates with ponies

Sacrifice Amid the Ice: Facing Facts on the Scott Expedition

Captain Lawrence Oates wrote that if Robert Scott's team didn't win the race to the South Pole, "we shall come home with our tails between our legs"

Carl Mays, pitcher for the 1920 New York Yankees

A Death at Home Plate

Khrushchev and Mao meet in Beijing, July 1958. Khrushchev would find himself less formally dressed at their swimming-pool talks a week later.

Khrushchev in Water Wings: On Mao, Humiliation and the Sino-Soviet Split

Rufus Choate

The Case of the Sleepwalking Killer

The evidence against Albert Tirrell was lurid and damning—until Rufus Choate, a protegé of the great Daniel Webster, agreed to come to the defense

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Theodore Roosevelt’s Life-Saving Speech

When a would-be assassin shot, the 50-page manuscript and metal eyeglasses case tucked against Roosevelt's chest absorbed the blow

Frank Costello testifying before the Kefauver Committee in March 1951

The Senator and the Gangsters

The British pigeon known as Crisp VC brought back news of the sinking of an armed trawler by a German U boat and the heroic death of her captain, Thomas Crisp, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

World War I: 100 Years Later

Closing the Pigeon Gap

During the First World War, Allied birds outperformed their rivals and saved thousands of lives–all thanks to the efforts of one London pigeon fancier

Polly Adler and a friend

The House that Polly Adler Built

She entered the brothel business without apology and set out to become the best madam in America

The Potala Palace, Lhasa: home to nine successive Dalai Lamas, a number of them suspiciously short-lived.

Murder in Tibet’s High Places

The Dalai Lama is one of the world's most revered religious leaders, but that didn't prevent four holders of the office from mysteriously dying

Polio patients in iron lungs in 1952

Salk, Sabin and the Race Against Polio

As polio ravaged patients worldwide, two gifted American researchers developed distinct vaccines against it. Then the question was: Which one to use?

A German mint hard at work producing debased coinage designed to be palmed off on the nearest neighboring state, c.1620

“Kipper und Wipper”: Rogue Traders, Rogue Princes, Rogue Bishops and the German Financial Meltdown of 1621-23

It is tempting to think of the German hyperinflation of 1923 as a uniquely awful event, but it pales in comparison to what happened in the 17th century

Storyville. Seated woman wearing striped stockings, drinking "Raleigh" Rye.

The Portrait of Sensitivity: A Photographer in Storyville, New Orleans’ Forgotten Burlesque Quarter

The Big Easy's red light district had plenty of tawdriness going on—except when Ernest J. Bellocq was taking photographs of prostitutes

The Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, site of the deadly race run between condemned grand viziers and their executioners.

The Ottoman Empire’s Life-or-Death Race

Custom in the Ottoman Empire mandated that a condemned grand vizier could save his neck if he won a sprint against his executioner

Edward S. Curtis' Canon de Chelly—Navajo (1904).

Edward Curtis’ Epic Project to Photograph Native Americans

His 20-volume masterwork was hailed as "the most ambitious enterprise in publishing since the production of the King James Bible"

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