Thirty years can completely rewrite what a familiar company does. Some businesses traded counters and catalogs for apps and subscriptions; others moved into cloud computing, streaming, health care or logistics. A few shrank from national institutions into tiny remnants. These 22 companies show how much can change in one generation.
From fake princes and royal heirs to invented nations and bogus Shakespeare manuscripts, meet the bold historical impostors who fooled governments, courts, bankers, scholars, and high society.
Kate Chase tied her political dreams to her powerful father, only to watch his defeats trigger a dramatic fall from Washington society.
Explore how history’s most powerful rulers turned personal grudges into public vengeance, using armies, prisons, censorship, and government agencies to punish rivals, critics, and anyone who dared openly challenge them.
Henry VII was consumed for most of his life with personal problems and domestic politics, but he sought personal glory in military victories.
For generations, people with unusual bodies, racial identities, disabilities, or medical conditions were marketed as attractions while promoters, scientists, newspapers, and museums constructed fantasies around them. Behind those labels were real people whose stories were often more complicated, accomplished, and troubling than the spectacles built around them.
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