June 12th, 1991, 9:47 p.m. The Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit. Game five of the NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers was supposed to be entertainment, but 33-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson had discovered it was something far more sinister. Through his friendship with Lakers point guard Magic Johnson, Prince had learned…
November 9th, 1987, 11:23 p.m. The Ritz, New York City. The exclusive afterparty for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony was winding down when 42-year-old Eric Clapton, widely regarded as one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, noticed 29-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson, sitting quietly in a corner booth. Clapton, who…
February 28th, 1985, 8:47 p.m. Studio 8, HNBC Studios, New York City. The American Music Awards were being broadcast live to 42 million viewers, when 34year-old Stevie Wonder, already a legend with 25 Grammy wins, made an announcement that stunned the audience. I’ve been hearing a lot about this young man, Prince, and his musical…
August 14th, 1988, 3:17 p.m. Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. 15-year-old Sarah Mitchell had been in a medically induced coma for 47 days following a severe car accident that had left her with traumatic brain injury. Her parents, David and Lisa Mitchell, had exhausted every medical option, spoken to specialists across the country, and…
Two tin cans, a piece of string, a hole the size of a bayonet point. That is all it took to make 40,000 predicted casualties disappear from the ledger of the British Empire and turn one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East into a laughingtock that spent an entire morning heroically assaulting…
In August of 1900, a British general sent a telegram to London declaring that 500 Australian soldiers were finished. He had not spoken to a single one of them. He had not fired a shot in their defense. He had simply looked at the smoke rising over the South African belt, decided the arithmetic was…
12 American operators, $47 million in equipment, 6 months of preparation, zero confirmed targets, four British soldiers, 11 days, a budget that wouldn’t cover the catering bill for the American mission planning phase. 14 high value targets confirmed, three networks dismantled, not a single compromise. The numbers arrived at Combined Joint Operations Command in Baghdad…
In 1962, a muscular American green beret captain named Charlie Beckwith arrived at the SAS headquarters in Heraford, England as part of a military exchange program. He was confident, experienced, and had already served in Laos during covert operations. He figured the Brits were professionals, sure, but nothing he had not seen before. Then he…
In late 2001, a squadron of roughly 90 Australian soldiers flew into southern Afghanistan to join the American war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. They came from a base in the suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, a place most people would associate with beaches and sunshine, not the hardest special forces unit on the planet….
In March 2002, on a frozen mountaintop in eastern Afghanistan, seven American servicemen were killed in the deadliest special operations engagement of the entire war so far. [music] Three helicopters were shot up. Two SEAL teams were driven off a 10,000 ft peak by entrenched al-Qaeda fighters who were never supposed to be there. And…
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