“Why me? Why me? Why now?” THE CRIME: Brunette Nancy Kerrigan, 24, and blonde Tonya Harding, 23, both had high hopes for the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. On 6 January Nancy Kerrigan was practising before about 200 people at the ice rink at Cobo Hall in Detroit. As she left the rink Kerrigan stopped to… Read More »
“Now we must shoot you” THE CRIME: In February 1917 Russia suffered its first revolution of the year. On 2 March Tsar Nicholas abdicated. The following month, on the night of 16 April, the revolutionary Lenin arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd from Switzerland, aboard a sealed train. The popularity of the Bolsheviks increased… Read More »
“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something” THE CRIME: The Mexican revolutionary was born as José Doroteo Arango Arambula near San Juan del Rio, Durango on 5 June 1878. Much of Villa’s life story is disputed. It is said that when he was 16, he discovered that a local rancher had… Read More »
“Long live sacred Germany” THE CRIME: After D-Day in 1944 the number of Germans plotting against Hitler increased. Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg — a colonel —was the only officer among them and the only one with regular access to Hitler so he agreed to carry out Hitler’s assassination, code-named Operation Valkyrie. It… Read More »
“The patriot who never had doubts when his country called him” THE CRIME: In 1948 the American government launched Operation Bootstrap to improve the economy of Puerto Rico. In 1950 the Jayuya Uprising, led by the nationalist Blanca Canales in Puerto Rico, failed. Among those injured in the uprising was the sister of Griselio Torresola,… Read More »
“I put no bomb in the boat” THE CRIME: Admiral of the Fleet, last Viceroy of India, Prince Philip’s uncle and a rampant self-publicist, Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, was born at Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire in England, at 6am on 25… Read More »
“I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust” THE CRIME: The first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in 1522, Karol Jozef Wojtyla, John Paul II became one of the most beloved statesmen of the 20th century. Little did he know that a Turkish thug was intent… Read More »
“They’re telling me I’m too tough for the job” THE CRIME: “The Teflon Don” was John Gotti’s nickname for many years because it appeared that no charges would stick. In 1972 Manny Gambino, the nephew of Carlo Gambino, was kidnapped and murdered. The FBI arrested two of the kidnappers while Gambino put a contract out… Read More »
“Do not kill him! This man has a story to tell” THE CRIME: One of the leading forces in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky was born as Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 26 October 1879 at Yanovka, Kherson Province, Russia. After the 7 November 1918 revolution, Trotsky was second only to Lenin in the Bolshevik hierarchy.… Read More »
“I had the immediate impression that there was no hope” THE CRIME: After the death of his father, Peter I, on 16 August 1921. Alexander I came to the throne as the King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. On 8 August 1928 the Serb leader Stjepan Radic died after being shot in the stomach in… Read More »