HotNow History

August 22, 1900. Biltmore Estate, North Carolina. Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt was born in the Louis XV Bedroom of America’s largest private home—a château with 250 rooms, 135,000 square feet, and …

She was born in a 250-room palace and groomed to guard the Vanderbilt legacy—until the day she walked away from it all and never looked back. Read More

November 30, 1874. A girl named Lucy Maud Montgomery entered the world in Clifton, a small village on Prince Edward Island, Canada. She would never know her mother’s voice. Before …

By age two she was alone. So she talked to trees, built worlds from nothing, and wrote from a hatbox the story that would heal millions of lonely children like her. Read More

April 1922. Rural Kansas. Both parents dead within one week—mother from a burst appendix, father from a sudden heart attack in the barn. Five children left behind. No relatives nearby. …

A 14-year-old girl became mother, father, and farmer to four siblings—and no one noticed for eight months. Read More

She wasn’t chasing fame. She wasn’t planning a comeback. She was doing math no parent should have to do. In 2010, Mayim Bialik had everything that supposedly defines success. A …

She Had a PhD, Two Babies, and an Expiring Insurance Card — So She Took an Audition She Never Wanted Read More

October 1979. Gary Burghoff stands on the MASH set, clutching a teddy bear that’s become nearly as famous as he is. He tells the producers he’s done. They’re stunned. MASH …

“He walked away from the most popular show on television—not for money, not for creative differences. He left because playing the character was erasing who he actually was. Read More

He told her he was developing a new sitcom called The Jeffersons. There would be an interracial married couple living next door to the main characters. A Black woman married …

In 1975, Norman Lear called Roxie Roker into his office with a warning Read More

It wasn’t supposed to be dramatic. Her mother had driven her to a hotel near what they both assumed was a quiet summer festival — three days of peace, music, …

In August 1969, twenty-two-year-old Melanie Safka climbed into a helicopter and left her mother behind. Read More

When Lillian Moller Gilbreth was born in 1878 in Oakland, California, no one expected her to change the way the world worked. She was the oldest of nine children in …

She won those battles one by one. In 1900, she stood before a crowd at the University of California Read More

And then she grabbed a pair of scissors… and cut the feet off her pantyhose. That tiny, impulsive act in 1998 would change everything. This is Sara Blakely’s story. Florida, …

She was 27. Selling fax machines door-to-door. Frustrated. Read More

His name is Tim Sweeney. While most tech billionaires collect superyachts, private islands, and skyscrapers with their names on them, Sweeney is collecting something different. Mountains. Forests. Rivers. Wilderness. Over …

The billionaire who built Fortnite is secretly buying America’s wilderness—not to build on it, but to save it forever. Read More