I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
Hitoshi Imamura was a Japanese general who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. He surrendered the Japanese forces in New Guinea and the southern Pacific Islands to Australian forces, representing the Allies, in September 1945, and was detained by the Australian Army, as he and troops
It's the fall of 1864. The war is going very badly for the Confederates. John Wilkes Booth is kind of the Brad Pitt of North America. He was a famous, dashing young actor, a committed supporter of the Southern Confederacy. A man who despised Lincoln. He begins to
It started with a suitcase hidden under a bed. It was 2009, and Antony Easton's father, Peter, had recently died. As Antony started to engage with the messy business of probate, he came across a small brown leather case in his father's old flat in the
Japanese singer-songwriter Yoko Ono had an obsession with artist Salvador Dalí’s surrealism, and decided she wanted to buy a strand of hair from Dalí’s famous mustache. Ono offered to pay the artist $10,000, which is the equivalent of about five or ten times that in today’s
The white marble headstone of Spc. 4 Richard Leroy McKinley may look like the other headstones in Section 31 but it marks Arlington National Cemetery's only radioactive grave and the story of America’s first fatal nuclear accident. In 1961, McKinley was serving as an operator at the
Albert Clarke was a rascally nine-year-old when he inherited the estate of Margaret Wise Brown, his next-door neighbour, who had no children of her own. Ever since, as “Goodnight Moon” has drifted toward the center of America’s collective consciousness, he has floated on the fringes of society. No steady
Authorities are scrambling to find the gang behind the heist that targeted high-security display cases in the famous French museum. The criminals, who disguised themselves as construction workers on a cherry picker, are still on the run. Authorities fear the one-of-a-kind, and therefore highly recognisable items, will be melted down
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is one of the most important spiritual sites for Christians, so it may come as some surprise that the keys to the church are entrusted to the care of two Muslim families. This tradition dates back several centuries and was reportedly instituted
For nearly a quarter-century he railed against slavery in one Quaker meeting after another in and around Philadelphia, confronting slave owners and slave traders. He insisted on the utter depravity and sinfulness of “Man-stealers,” who were, in his view, the literal spawn of Satan. He considered it his Godly duty
In 2013, Samantha Futerman was a 25-year-old actress in LA, with a YouTube channel, and a major release on her IMDb bio. On February 21, she made her way to a friend’s apartment to have her nails done for the premiere of her new film. As her friend painted
Polar bears on an island off Russia's eastern coast have taken over an abandoned research station and made themselves at home. Drone footage captured by photographer Vadim Makhorov shows the large bears getting comfortable in the remains of a Soviet-era weather station on Kolyuchin Island. The tiny island
Nola and Helan are two of the hundreds of sleeping children who have appeared sporadically in Sweden over a span of 20 years. The first official medical reports of the epidemic appeared in the early 2000s. Typically, the sleeping sickness had an insidious onset. Children initially became anxious and depressed.