Secretariat was born at Meadow Stables in Doswell, Virginia, on March 30, 1970. He was sired by Bold Ruler, the 1957 Preakness winner, and foaled by Somethingroyal, which came from a Thoroughbred line known for its stamina. An attractive chestnut colt, he grew to over 16 hands high and was at two years the size of a three-year-old.

He ran his first race as a two-year-old on July 4, 1972, a 5 1/2-furlong race at Aqueduct in New York City. He came from behind to finish fourth; it was the only time in his career that he finished a race and did not place. Eleven days later, he won a six-furlong race at Saratoga in Saratoga Springs, New York, and soon after, another race. His trainer, Lucien Laurin, moved him up to class in August, entering him in the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga, which he won by three lengths. By the end of 1972, he had won seven of nine races.

With easy victories in his first two starts of 1973, Secretariat seemed on his way to the Triple Crown. Just two weeks before the Kentucky Derby, however, he stumbled at the Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct, coming in third behind Angle Light and Sham. On May 5, he met Sham and Angle Light again at the Churchill Downs track in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. Secretariat, a 3-to-2 favorite, broke from near the back of the pack to win the 1 1/4-mile race in a record 1 minute and 59 2/5th seconds. He was the first to run the Derby in less than two minutes and his record still stands.

Two weeks later, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, Secretariat won the second event of the Triple Crown: the Preakness Stakes. The official clock malfunctioned, but hand-recorded timers had him running the 1 3/16-mile race in record time.

On June 9, 1973, almost 100,000 people came to Belmont Park near New York City to see if “Big Red” would become the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown. Secretariat gave the finest performance of his career in the Belmont Stakes, completing the 1.5-mile race in a record 2 minutes and 24 seconds, knocking nearly three seconds off the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957. He also won by a record 31 lengths.

Ron Turcotte, who jockeyed Secretariat in all but three of his races, claimed that at Belmont he lost control of Secretariat and that the horse sprinted into history on his own accord.

Secretariat would race six more times, winning four and finishing second twice. In November 1973, the “horse of the century” was retired and put to stud at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky. Among his notable offspring is the 1988 Preakness and Belmont winner, Risen Star. Secretariat was euthanized in 1989 after falling ill. An autopsy showed that his heart was two and a half times larger than that of the average horse, which may have contributed to his extraordinary racing abilities. In 1999, ESPN ranked Secretariat No. 35 in its list of the Top 50 North American athletes of the 20th century, the only non-human on the list.

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Senator McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) experienced a meteoric rise to fame and power in the U.S. Senate when he charged in February 1950 that “hundreds” of “known communists” were in the Department of State. In the years that followed, McCarthy became the acknowledged leader of the so-called Red Scare, a time when millions of Americans became convinced that communists had infiltrated every aspect of American life. Behind closed-door hearings, McCarthy bullied, lied, and smeared his way to power, destroying many careers and lives in the process. Prior to 1953, the Republican Party tolerated his antics because his attacks were directed against the Democratic administration of Harry S. Truman.

When Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953, however, McCarthy’s recklessness and increasingly erratic behavior became unacceptable and the senator saw his clout slowly ebbing away. In a last-ditch effort to revitalize his anticommunist crusade, McCarthy made a crucial mistake. He charged in early 1954 that the U.S. Army was “soft” on communism. As Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee, McCarthy opened hearings into the Army.

Joseph N. Welch, a soft-spoken lawyer with an incisive wit and intelligence, represented the Army. During the course of weeks of hearings, Welch blunted every one of McCarthy’s charges. The senator, in turn, became increasingly enraged, bellowing “point of order, point of order,” screaming at witnesses, and declaring that one highly decorated general was a “disgrace” to his uniform.

On June 9, 1954, McCarthy again became agitated at Welch’s steady destruction of each of his arguments and witnesses. In response, McCarthy charged that Frederick G. Fisher, a young associate in Welch’s law firm, had been a long-time member of an organization that was a “legal arm of the Communist Party.” Welch was stunned. As he struggled to maintain his composure, he looked at McCarthy and declared, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” It was then McCarthy’s turn to be stunned into silence, as Welch asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

The audience of citizens and newspaper and television reporters burst into wild applause. Just a week later, the hearings into the Army came to a close. McCarthy, exposed as a reckless bully, was officially condemned by the U.S. Senate for contempt against his colleagues in December 1954. During the next two-and-a-half years McCarthy spiraled into alcoholism. Still in office, he died in 1957.

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Rescue workers quickly arrived on the scene, toiling “like demons” to search for victims and to remove debris. Clerks recalled screams of co-workers. One witness said Civil War veterans who worked in the building were the “wildest and craziest.” In a panic, some employees jumped from the second floor, using an awning to brace their fall.

Businesses and homes in the immediate area were used as makeshift hospitals. Anguished relatives rushed to the scene. Some onlookers watched events unfold from the rooftops of buildings.

“Plunged in a chasm of death,” read a newspaper headline.

A Washington Post reporter visited the home of a victim whose body was the last one recovered. “Say, mister, when is papa coming home?” asked the tearful boy. “He will come home tomorrow, won’t he?”

One man thought there was a "curse" on the building since Lincoln's assassination. "...if I had my way [Ford's Theatre] should be entirely demolished and the ground be forever left unbuilt upon,” he told a reporter.

Ford's Theatre remained a federal office building until 1932. After undergoing extensive renovations, it was re-opened as a theater in 1968. The national historic site underwent extensive renovations again in the 2000s.

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Cornwell, whose maiden name is Daniels, had a difficult childhood: When she was 5, her father, a lawyer, left the family. Afterward, Cornwell moved with her mother and two brothers to Montreat, North Carolina. There, her mother was hospitalized for mental illness, forcing Cornwell and her brothers to spend time in foster care. Cornwell graduated from Davidson College in 1979, married her college professor and became a reporter for the Charlotte Observer, eventually covering the police beat. She went on to work for six years as a technical writer and computer analyst in the chief medical examiner’s office in Richmond, Virginia.

After multiple rejections from publishers, Cornwell’s first novel, “Postmortem,” was released in 1990. The book features Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the brainy, murder-solving medical examiner. “Postmortem” was a hit, and Cornwell has since penned 18 other top sellers starring Scarpetta. Known for meticulous research and grisly detail in her writing, Cornwell attends autopsies and interviews forensic scientists and law-enforcement professionals to keep up with the latest procedures and technology. She’s also learned to pilot helicopters, shoot guns and scuba dive because her characters do. Her books have been credited with helping to inspire such TV shows as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “Cold Case.”

In addition to the Scarpetta series, Cornwell has written novels featuring journalist-turned-cop Andy Brazil and state police investigator Win Garano, along with several cookbooks and a children’s book.

Cornwell’s personal life has occasionally read like the pages of a crime thriller. In 1992, the writer, then divorced, had a brief affair with married FBI agent Margo Bennett. Four years later, Bennett’s estranged husband Eugene, an ex-FBI agent who blamed the affair for the breakup of his marriage, launched an (ultimately unsuccessful) plot to murder his wife.

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Germany’s announcement in early 1915 that its navy was adopting a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare concerned many within the government and civilian population of the United States—which maintained a policy of strict neutrality during the first two years of World War I. The sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, caused an immediate uproar, as many believed Germany had sunk the British cruiser deliberately as a provocation to Wilson and the U.S.

Bryan, as secretary of state, sent a note to the German government from the Wilson administration, lauding the ties of friendship and diplomacy between the two nations and expressing the desire that they come to a clear and full understanding as to the grave situation which has resulted from the sinking of the Lusitania. When the German government responded by justifying their navy’s action on the basis that the Lusitania was carrying munitions (which it was, a small amount), Wilson himself penned a strongly worded note, insisting that the sinking had been an illegal action and demanding that Germany cease unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed merchantmen.

"The Government of the United States is contending for something much greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce," Wilson wrote. "It is contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity, which every Government honours itself in respecting and which no Government is justified in resigning on behalf of those under its care and authority."

Objecting to the strong position taken by Wilson in this second Lusitania note, and believing it could be taken as a precursor to a war declaration, Bryan tendered his resignation on June 9, 1915, rather than sign it. The note and two more similar ones were sent to Germany, which was persuaded to curb the submarine policy over the course of 1916 rather than risk further antagonizing the U.S.

Bryan’s resignation marked a significant turning point, as the Lusitania crisis had convinced his successor, Robert Lansing, that the U.S. could not remain neutral forever, and would indeed eventually have to enter the war against Germany. As it unfolded, Germany resumed its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917; two months later, Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war.

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The CIA concluded that Cambodia was probably the only nation in the area that would immediately fall. “Furthermore,” the report said, “a continuation of the spread of communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread which did occur would take time–time in which the total situation might change in any number of ways unfavorable to the communist cause.” The CIA report concluded that if South Vietnam and Laos also fell, it “would be profoundly damaging to the U.S. position in the Far East,” but Pacific bases and allies such as the Philippines and Japan would still wield enough power to deter China and North Vietnam from any further aggression or expansion. President Johnson appears to have ignored the CIA analysis—he eventually committed over 500,000 American troops to the war in an effort to block the spread of communism to South Vietnam.

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The secular and religious leader of the religious sect, Brigham Young, had established Salt Lake City as the center of a new Utah sanctuary for the Latter-day Saints in 1847. In subsequent years, Young worked diligently to encourage and aid members who made the difficult overland trek to the Great Salt Lake. In 1856, however, a series of poor harvests left the church with only a meager fund to help immigrants buy wagons and oxen. Young suggested a cheaper mode of travel: “Let them come on foot with handcarts or wheelbarrows; let them gird up their loins and walk through and nothing shall hinder or stay them.”

Amazingly, many members of the church followed his advice. On June 9, 1856, a band of 497 left Iowa City, Iowa, and began the more than 1,000-mile trek to Salt Lake City. They carried all their goods in about 100 two-wheeled handcarts, most of which were heaped with the maximum load of 400 to 500 pounds. Each family usually had one cart, and the father and mother took turns pulling while any children old enough helped by pushing.

The handcart immigrants soon ran into serious problems. The craftsmen who had constructed the handcarts back in Iowa City had chosen to use wooden axles instead of iron in order to save time and money. Sand and dirt quickly wore down the wood, and water and heat made the axles splinter and crack. As the level terrain of the prairies gave way to the more rugged country of the Plains, the sheer physical challenge of hauling a 500-pound cart began to take its toll. One British immigrant who was a skilled carpenter wrote of having to make three coffins in as many days.

Some of the pilgrims gave up. Two girls in one handcart group left to marry a pair of miners they met along the way. The majority, however, struggled on and eventually reached the Salt Lake Valley. Over the course of the next four years, some 3,000 converts made the overland journey by pushing and pulling heavy-laden handcarts. Better planning and the use of iron axles made the subsequent immigrations slightly easier than the first, and some actually made the journey more quickly than if they had used ox-drawn wagons. Still, once the church finances had recovered, Young’s followers returned to using conventional wagons. The handcart treks remained nothing less than heroic. One girl later estimated that she and her family had each taken over a million steps to reach their goal, pushing and pulling a creaking wooden handcart the entire way.

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