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Deep-dive stories of disasters, mysteries, forgotten battles and the strange turns of the past — thoroughly researched, vividly told, and never dull. History, but with katanas.
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The Forty-Seven Ronin: The Samurai Who Waited Two Years to Avenge Their Master
In the spring of 1701 a lord drew his sword inside the shogun's own castle and was ordered to die by sundown.…
Sergeant Stubby: The Stray Dog Who Became America’s Greatest War Hero
He was a stubby-tailed stray of no particular breed, wandering a college football field in 1917 when a young soldier gave him…
The Collar Bomb Heist: The Pizza Deliveryman With a Bomb Locked to His Neck
On a hot afternoon in 2003, a pizza deliveryman walked into a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a bomb locked around his…
Lady Death: Lyudmila Pavlichenko and the 309 Shots That Shamed a Room Full of Men
She was a history student from Kyiv who had never meant to be a soldier. By the age of twenty-five she had…
The Dreadnought Hoax: How Virginia Woolf Fooled the Royal Navy
In 1910 a band of friends painted their faces, pinned on false beards, and talked their way aboard the most powerful warship…
Khutulun: The Mongol Princess No Man Could Beat in Wrestling
Seven centuries ago, a great-great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan vowed she would marry only the man who could beat her in wrestling. Suitor…
The Candy Bomber: The Pilot Who Dropped Chocolate on a City the World Was Trying to Starve
In 1948, the Soviet Union sealed off West Berlin and waited for two million people to starve. One American pilot, moved by…
The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: The Real Disaster That Inspired Moby-Dick
In 1820, a sperm whale the size of the ship itself turned and rammed the Nantucket whaleship Essex until it sank, stranding…
The General Slocum: The Picnic Boat Fire That Erased a New York Neighborhood
On a bright June morning in 1904, more than thirteen hundred people boarded a steamboat for a church picnic and never came…
The Demon Core: The Plutonium Sphere That Killed Two Scientists With a Slip of the Hand
It was a sphere of plutonium the size of a grapefruit, built to end a war that ended first. Twice, a careless…
The Poison Squad: The Government Clerks Who Ate Poison for Breakfast to Make Food Safe
In 1902 a government chemist sat a dozen healthy young men down at a basement dining table in Washington and fed them…
Witold Pilecki: The Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz to Tell the World
In 1940 a Polish officer did something no one else would dare: he let himself be captured and sent to Auschwitz on…
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