Melinda Beck

Generations of Americans assume that Al Capone was responsible for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the execution-style slaying of seven associates of rival mobster George "Bugs" Moran in a Chicago garage on February 14, 1929. In fact, Capone, the flamboyant Chicago crime boss, ...read more

Were there female gladiators in ancient Rome? While sparse, evidence exists in art, laws and written accounts that women did participate in the brutal sport during the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, fighting each other fiercely with weapons for entertainment. But ...read more

Some 200 years before the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, courts in Europe were convicting men—and some women—of transforming into werewolves and mutilating and eating children. The punishments were sometimes as gruesome as the alleged crimes. In Germany in 1589, ...read more

The unlikely band of American women who crossed the Atlantic into war-torn France in February 1918 included six doctors, 13 nurses, a dentist, a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter and a mechanic. They were the first wave of women determined to build hospitals to treat the ...read more

For nearly five decades, police and amateur sleuths have sought the identity of the Zodiac—and never come close to making an arrest. The serial killer who murdered at least five people, taunted police and terrorized Bay Area residents in the 1960s and 1970s apparently vanished ...read more