Showing results for "The Double" in Historical

Eddie Chapman was a womaniser, blackmailer and safecracker. He was also a great hero - the most remarkable double agent of the Second World War. Chapman became the only British national ever to be awarded an Iron Cross for his work for the Reich. He was also the only German spy ever to be parachuted into Britain twice. But it was all an illusion: Eddie fooled the Germans in the same way he conned his victims in civilian life. He was working for the British all along.

Unmasking the Klansman may read like a work of fiction but is actually a biography of Asa Carter, one of the South's most notorious white supremacists (and secret Klansman). In the early 1960s Carter became a secret adviser to George Wallace and wrote the Alabama governor's infamous 1963 inauguration speech vowing "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Leland Stanford retains a double legacy as both a robber baron and a great philanthropist. He got his start in business as a merchant during the California gold rush, but he worked his way up to president of both the Central and Southern Pacific Railroad companies by 1861. He became a railroad mogul, a leading force in an under-regulated industry wherein he gained a reputation for corrupt and greedy practices. Yet, he and his wife benevolently founded Stanford University in memory of their deceased son.