Fri, Sep 22, 2017
In 1888, a series of gruesome murders shocked London: The perpetrator was dubbed "Jack the Ripper". This was the Victorian era, when puritanism reigned and forensic science was in its infancy. How did these factors combine to create one of the most renowned crime stories in history, resulting in the construction of the serial killer?
Fri, Sep 15, 2017
Paris, January 1907. Albert Soleilland is accused of the rape and murder of a little girl named Marthe. The press details every step of the case as if it was a show. As early century France was on the verge of abolishing the death sentence, this infamous crime set the abolitionist cause back decades. The media strenuously called for Soleilland's execution en masse.
Fri, Sep 22, 2017
In 1924 in Hanover, Germany, untold numbers of bones were found by authorities, and the news immediately hit the press. A prime suspect, Fritz Haarmann, was quickly arrested. The heinous crimes committed by the one now called "the vampire" reminded the German people of the traumas of the Great War. Cruelty, sexual violence, and cannibalism in the fragile Weimar Republic.
Fri, Oct 6, 2017
In 1929, seven members of Bugs Moran's gang were assassinated in a garage by Al Capone's henchmen. This event was taken up by the press who named it the "Saint Valentine's day Massacre". Carried out during the prohibition, those killings became the newsworthy symbol of gang wars - they consolidated the image of the Italian mobster in the American collective imaginary.
Fri, Sep 15, 2017
In August 1933, 18-year-old Violette Noziere poisoned her father in Paris. After a short period on the run, Violette was charged with murder and swiftly confessed to the crime, saying her motive was that her father abused her. The press and public were immediately fascinated by this patricidal teenager, who became known as "The Monster in the Skirt".
Sat, Oct 21, 2017
On May 18th 1936, Abe Sada killed her lover by "erotic asphyxia" then cut off his member and carved his name in her flesh. In a militarized Japan, the press was very interested in this crime with erotic and transgressive accents. The murder has become a classic in Japanese culture; news of this crime spread a made up image of Japan - where love and sexual urges are liberated - to the West.
Fri, Sep 8, 2017
On 8 July 1947, the US Air Force announced the discovery of a "flying disc" which had crashed in the Roswell area of New Mexico. This was the birth of the flying saucer phenomenon. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, when conspiracy theories abounded, the myth of the UFO gradually took shape to become a recurrent theme in science-fiction movies and popular culture.
Fri, Sep 29, 2017
It is 1978, Guyana. Reverend Jim Jones held an apocalyptic mass. Its' outcome? The sacrifice of 918 members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an American cult founded in the mid-1950s. The entire world was horrified by journalists' accounts, and the images they saw of Jonestown, and this event haunted small communities and alternative forms of worship throughout the 1970s.
Fri, Sep 8, 2017
On 31 August 1997, Princess Diana died alongside her companion, Dodi Al-Fayed, in a car crash in Paris, whilst being pursued by paparazzi. Her untimely death prompted an outpouring of grief in Britain and elsewhere in the world, and made her a symbol of the excesses of media intrusion, that was ironically echoed in the coverage of her funeral, broadcast live around the globe.