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No other errors of subject–verb agreement, articles, verb tense, pronoun/homophone use, spelling, punctuation, or capitalization were found. The text uses consistent American spelling, correct absolute dates throughout (no relative-to-today references), and no forbidden time phrasing. All other elements are grammatically correct and internally consistent. The only change needed was adding the closing quotation mark in … Read more

55 Strelitzer Strasse On the evening of October 4, 1964, Andreas Springer, 21, had a last dinner with his family in East Berlin, saying nothing about where he was going. Afterward he set out to find 55 Strelitzer Strasse, where he had been told a way out of the city was waiting. Springer had been … Read more

A Homecoming That Didn’t Finish The East Indiaman Götheborg left Sweden in March 1743 and reached Canton (present-day Guangzhou), China, in early June 1744. By September 1745 she was on the final leg home, thirty months out, carrying tea, silk, spices, and porcelain for the Swedish East India Company. At least 35 men had already … Read more

The Bridge at Sant’Angelo Before dawn on September 11, 1599, guards led three prisoners across the bridge at Sant’Angelo, in front of the castle of the same name in Rome. Beatrice Cenci was twenty-two years old. She was beheaded with a small axe, and beside her, her stepmother, Lucrezia Petroni, was beheaded as well. Her … Read more

On the Newsstand, 1957 In June 1957, a fifty-cent magazine called Duke, positioned from the start as a “Black Playboy,” went on sale in Chicago, published by the newly formed Duke Publishing Co. Set beside a copy of Playboy on the same rack, the resemblance was immediate: black-and-white pages broken by a color cover, and … Read more

A New Theater, a Full House On May 29, 1913, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris opened its doors for a performance meant to crown its first season. The hall itself was new that year, built for exactly this kind of evening, and it was full. Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes had brought Paris something new … Read more

Two Companies, One Drawing Board In 1964, officials from Britain and France began talking about building a combat aircraft together instead of separately. Handel Davies co-chaired the British side of the working group; his French counterpart was Ingénieur-Général Lecamus. Out of those talks came two proposals, and in May 1965 the two governments signed a … Read more

On August 27, 1935, Pope Pius XI stood before an audience in Rome and warned against unjust wars of conquest. He did not name Mussolini. He did not name Ethiopia. Within a year, the same pope would call the very war he had seemed to warn against a happy triumph. The Pope’s Caution By the … Read more

Euston Station, August 20, 1868 At 7:30 in the morning on August 20, 1868, the Irish Mail pulled out of Euston station in London, bound for Holyhead on the coast of Wales, where its passengers would cross by ferry to Dublin. The London and North Western Railway had run this service daily since 1860. Its … Read more

“Strike My Name”: Prague, 1948 In 1948, a Czech man named Václav R. wrote to authorities in Prague asking to have his name struck from the “Gypsy register.” Three years earlier, in May 1945, he had been freed from Terezín, the concentration camp northwest of Prague where the Nazis sent him in 1944. Czechoslovakia’s government … Read more