by Nick Kolakowski | Dec 30, 2021 | Noir
The bank robber John Dillinger died on July 22, 1934. Or maybe he didn’t. At the height of the Great Depression, Dillinger and his crew robbed at least a dozen banks across the Midwest, netting a small fortune (roughly $300,000, or around $5.7 million in 2019 dollars)...
by Nick Kolakowski | Dec 27, 2021 | Pop Culture
Even quick fires can change cities forever. London, Chicago and San Francisco all burned to their foundations, only to have more modern versions rise from the ashes. Baltimore underwent its own less-famous fire over a century ago, a 30-hour inferno that...
by Nick Kolakowski | Dec 20, 2021 | Pop Culture
A few years ago, along with a bunch of other folks, I became mildly obsessed with the AMC series The Terror, which follows two 19th century British ships attempting to navigate the Northwest Passage. Within two episodes, the ships are stuck in winter ice, and the crew...
by Nick Kolakowski | Dec 20, 2021 | Uncategorized
It wasn’t until the stoic German executive popped open the champagne and began drinking straight from the bottle that I feared we might die in the next few minutes. We were approaching Florence airport but the air-traffic controller wasn’t responding. We were lower on...
by Nick Kolakowski | Dec 16, 2021 | Noir
Mention “Bonnie and Clyde,” and, for many people, the first thing that springs to mind is the Arthur Penn movie, in which Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway play an impossibly glamourous couple who rob banks, party hard, and die young. Just in case you’ve never seen it,...
