Terrible People from History

There’s a cynical modern saying: “Steal a hundred pounds, go to jail. Steal a hundred grand, get a book deal.” This is far from a modern phenomenon. Throughout history those who commit audacious crimes have sometimes been rewarded rather…

During his lifetime, many men underestimated or ignored Luke Short. He stood less than 5’6” tall and seemed like a natural target for the type of bully that frequented the American “Wild West” period. But those who tried to take advantage…

Nothing makes history trickier to investigate than the whiff of scandal. Coverups and spin aren’t modern inventions, and when it makes every source you have unreliable then getting to the truth of the matter becomes all but impossible. So…

The genius of Eugène François Vidocq lay in one simple principle. In order to catch a criminal, you had to be able think like a criminal. And in his case that was easy, because he was one. He’s sometimes referred to as “the French Jonathan…

“Who was the worst Roman emperor?” is a commonly asked question, and one which is difficult to answer for many reasons. Not least of those is “worst for whom?” Rome was a slave economy after all, so an emperor good for the city of Rome was…

They say history belongs to the winners, but that’s only half the story. History also belongs to glory hounds. Those who trumpet their triumphs, those who seek to make sure that they are remembered. As for those who would as soon be…

In 1703, at the dawn of the eighteenth century, a traveler came to London Town. A native of a far-off land, kidnapped by Catholic missionaries but rescued by a Protestant minister, he was practically tailor-made for the fervently Protestant…

Content warning: this column discusses suicide and episodes of suicidal ideation in the life of Hans Fallada. Societies don’t go wrong all at once. Things get worse by degrees, and it can slowly creep up on you. You convince yourself…

One of the big problems with using paintings and other art pieces as a historical source is that most artists don’t depict reality as it is but rather reality as they wished it would be. Idealised and more attractive versions of historical…

Hetty Green, America’s richest woman, was born as Henrietta Robinson in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1834. Her father Edward owned the biggest whaling company in the city, and New Bedford was at the time the biggest whaling city in…