The Lusitania remained a passenger liner, but with the hull of a battleship.
THE THING THAT ENTRANCED ME about Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city’s willingness to take on the impossible in the name of civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise r...
THE DATE WAS APRIL 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course the man in suite 63–65, shelter deck C, did not yet know it. What he did know was that his foot hurt badly, more than he...
Strange things began to happen that made Holmes’s claims about being the devil seem almost plausible. Detective Geyer became seriously ill. The warden of Moyamensing prison committed suicide. The jury...
Outside the White House, Wilson’s many notes to Germany and their replies became the target of wry humor, as when one editor wrote: Dear Kaiser: In spite of previous correspondence on the subject anot...
On March 30, 1890, an officer of the First National Bank placed a warning in the help-wanted section of the Chicago Tribune, to inform female stenographers of our growing conviction that no thoroughly...
Messersmith wrote. We must keep in mind, I believe, that when Hitler says anything he for the moment convinces himself that it is true. He is basically sincere; but he is at the same time a fanatic. M...
Marconi recognized that with no revenue and no contracts and in the face of persistent skepticism, he needed more than ever to capture an ally of prominence and credibility. Through Fleming, however,...
Lauriat made his first trip in 1873 on one of Cunard’s earliest steamers, the Atlas. His purchases routinely made news. One acquisition, of a Bible dating to 1599, a Geneva, or Breeches, Bible—so name...
It instructed Germany’s ambassador in Mexico to offer Mexican president Venustiano Carranza an alliance, to take effect if the new submarine campaign drew America into the war. Make war together, Zimm...
It had swept him, he said, into a dream from which I did not recover for months.
In traveling about the city that day, Dodd was struck anew by the extraordinary German penchant for Christmas display. He saw Christmas trees everywhere, in every public square and every window. One m...
In the 1880s Chicago was experiencing explosive growth that propelled land values to levels no one could have imagined, especially within the downtown Loop, named for the turn-around loops of streetca...
However, in a later interview, housed in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, London, Beesly was less judicious. As an Englishman and a lover of the Royal Navy, he said, I would prefer to attribut...
Holmes explained that he had been doing some dissection but now had completed his research. He offered Chappell thirty-six dollars to cleanse the bones and skull and return to him a fully articulated...
His quest to create a powerful first impression was good showmanship, but it also exposed the aesthetic despot residing within.
His letter to Rice began, I have on hand a great project for the World’s Fair in Chicago. I am going to build a vertically revolving wheel 250’ in dia. Nowhere in this letter, however, did he reveal t...
Her place already was luxurious, with a bowling alley where the pins were bottles of chilled champagne,
He saw Hitler’s stature within Germany grow to that of a god. Women cried as he passed near; souvenir hunters dug up parcels of earth from the ground on which he stepped. At the September 1936 party r...
He knew that his day was coming to an end. On July 4, 1909, as he stood with friends on the roof of the Reliance Building, looking out over the city he adored, he said, You'll see it lovely. I never w...