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The Dead Woman Who Brought Down the Mayor
An early 20th century street scene in New York City. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Leo Bar PIX IN MOTION Besides her killers, the elevator operator was the last person to see Vivian Gordon alive late...
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When New York City Tamed the Feared Gunslinger Bat Masterson
Bat Masterson, toward the end of his life, in New York City. Photo: Wikipedia Bat Masterson spent the last half of his life in New York, hobnobbing with Gilded Age celebrities and working a desk job...
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How the Ford Motor Company Won a Battle and Lost Ground
Before the blows began to rain: Walter Reuther (hand in pocket) and Richard Frankensteen (to Reuther’s left). Photo: James Kilpatrick of the Detroit News, Wikimedia Commons In 1937, Walter Reuther and...
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The Trial That Gave Vodou A Bad Name
An engraving–probably made from a contemporary artist’s sketch–shows the eight Haitian “voodoo” devotees found guilty in February 1864 of the murder and cannibalism of a 12-year-old child. From...
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The Desperate Would-be Housewife of New York
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1857 In the early evening of January 30, 1857, a middle-aged dentist named Harvey Burdell left his townhouse at 31 Bond Street, a respectable if not truly chic...
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The Incredible Disappearing Evangelist
Aimee Semple McPherson. Photo: Library of Congress Along the Los Angeles beach between Venice and Ocean Park, a small group of mourners wandered aimlessly, occasionally dropping to the sand to...
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Alexander Hamilton’s Adultery and Apology
Alexander Hamilton, painted by John Trumbull, c. 1806. In the summer of 1791, Alexander Hamilton received a visitor. Maria Reynolds, a 23-year-old blonde, came to Hamilton’s Philadelphia residence to...
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The Football Star and the Wrath of his Would-Be Bride
A Merillat-Van Ness headline, 1915. Washington Post. The 1915 marriage of Louis Merillat and Ethel Wynne was straight out of a fairy tale. She was a Chicago beauty from a wealthy family, and he was a...
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President Cleveland’s Problem Child
“Another Voice for Cleveland,” September 1884. Library of Congress. “It seems to me that a leading question ought to be: do the American people want a common libertine for their president?” So wrote a...
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Edgar Allan Poe Tried and Failed to Crack the Mysterious Murder Case of Mary...
Mary Rogers in the river, 1841. American Antiquarian Society. She moved amid the bland perfume That breathes of heaven’s balmiest isle; Her eyes had starlight’s azure gloom And a glimpse of heaven–her...
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