A lost Jack Kerouac story was discovered in the belongings of a gunned-down mob boss

Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady were early Beats

Works like Ginsberg’s "Howl" and Kerouac’s "On the Road" redefined literature, inspiring countercultural movements for several decades.

Why country singer Zach Bryan purchased the original 'On the Road' manuscript

The superstar paid $12.1M for the original draft of Kerouac's novel, which was written on a 120-foot typescript scroll so the text could be read without stopping. Bryan recently purchased a church in Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, with plans to turn it into the Jack Kerouac Center. The scroll will likely be housed there.

Walt Whitman's lost novel

In 2016, a long-forgotten piece of Walt Whitman's earliest work was uncovered. First published anonymously in 1852, "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle" is a serialized story that predates "Leaves of Grass." It offers a rare look at Whitman's early writing, before he became one of the most influential poets in US history.

Before he was a famous novelist, John Steinbeck wrote a werewolf murder mystery.

Joan Didion interviewed The Grateful Dead in 1967, before they became music icons.

Inside 'Blood Meridian' author Cormac McCarthy's library of 20,000 books

The reclusive writer published 12 novels and taught himself stonemasonry and quantum physics, among myriad other skills and subjects. Since he died in 2023, scholars have been mining his personal library for lessons on his influences, interests, and more.

‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby’ was a letter to an editor

Wolfe pitched a story about custom-made cars to Esquire with a satirical angle. While struggling to actually put the piece together, he explained to the editor what he wanted it to be. The editor published the letter as is, removing the greeting. The seminal article became a book of essays.

Tom Robbins wrote comedy for the counterculture

Robbins passed away at the age of 92, leaving behind a catalog filled with surreal and comic explorations of the American counterculture. But his early success led some to disregard the prophetic and nuanced storytelling in his books.

Camus died in a car crash, which some believe was orchestrated by the KGB

Albert Camus died in 1960, at the age of 46, after his publisher's car crashed into a tree. Italian author Giovanni Catelli, however, alleges that what appeared to be an accident was actually an assassination by the Soviet spy agency as a way to silence the French writer's anti-Soviet beliefs.

Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Hell’s Angels’ gave inside look at a notorious motorcycle gang

What began as an article turned into roughly two years of Thompson’s life spent riding with the infamous Californian gang. By absorbing himself in their lifestyle, he gave the American public a look into their partying, drinking and violence.

Why Stephen King bought the van that nearly killed him

Back in 1999, writer Stephen King was struck by a vehicle near his home in Bangor, Maine. It's a story he recounts in his memoir "On Writing," though that sober-minded text doesn't reveal a fascinating bit of trivia: King initially bought the van intending to obliterate it with a sledgehammer. King did end up purchasing the vehicle, though he didn't destroy it himself. This article uncovers why.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

O’Connor shared lengthy, intimate letters with Betty Hester, a recluse

When O’Connor’s private letters were released in “The Habit of Being,” readers wondered about the identity of “A,” who had an intimate (possibly romantic) relationship with the writer. Decades later, “A” was revealed to be Betty Hester, a reclusive file clerk. Scholars still debate whether the two were romantically involved.

The oft-cited roots of the true crime genre

The 1966 book "In Cold Blood" by American author Truman Capote is often considered the beginning of true crime as it's known today. The story details the real-life murders of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas, using techniques that, at the time, were relegated to fictional tales. Before it was a book, the narrative was published by The New Yorker in 1965 as a four-part series. 

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

The strange, unsolved story of Filippo Bernardini and the stolen book manuscripts

Over the last five years, a mysterious figure has been stealing manuscripts, often unpublished, from individuals and organizations in the publishing industry across three continents. The scammer, later identified as Filippo Bernardini, was an...

Zora Neale Hurston's 'Spunk' spent decades languishing in the Library of Congress

The author, known for her masterwork "Their Eyes Were Watching God," wrote the play in 1935, but it was mostly unknown. In 1997, it was re-discovered in the Library of Congress' drama collection, a repository for plays that were not copyrighted because they were never staged.

The inside story of the 1969 murder of coal union leader Jock Yablonski

In 1969, Jock Yablonski challenged the longtime president of the United Mine Workers, Tony Boyle. On New Year's Eve of that year, Yablonski, his wife, and their daughter were brutally murdered in their beds.

Searching for a hate crime's unknown victim

In 2004, two federal agents heard a rumor: two white men, one under investigation for an unrelated crime, had gotten away with killing a Black man 15 years earlier as a requirement to join a white supremacist group. One of the men confessed to the crime, though he didn't know who was killed. This series dives into the search for the slain man and the justice he deserved.

Listen to Gay Talese read from ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold’

The writer revisits his 1966 profile on Frank Sinatra, one of the most popular magazine stories ever written. The story uncovered aspects of Sinatra’s life previously unknown to most people, such as having a personal staff of 75 people, including one person to take care of his hairpieces.

Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ inspired a trove of angry letters to The New Yorker

The writer’s short story “The Lottery” is widely taught in American schools and with good reason—it’s a masterful and horrifying story about the dangers of blind tradition. After its initial publication in The New Yorker, 150 readers wrote letters calling the story “outrageous,” “gruesome,” and “utterly pointless.” Listen to a reading of the story below and a discussion of why it provoked such outraged responses.

Although not known for horror, a young Tennessee Williams wrote a gothic radio play

The "Streetcar Named Desire" author wrote "The Strangers," a short script, while a student at the University of Iowa in the 1930s. Andrew Gulli, managing editor for the literary magazine that published the unearthed piece, said that it blends classic '30s radio horror with themes Williams would revisit in later, more famous work.

The Foolkiller: The mysterious submarine at the bottom of the Chicago River

In November 1915, a submarine was found at the bottom of the Chicago River. It had been there for at least 10 years, was 40 feet long, and contained the remains of a man and his dog. To this day, no one knows who built it.

You can read First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' will online

Unlike trusts, the contents of a will are public information. Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy's will included her copy of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address signed by Robert Frost and other fascinating historic objects.

Salvador Dalí once conned Yoko Ono

A quirky story often told about Salvador Dalí claims that in 1969, Yoko Ono offered him $10,000 for one of his famous mustache hairs. Allegedly wary of occult intentions, Dalí instead sent her a blade of grass. While the tale is debated, it fits neatly into Dalí's eccentric public image and his later-life reputation for turning playful stunts into profitable moments.

Listen to found cassette tapes from around the world

A growing catalog collects tapes discovered in Barcelona, New York, and other locations, featuring digitized audio for easy listening alongside any accompanying visuals or notes. Some audio fragments include voice memos and mixtapes as well.

The usual rules of fate do not apply': Race car driver-turned-ace WWI fighter pilot survives being lost at sea

Eddie Rickenbacker had an amazing career as a World War I hero, fighter pilot, and race care driver, among other accomplishments. This restored footage of an short 12-minute documentary about his early life, war stories, and survival at sea for 24 days provides amazing insight on a truly American character.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.