The saying “Behind every great man, there’s an even better woman” has a disturbing meaning when used to describe some of history’s worst people. Women who stood next to dictators like Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, and Francisco Franco often became caught up in the chaotic tides of ambition, ideology, and oppression. Some actively supported their partners’ governments, while…
Vintage Wonders
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States seemed like the safest place in the world to live. Since the bombing of Pearl Harbor six decades earlier, the country had not been attacked on its own soil. It looked like war was something that happened in other places. That might be what made the huge terrorist assaults that…
Christopher J. McCandless, who went by the name Alexander Supertramp, is still one of the most controversial adventurers of our time. His adventure into the Alaskan tundra and terrible death have made many people think about their own lives and ideals. Some people consider McCandless as a visionary transcendentalist who had the courage to go against the grain and look…
Dina Sanichar’s life was full with sadness and loneliness. He was found as a small boy in the Indian jungle and reared by wolves. He had a hard time adjusting to life with people. He never learned to speak or connect with other people in a meaningful way, even though people tried to teach him how to do so. He…
In the summer of 1978, a normal helicopter trip over the thick forests of southern Siberia led to one of the most amazing discoveries in contemporary Russian history. A pilot was checking out the rough terrain near the Mongolian border to find landing spots for a party of geologists when he saw something strange at the basin of the Abakan…
Born on September 30, 1968, Bellucci grew up in the small Italian village of Citta di Castello, where her father owned a trucking company. At 18, she enrolled at the University of Perugia with plans to study law. To pay her tuition, Bellucci started modeling. Two years later, she dropped out of school to relocate to Milan, where she signed…
Claudia Cardinale is an Italian actress who was born on April 15, 1938. She has been in a number of well-known European movies from the 1960s and 1970s, acting in Italian, French, and English-language films. Cardinale was born and raised in La Goulette, a neighborhood in Tunis. She won the “Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia” contest in 1957, which…
One woman’s brave fight against how Italy treated rape victims in 1966 shook the country. The lessons from this fight are still important today. After being kidnapped and raped, Franca Viola became the first Italian woman to decline a “rehabilitating marriage” (“matrimonio riparatore” in Italian) with her attacker. She was one of the first Italian women who had been raped…
Mug shot photography changed the way police investigate crimes and let them maintain pictures of the people they detained. Starting in the middle of the 1800s, police took pictures of the faces of offenders they already knew. These pictures, which are called “mug shots” (from the British slang word “mug,” which means “face”), replaced drawings and information on wanted posters….
Terry Sawchuk is a 36-year-old goalkeeper for the Toronto Maple Leafs. A professional make-up artist and a doctor have recreated some of the more than 400 stitches he got while playing in the National Hockey League for 16 years. Terry Sawchuk’s face was hit many times, although not all at once. His cuts and bruises recovered. The scars were hard…