Still one of the deadliest disasters in American history, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 left one of the United States great cities in ruins. The damaged post office and surrounding ruins, in the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire.Archive Photos/Getty Images Rendering of people fleeing across the Randolph Street Bridge.Currier and Ives/Chicago Historical Society/Wikimedia Commons The ruins of the courthouse as seen from the Chicago Tribune building. Otto Herschan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images A rendering of the blaze. Read More...
Before Leona Helmsley went to prison for tax evasion in 1989, she owned some of New York City's most luxurious hotels and was infamous for her legendary cruelty towards her employees.Joe McNally/Getty ImagesLeona Helmsley looks out over New York City in March 1990.
New Yorkers had many names for Leona Helmsley. Some called her the “Queen of Mean.” Mayor Ed Koch described her as the “Wicked Witch of the West.” And a judge in 1989 deemed her a felon as well as a “product of naked greed” for evading taxes. Read More...
Velma Barfield was a sweet God-fearing grandmother. Unfortunately, everyone in her life seemed to die mysteriously. “You know, it’s the saddest thing but it seems like everybody my mother ever gets close to dies,” Velma Barfield’s son Ronnie Burke once said. “How could the good Lord allow this to happen to a faithful Christian like Velma Barfield?”
It was a question a lot of people wanted to ask. Even after the truth had come out and Velma Barfield was waiting to become the first woman to be executed in America in 22 years, many couldn’t understand how she’d gotten there. Read More...
