Scandals

Last month, Delaware became the first state in the Union to ban child marriage. In all other states, legal exceptions allow minors—mostly girls, some as young as 12—to marry even if the state’s official minimum age is 18. Between 2000 and 2010, there were nearly 250,000 child ...read more

Former FBI deputy director William Mark Felt, Sr., age 91, broke his 30-year silence and confirmed in June 2005 that he was “Deep Throat,” the anonymous government source who had leaked crucial information to Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which helped ...read more

As the first secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Alexander Hamilton built the foundations of the national banking system and wielded more power in the earliest years of American democracy than any other man beside George Washington. Yet unlike Washington, and unlike his longtime ...read more

Late on the night of July 18, 1969, a black Oldsmobile driven by U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy plunged off the Dike Bridge on the tiny island of Chappaquiddick, off Martha’s Vineyard, landing upside down in the tidal Poucha Pond. The 37-year-old Kennedy survived the crash, but the ...read more

The Monica Lewinsky scandal began in the late 1990s, when America was rocked by a political sex scandal involving President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern in her early 20s. In 1995, the two began a sexual relationship that continued sporadically until ...read more

At Elizabeth II’s coronation at Westminster Abbey in 1953, all eyes should have been on the new monarch. But someone else stole the show that afternoon: Princess Margaret. At the televised event, the queen’s sister picked a piece of lint from the lapel of Peter Townsend, a war ...read more

Political opposition research may be more intense than ever before, but the idea of smearing your rivals by exposing their secrets is definitely not new. Here’s a look at some of the biggest scandals in presidential elections involving dirt dug up by the other side. 1. Andrew ...read more

In the summer of 1807, the city of Richmond, Virginia, played host to one of the most remarkable trials in early American history. The case involved several legal luminaries, but its undisputed star was the defendant, 51-year-old Aaron Burr. The New Jersey native had only ...read more

Not only does the U.S. president have the authority to appoint a special prosecutor—he also has the authority to fire one. President Ulysses S. Grant exercised both of these powers in 1875, during the Whiskey Ring Scandal. Before the scandal was over, Grant also did something no ...read more

1. The Hutchinson Letters In December 1772, Benjamin Franklin, who was then serving as Britain’s Postmaster General of the American colonies, anonymously received a packet of letters written to a British official by Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts. In the ...read more

It’s the one autograph Pete Rose never wanted to sign. When baseball’s all-time hits leader scrawled “Peter Edward Rose” at the end of a five-page document on August 23, 1989, he signed his own death sentence from the game he loved. The agreement ended a six-month investigation ...read more