“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
A Meeting Dressed as a Teatime A community hall in North Schleswig, the name Prussian administrators used for the district after 1864, hosted gatherings like this one. Danes there called it Southern Jutland, the name the region has carried officially since 1920. Coffee is poured, but the coffee is not really the point. The table … Read more
In Seguin, Texas, a house at 704 Zorn Street is built from a material almost nobody else in the area was using at the time. It gave the town a nickname, carries a labor history that was never fully written down, and now holds a museum run by descendants of people once enslaved nearby. The … Read more
The Weigh-In On the morning of March 24, 1962, Bennie “Kid” Paret and Emile Griffith stepped onto the scale at Madison Square Garden ahead of that night’s welterweight title fight. Paret had already told reporters what he thought of his opponent. “I hate that kind of guy,” he said. “A fighter’s got to look and … Read more
The Lot on Fremont Street On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, three men died within thirty seconds. The shooting did not happen inside the O.K. Corral itself. It happened in a narrow vacant lot on Fremont Street, next to C.S. Fly’s photography studio, close to the corral’s rear entrance. That … Read more
The Clock at 8:08 Ulysses S. Grant arrived at a rented cottage near the summit of Mount McGregor, in Saratoga County, New York, on June 16, 1885. He came with his wife Julia, other family members, servants, and a team of physicians, and he came because he was dying of cancer of the throat and … Read more
The Order to Undo On June 14, 1632, Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia, who had ruled since 1607, handed the throne to his son Fasilides. In the same declaration he rescinded the decree that had made Catholicism the religion of the state. Ethiopians who wished to remain Catholic could do so, he said, but no one … Read more
A Truck at the Side Entrance On Monday, July 22, 1946, shortly after noon, a delivery truck pulled up at the service entrance of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, then administered by Britain as Mandatory Palestine. Nothing about it drew a second look. Trucks came and went through that side door all day, dropping … Read more
The Frenchman on the Riverbank In the winter of 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville stood on the bank of the Mississippi River at Memphis and watched a crowd of Choctaw men, women, and children cross the water on ice. He had come to the United States to study American prisons and, more broadly, American democracy, the … Read more
One car ferry. Three acts of violence, fourteen years apart. Two murders under one name, then a sinking that killed 852 people under another. A Ferry Called Sally On June 29, 1980, a new ferry entered service for the Finnish company Rederi Ab Sally, running between Turku and Stockholm via Mariehamn in the Åland Islands. … Read more