My father, Jean-Baptiste Sanson, had christened in the church of Saint-Laurent two children: a daughter, who married Pierre Hérisson, executioner of Melun, and a son, myself. After my mother’s death, he remarried, his second wife from a family of executioners in the province of Touraine. Together they produced twelve children, eight of whom survived, six [...]
By James B. Daniels IF EVER THERE WAS A MAN who was always at the wrong place at the wrong time, it was Hemy Wirz. Wirz has become infamous as the commander of Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville, the most notorious of all Civil War prison camps. Heinrich Hartmann Wirz, as he was originally [...]
There has been a manor at Otley since at least the time of the Domesday Book, and the place name itself is Anglo-Saxon. Deep in the lush Suffolk countryside, the site of Otley Hall has been occupied since the 12th century, when the de Otteleys were lords of the manor. From 1401 the Gosnold family [...]
Until recently, not much was known about the first Africans to come to Virginia. They certainly came unwillingly, part of a group captured by the Portuguese army from the West Central African land of Ndongo in 1619. While on their way to the Spanish colony of Mexico as slaves, their ship was seized by English [...]
Robert Pinkerton knew a good detective when he saw one, and in his opinion Isaiah Lees was the best of the breed in 19th-century San Francisco. With unprecedented police work, Lees put a lid on crime in one of America’s wildest cities of the time. If Sherlock Holmes had existed he might have taken lessons [...]
Can this story possibly be true? An ancient Egyptian document, known today as the Westcar Papyrus, tells the fictional story of what happened when Khufu asked his son Hardjedef to entertain him. Hardjedef told his father about the magician Djedi: Djedi lives in a village near the palace. He is 110 years old; every day, [...]
Time often shapes perceptions ELIZABETH WILSON, who wrote our cover story (“The Queen Who Would Be King,” p. 80) about the controversial female pharaoh who ruled Egypt c. 1479-1458 B.C., lives near the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City She was often in the museum’s Hatshepsut gallery–part of its permanent collection. Once, a [...]
Thirty years ago, rumors of ghosts and demons swirled out of a small town on Long Island, New York. In 1975, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into a three-story home in the town of Amityville. The house had a bleak history that included the death of six residents the previous year [...]
Q The National Weather Service (NWS) severe thunderstorm as having hail at least ¾ of an inch in and/or wind gusts of at least 58 mph. How and why were these particular criteria selected? Joseph Forbes Ormond Beach, Florida A The history behind the severe thunderstrom criteria used by the United States Government (including both [...]
They’ll interview you, take your pictures, and craft your story into a lovely memoir–by you Jutta van der Kuijp had been asking her 82-year-old father, Jan, to write his life story for years. She’d always found it fascinating. Born in what is today Jakarta, he’d spent most of the Second World War in POW camps [...]