True Historical

Timeless wisdom drawn from 3,000 years of human experience offers hope, insight and inspiration to listeners of all ages. These true stories of great individuals include Raphael, Michelangelo, Diogenes, Alexander the Great, King Solomon, Jesus' The Good Samaritan, Beatrix Potter, Satchel Paige, and more.

Journalist Dennis McAuliffe Jr. grew up believing that his Osage Indian grandmother, Sybil Bolton, had died an early death in 1925 from kidney disease. It was only by chance that he learned the real cause was a gunshot wound and that her murder may well have been engineered by his own grandfather. As McAuliffe peeled away layers of suppressed history, he learned that Sybil was a victim of the "Osage Reign of Terror"....

What if a respected surgeon could destroy your life with just one diagnosis? In early twentieth century Green Bay, Wisconsin, this terrifying reality was all too true for two women. Mary, an illiterate maid, and Mollie, a college-educated socialite, fell victim to the physical violence and mental abuse of celebrated surgeon Dr. John R. Minahan. To silence them, he claimed they had the shameful and dreaded disease of syphilis.

Discover the true stories of extraordinary animals who changed the course of history. From the battlefields of ancient empires to the viral stars of the internet age, Famous Pets of History takes you on a heartwarming journey through time, celebrating the dogs, cats, birds, and unlikely animal companions who have inspired legends, comforted leaders, and captured the world’s imagination. Meet Hachiko, the loyal Akita who waited for his owner every day for nearly a decade. Cheer for Balto and Togo, the brave sled dogs who raced through a blizzard to save a town. Marvel at Cher Ami, the ...

In 1860, a woman denied her inheritance and desperate for an income meets a man who lies to her, then offers her employment. Should she trust anything he says? Because Hannah True, 38, has no husband, her father’s will leaves the hotel she has been managing to her brothers-in-law. They decide to sell, leaving Hannah without a home or income. While traveling by steamboat to visit her aunt in New York City, she meets a man who takes an unexplained interest in her and then offers her a job in his detective agency. The work sounds too dangerous and nomadic for a woman who hopes to provide a ...

Jon Meacham, in American Lion, has delivered the definitive human portrait of a pivotal president who forever changed the American presidency and America itself. Andrew Jackson, his intimate circle of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency.

The men on the SS Marine Electric sailed into a storm in February 1983 not knowing that they would make history - at a great cost in lives. Just three men survived the wreck of the Marine Electric off the shores of Virginia and they found that their struggle had just begun once they got back to shore. Blamed for the wreck, they fought back and broke a code of silence that had covered up sloppy ship inspections for decades and revealed the flaws in old World War II rust buckets that were still at sea long past their functional lifetime.

They say reformed rakes make the best husbands. They were wrong. Ten years ago, Tabby Russell married the man of her dreams. Or so she thought. The reformed rake had seemed vastly appealing when she was younger, but as life marched on and his old habits returned, Tabby realized too late that she should have chosen wiser when facing the marriage alter. But there is no undoing the decisions of the past or avoiding the ensuing consequences. Even if Tabby wishes otherwise.

In 1948 West Berlin, Mercedes and her mother rely on the noisy American planes that form a “sky bridge” into the city, bringing vital food and supplies. But the planes deliver more than flour, clothing, and coal. Every day, one special plane wiggles its wings, and its pilot drops small candy-filled parachutes for the children. How can Mercedes get the “Chocolate Pilot” to drop some candy just for her?

By 1944, the war has turned against Hitler’s Third Reich, and German cities lie in ruins from the constant bombing by the Allies. On every front, Allied forces are driving the Wehrmacht forces back. Inspired by the success of his terror weapons, the V-1 and V-2 rockets, against cities in England, Hitler approved plans for a secret operation to retaliate against the United States by launching V-1 buzz bombs from the decks of German U-boats in an attack on New York City. In September of 1944, a clandestine operation involving the Abwehr, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe, codenamed Operation ...

Charles Brandt, who handled over fifty-six homicides as the chief deputy attorney general of Delaware, in charge of all homicides and a private homicide defense attorney in the 1970s, has now used his hands-on professional experience in murder investigation and his analytic skills to conclusively solve every secret of the homicides of JFK, Officer Tippit, and Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas in 1963.

A young Jewish mother. A Nazi occupation bent on genocide. A heart-breaking decision that will tear a young family apart. Among the Reeds is a deeply personal family memoir that is part biography, part psychological observation of the extraordinary wartime lives of a persecuted people. If you like true stories of courage, heart-stopping near misses, and tear-jerking choices, then you’ll love Tammy Bottner’s compelling account.

In July 1952, Dr. Walter Freeman arrived at the gates of a West Virginia asylum. In his medical bag he carried two metal picks and a surgical hammer. He had invented a “cheap, easy” ten-minute lobotomy. The press described it as a miracle cure, a new frontier in psychosurgery. That summer, in just twelve days, Freeman lobotomized 228 men, women, and children in West Virginia’s public mental hospitals. His blitzkrieg of brain surgery became known as “Operation Ice Pick,” named after the tools he wielded.

November, 1914. The Great War has come to Brussels, the Germans have occupied the city, and Edith Cavell, Head Nurse at Berkendael Medical Institute, faces an impossible situation. As matron of a designated Red Cross hospital, Edith has sworn an oath to help any who are wounded, under whatever flag they are found. But Governor von Lüttwitz, the ranking German officer, has additional orders for her. She and her nurses must also stand guard over the wounded Allied prisoners of war and prevent them from escaping.

The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometer walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal families at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth. Here Aboriginal children were instructed in the ways of white society and forbidden to speak their native tongue.

The series "Restless Souls & Haunted Places" takes you to the mystical locations of the pioneer days where spirits are said to be roaming buildings and battlefields of days long gone. A series of murders shocks the mining town of Jerome and leaves a trace of mutilated bodies. Is a mysterious soiled dove involved in those crimes? Traces lead to a connection between the unknown European beauty and an Apache legend about a monster banished inside the sacred Mount Graham. When rancher Ben O'Connor sets out to find his best friend's killer, he has no idea that he is about to face a bloody battle...

Peter Carey's stunning, Booker Prize-winning novel about Australia's most famous outlaw. As he flees the police, Ned Kelly scribbles his narrative in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose. To his pursuers he is a thief and a murderer. To his own people he's a hero for opposing the English. Ned, who saw his first prison cell at 15, has become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over towns and defying authority.

In the early 1900s, at the dawn of the “American Century,” few knew the intoxicating power of greed better than white men on the forefront of the black gold rush. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma’s Indian Country, these tycoons impersonated, defrauded, and murdered Native property owners to snatch up hundreds of acres of oil-rich land. Journalist and fourth-generation Oklahoman Russell Cobb sets the stage for one such oilman’s chicanery: Tulsa entrepreneur Charles Page’s campaign for a young Muscogee boy’s land in Creek County.

The "unputdownable" (Dave Eggers, National Book award finalist) story of the most infamous American con man you've never heard of: James Strang, self-proclaimed divine king of earth, heaven, and an island in Lake Michigan, "perfect for fans of The Devil in the White City" (Kirkus).

For Clara Deverill, standing in for the real Lady Truelove means dispensing advice on problems she herself has never managed to overcome. There’s nothing for it but to retreat to a tearoom and hope inspiration strikes between scones. It doesn’t - until Clara overhears a rake waxing eloquent on the art of “honorable” jilting. The cad may look like an Adonis, but he’s about to find himself on the wrong side of Lady Truelove.