[Louisiana’s populist governor and senator Huey Long—called by some an American Mussolini and immortalized in Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men, was assassinated in the statehouse he commissioned.] The Louisiana peasant who became Louisiana’s king is on view … Continue reading →

No living man ever dreamed that it was possible that the intense joy of the nation over the recent happy deliverance from war could be or would be so soon turned to grief more intense and bitter than ever before … Continue reading →

Jack Dempsey proved to be the greatest fighting tornado, in a boxing way, the game has ever known, when in nine minutes of actual combat today, he crushed Jess Willard into a shapeless man of gore and battered flesh. One … Continue reading →

Mata Hari, which is Javanese for Eye-of-the-Morning, is dead. She was shot as a spy by a firing squad of Zouaves at the Vincennes Barracks. She died facing death literally, for she refused to be blindfolded. Gertrud Margarete Zelle, for … Continue reading →

[Mike Royko wrote this reminiscence on the day of Jackie Robinson’s death.] All that Saturday, the wise men of the neighborhood, who sat in chairs on the sidewalk outside the tavern, had talked about what it would do to baseball. … Continue reading →

Benjamin Mehlig, a small man with an office at 132 Fulton Street, who had a habit of leaving the West Side Interborough subway at 157th Street and Broadway every evening at a little before 6 o’clock, set his teeth firmly … Continue reading →