When Michelle Kwan won her ninth U.S. ladies figure skating title in 2005, she tied this legendary skater.
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Sabtu, 31 Maret 2018
Giving the Machine Guns Wings
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Jumat, 30 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 31, 2018
This child star’s juvenile Academy Award was stolen only to reappear at a 1995 flea market.
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Aviation History Review: Hard and Soft Ware
CH’s new flight yoke and a gunship sim. CH Products is one of the oldest and best makers of PC peripherals. The company has been making joysticks since the early days of the PC’s existence. CH eventually branched out into more specialized gaming peripherals such as its throttle and rudder pedals, which “Airware” has previously …
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Aviation History Book Review: War Birds
War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator by John MacGavock Grider and Elliott White Springs If James McCudden’s Flying Fury seems like the quintessentially British memoir of World War I aviation, it might be argued that War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator is the prototypical American version. Originally serialized in Liberty magazine in 1926, …
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Aviation History Book Review: Facing the Heat Barrier
Facing the Heat Barrier: A History of Hypersonics by T.A. Heppenheimer, NASA History Series, Washington, D.C., 2008, $57.41. Tom Heppenheimer is well known for his books and articles on technical subjects, and Facing the Heat Barrier is a fitting showcase for his talents. His interesting approach to a difficult topic makes one realize that while …
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Aviation History Book Review: Conquistadors of the Sky
Conquistadors of the Sky: A History of Aviation in Latin America by Dan Hagedorn, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2008, $39.95. It’s one thing for a book to fill a long-overlooked gap, and another to do it in a comprehensive, readable fashion. Conquistadors of the Sky is an invaluable contribution covering topics from Aztec myths …
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Aviation History Book Review: A Dawn Like Thunder
A Dawn Like Thunder: The True Story of Torpedo Squadron Eight by Robert J. Mrazek, Little, Brown & Company, New York, 2008, $27.99. Robert Mrazek presents in a popular, anecdotal form the results of intensive research into a squadron that performed heroically during World War II. A Dawn Like Thunder chronicles in intimate detail the …
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Aviation History Book Review: Memphis Belle
Memphis Belle— Dispelling the Myths by Graham M. Simons and Harry Friedman, GMS Enterprises, Peterborough, UK, 2008, $120. The Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress Memphis Belle is certainly the best-known aircraft of World War II. Scholarly histories and popular journals alike have repeated variations of the legend that Belle was the first Eighth Air Force heavy …
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Misty Fast FACs
When the U.S. Air Force played Misty in Vietnam, the enemy ran for cover. As U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated in the mid- 1960s, the angry skies over Southeast Asia took a mounting toll on American aircraft. Propeller-driven “slow movers” like the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog and O-2 Skymaster, used primarily by forward …
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Into the Air- Aviation of North America
A handful of innovative pragmatists came together in 1907 to build flying machines, and in the process jump-started aviation in North America. At its outset, the Aerial Experiment Association might have seemed an unlikely venture. Launched in 1907 at the summer home of 60-year-old Alexander Graham Bell, this small group of youthful engineers and mechanics …
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The Incredible ‘Winkle’ Brown
Few would argue with the contention that Eric Brown is the greatest test pilot who ever lived—except, of course, for Brown himself. First pilot to land a pure jet on an aircraft carrier. First to land a tricycle gear airplane on a carrier. First to land a high-performance twin on a carrier. First deck landing …
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Sun Setters Over Japan
Best known for their role in defeating the Luftwaffe, P-51 Mustangs also performed yeoman service in the Pacific, flying the longest fighter escort missions of World War II. As 91 North American P-51D Mustangs of the 15th and 21st Fighter groups approached their rendezvous point on April 7, 1945, the pilots saw for the first …
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Custer’s Channel Wing
The inventor knew only frustration and failure, but his unusual wing design might yet succeed. Like many unique design concepts, the channel wing was the product of one man’s vision and persistence. Willard Custer, a great-grand nephew of George Armstrong Custer, has been called the father of short takeoff and landing aircraft. That may be …
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Constellation Restoration
Lufthansa is spending millions to return a Lockheed L-1649A Starliner—considered the ultimate ‘Connie’—to flying status. While U.S. airlines demand your spare change if you want a cup of instant coffee, sell everything from pillows to luggage space, rip out the in-flight entertainment and invest in little beyond fuel futures, Lufthansa is spending a considerable amount …
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One Small Step
The first woman to parachute from an airplane, ‘Tiny’ Broadwick leapt into the record books. On January 9, 1914, a diminutive young woman “stood poised for a moment on a step at the side of the Martin biplane, looked down 1,000 feet at the earth below, and stepped out into space as lightly and unconcernedly …
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Spirit of Texas: Mission Accomplished
Ross Perot Jr. was just 23 when he set out on a bold venture: to circumnavigate the world in a helicopter. He had only a year of flying under his belt at the time. Fortunately for him, his father, the well-known Texas business magnate and sometime presidential candidate, was willing to buy into his dream. …
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Aviation History Briefing- July 2009
Barn Cub Found Every collector’s dream is to come across a “barn find,” though often the discovery doesn’t involve a barn. It can be a Merlin engine spotted in a junkyard, a decrepit Stearman parked in a field, Spad wings stored in a warehouse. A remarkable recent find, in fact, involved a Texas ranch hangar: …
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Aviation History Review: Yankee Air Pirate
Fly the unfriendly skies of Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict may have featured the most unusual and varied air war in history. In the skies over Southeast Asia, helicopters really came into their own, jets and props worked together regularly and dissimilar air combat opened a lot of eyes. This rich pool of historical aviation is …
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Aviation History Book Review: West With the Night
West With the Night by Beryl Markham Beryl Markham was the first person to fly solo from England to North America from east to west, against prevailing Atlantic winds. She accomplished this remarkable feat in 1936, flying a Vega Gull dubbed The Messenger. Her harrowing flight, which ended with a crash landing in Nova Scotia, …
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Aviation History Review: Wings of Defeat
Wings of Defeat Independent Lens, San Francisco, Calif., 2009, available from www. edgewoodpictures.com/wingsofdefeat, $24.95. Veteran Mitsubishi A6M Zero pilot Shigeyoshi Hamazono claimed to have survived grueling campaigns in the Solomon and Philippine islands because of his constant urge “to win.” Kazuo Nakajima was a 16-yearold boy eagerly training to be a Japanese navy pilot when …
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Aviation History Book Review: IL-2 Shturmovik Guards
IL-2 Shturmovik Guards Units of World War 2 by Oleg Rastrenin, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2008, $22.95. World War II’s most-produced warplane, with 36,152 built, the Ilyushin Il-2 was also the first successful armored attack plane and, like the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, made the sobriquet of Shturmovik (ground attack plane) its own. The regiments that …
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Aviation History Book Review: Luftwaffe Colours
Luftwaffe Colours, 1935-1945 by Michael Ullmann, Hikoki Publications, Manchester, UK, 2008, $59.95. Books dealing with German aircraft camouflage and markings are a significant slice of the aviation history publishing industry. It seems that each aircraft in the Luftwaffe’s inventory has at least one volume devoted to its coloration, with the more iconic types such as …
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Aviation History Book Reviews: Racing for the Gold and Aviation Visionary
Racing for the Gold: The Story of Lyle Shelton and the Rare Bear by Dell Rourk, AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Ind., 2008, $16.95. Aviation Visionary: “Smilin’ Jack” Conroy and his Conroy Aircraft Corporation by Robert R. Kirby and George M. Warner, BAC Publishers, Upland, Calif., 2008, $19.95. Two books you may have missed share some of the …
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Aviation History Book Review: A Dream of Pilots
A Dream of Pilots by Philip Handleman, illustrated by Craig Kodera, Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, La., 2009, $14.95. Attention parents and grandparents! Would you like to see your children and grandchildren stop watching pixels move around a screen and become motivated to fly? If so, buy a copy of Philip Handleman’s new book A Dream …
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Aviation History Book Review: Secret Pusher Fighters
American Secret Pusher Fighters of World War II: XP-54, XP-55, AND XP-56 by Gerald H. Balzer, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2008, $39.95. Veteran aviation historian Gerald H. Balzer chose three of World War II’s most fascinating American aircraft as the subject for his comprehensive new book. Those three airplanes—the Vultee XP-54, Curtiss XP-55 and …
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Tombs of Memory
The cultured French town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, is steeped in history—the more recent of which residents would rather forget
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Kamis, 29 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 30, 2018
After an arduous, exhausting, multi-generational fight of over seventy years, American women won the right to vote with the passage of the nineteenth amendment in 1920. The constitutional change was announced by this secretary of state.
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Aviation History Book Review: Contrails Over the Mojave
Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Fighter Testing at Edwards Air Force Base by George J. Marrett, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 2008, $29.95. There is always an “inside” story behind the testing of military jet aircraft before they are released into the active inventory. After the usual sequence of design and …
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First Blood in Korean Skies
In a brief but eventful combat career, the F-82 Twin Mustang proved its worth over Korea. By early 1945 it seemed obvious to the Allies that Japan would never surrender and the only way to achieve total victory in the Pacific War was by invasion. This grim prospect—and the need to win air superiority over …
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Allied Ace of Aces: René Fonck
‘He is a tiresome braggart, and even a bore, but in the air, a slashing rapier,’ wrote Claude Haegelen of squadron mate René Fonck—and he was one of Fonck’s best friends. When Germans, Americans, Italians or Belgians think of World War I aviation, the first names that come to mind are usually their highest-scoring fighter …
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Two Electras in Search of Howland Island
Thirty years after Amelia Earhart vanish, another woman flier set out to retrace her unfinished journey. The Lockheed Model 10 Electra circled above the vast Pacific, its crew members straining their eyes in search of a small island, just two miles long and rising about 10 feet above the ocean. Rain obscured their vision and …
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The Magnificent Merlin
The course of World War II would have been very different without Rolls-Royce’s immortal engine. The British Overseas Airways Corporation flight from Stockholm, Sweden, landed at an airfield in Leuchars, northern Scotland, one of several hundred round trips the airline made between the two cities. But this was no ordinary flight. The year was 1943, …
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Barling Bomber
Cost overruns and poor performance doomed the experimental strategic bomber, but it helped point the way to the future. To some it was the “Magnificent Leviathan,” to others “Mitchell’s Folly.” Its detractors considered the giant triplane a waste of taxpayer money, and dismissed it as reflection of the outsized aspirations of air power advocate Brigadier …
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Corsair!
American Society of Aviation Artists 2008 Award of Distinction winner. The clean, distinctive lines of Jack Fellows’ award- winning painting are indicative of his careful research and close attention to detail and accuracy. That painstaking approach has resulted in countless magazine covers and commissions over the years. The oil-on-canvas Corsair! (a portion of which is …
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Recce Phantom Restored
The Nebraska Air National Guard reclaims an RF-4C, preserving its own history. For many of the men in the Nebraska Air National Guard who flew the McDonnell Douglas RF-4C, the Phan – tom remains the source of lasting memories. The Cornhusker pilots and ground support personnel were members of the 173rd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, which …
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Herman the German
Master engineer Gerhard Neumann helped keep the Tigers flying and enabled the Allies to evaluate the first captured Japanese Zero. He was an enemy alien living in China when Claire Chennault recruited him into the American Volunteer Group. The Flying Tigers knew him as “Herman the German.” He would rebuild—twice—the first Japanese Zero to fall …
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Aviation History Briefing- September 2009
Scrapyard Spitfire There are more Spitfires flying today than have been airworthy since the early 1950s: at least 50, some sources say, with as many as 150 more in various stages of rebuilding and modification all over the world. Though they’re not rare by top classic-car standards, Spits are still enormously valuable. The record price …
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Aviation History Review: DCS- Black Shark
Can a flight sim offer too much detail, even for dedicated players? If it seems like it’s been a while since a meaty technical helicopter simulation hit the shelves, that’s because it has been. Deep simulations like Jane’s AH64 Longbow came out in the late 1990s, and while some nice fixed-wing products have since made …
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Aviation History Book Review: We
“We” by Charles A. Lindbergh With the smiling humility that he personified following his solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh shared the honors of his great feat with the airplane that carried him through thick and thin. That’s what “We” is all about. This book is in two parts: The …
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Aviation History Book Review: The Spitfire Smiths
The Spitfire Smiths: A Unique Story of Brothers in Arms by Christopher Shores, Grub Street, London, 2008, $30. Canadian brothers Rod and Jerry Smith flew together at Malta in 1942. Jerry died there, and Rod—who finished the war as a squadron commander and 13-victory ace—died before completing his memoircum-analysis. Fortunately Christopher Shores finished the project. …
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Aviation History Book Review: Red Sky, Black Death
Red Sky, Black Death: A Soviet Woman Pilot’s Memoir of the Eastern Front by Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova, Slavica, Bloomington, Ill., 2009, $29.95. “So you want to fly the Shturmovik? Do you have any idea what a hellish job that is? No woman in history has ever flown ground attack planes. Two cannons, two machine guns, two …
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Aviation History Book Review: Technical & Operational History
A Technical & Operational History of the Liberty Engine: Tanks, Ships, and Aircraft 1917-1960 by Robert J. Neal, Specialty Press, 2009, $74.95. Designed literally overnight in a Washington, D.C., hotel room in 1917, the Liberty aircraft engine was nevertheless a groundbreaking power plant. While the engine design in itself was not a pioneering effort, the …
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Aviation History Book Review: Second to None
Second to None: The History of the 368th Fighter Group by Dr. Timothy M. Grace, http://bit.ly/2GUJvAu, $40. Every military unit should have a history like the one Tim Grace has created for the 368th Fighter Group. It would be a great thing for the units as well as for historians. Written by the son of …
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Aviation History Book Review: The Road to Big Week
The Road to Big Week by Eric Hammel, Pacifica Military History, Pacifica, Calif., 2009, $32.95. In his excellent new book, Eric Hammel maintains his usual rigorous standards of research and writing in telling the complete story of the struggle for daylight air superiority over Western Europe. Starting at the correct, though often overlooked, starting point—November …
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Aviation History Book Review: Nachtjagd War Diaries
Nachtjagd War Diaries: An Operational History of the German Night Fighter Force in the West, Volume I, September 1939- March 1944; Volume II, April 1944-May 1945 Vol. I by Theo E.W. Boiten, Vol. II by Boiten and Roderick J. McKenzie, Red Kite, Walton-on-Thames, UK, 2008, £80 (about $135) for both volumes. The six-year nighttime struggle …
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Tin Triangle Tales
Fast, agile and futuristic, the RAF’s Avro Vulcan nuclear bomber left an indelible impression on the crewmen who flew it during the Cold War. The sleek, delta-wing bomber lands in the ocean, then slowly sinks to the bottom—part of a plan by a menacing villain in – tent on recovering the stolen aircraft’s nuclear weapons. …
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Off to Oz- Adventurous Aviators
It wasn’t long after Kitty Hawk that intrepid birdmen sought to overcome the challenges imposed by large bodies of water, beginning with Louis Blériot’s English Channel crossing in 1909. Before World War I, bold aviators had already traversed the Mediterranean, North and Norwegian seas. By war’s end, the development of large, increasingly powerful multiengine planes …
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Operation Mallory Major
A Twelfth Air Force intelligence officer came up with a daring plan to cripple Axis supply lines in northern Italy. Colonel Randy Holzapple strode into the smoke-filled briefing room on Sardinia at 5 a.m. on July 12, 1944. Yanking back a curtain to reveal a map, he said: “Men, you’ll recognize this as northern Italy, …
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Stearman’s Biplane Beauties
Lloyd Stearman’s sturdy airplanes earned a worldwide reputation for performance and reliability during aviation’s Golden Age. In his day, Lloyd Stearman was as well known as aviation giants Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech and E.M. “Matty” Laird, all of whom he worked with at one time or another. Today Stearman’s name is most often associated with …
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Building a Better Flying Saucer
Canada’s Avrocar only got 18 inches off the ground, but it signaled the first step toward practical application of vectored thrust. A new exhibit at the National Museum of the United States Air Force brings back memories of the “duck and cover” age, when reports of space invaders and flying saucers filled the news. During …
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Flying Fort Gets a Facelift
The Midwestern gate guard stands in for a storied six-mission bomber. The Boeing B-17F that serves as a gate guard at Offutt Air Force Base never saw combat during World War II, and narrowly missed out on a glamorous Hollywood career as well. The Flying Fortress recently gained new luster, however, thanks to a borrowed …
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Devil in the Dark
After sundown, the Luftwaffe’s leading night fighter wreaked havoc on RAF bomber formations. German took an enormous toll on the RAF’s Bomber Command during World War II. Among the most aggressive Nachtjäger, or night fighters, Nachtjäger pilots were Helmut Woltersdorf (24 victories), Martin Drewes (43), Ludwig Becker (44), Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgen – stein (88) …
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Aviation History Briefing- November 2009
Two Harpoon Twins The PV-2 Harpoon was the last in a long line of Lockheed double-fin twins that started in 1934 with the Model 10 Electra (Amelia Earhart’s mythic airplane) and included the RAF’s Hudson bomber, the Lodestar transport and the PV-1 Ventura U.S. Navy patrol bomber. The Harpoon was a beefier Ventura with greater …
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Rabu, 28 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 29, 2018
Before Harriet Beecher Stowe became America’s favorite female novelist with the release of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, this author held that position.
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Wild West DVD Review: How the West Was Won
How the West Was Won three-disc special,Warner Home Video, 2008, 164 minutes, $29.98. Warner Bros. created this epic in 1962 for Cinerama, a format using three projectors to create a widescreen image on a 146-degree curved screen. While the Cinerama image was breathtaking on the big screen, it did not translate well to VHS and …
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Wild West Book Review: A Remarkable Curiosity
A Remarkable Curiosity: Dispatches from a New York City Journalist’s 1873 Railroad Trip across the American West by Amos J. Cummings, compiled and edited by Jerald T. Milanich, University Press of Colorado, Boulder, 2008, $26.95. In May 1873, New York Sun editor Amos J. Cummings set off on a westward odyssey on the recently established …
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Wild West Book Review: Massacre at Bear River
Massacre at Bear River: First, Worst, Forgotten by Rod Miller, Caxton Press, Caldwell, Idaho, 2008, $18.95. On January 29, 1863, near present-day Preston, Idaho, an Army detail led by Patrick Edward Connor attacked a Shoshone Indian encampment and perpetrated one of the largest massacres in the annals of Western history. The slaughter carried out by …
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Wild West Book Review: The Wild West Catalog
The Wild West Catalog by Bruce Wexler, Running Press, Philadelphia, 2008, $19.95. In trying to address every aspect of the West in 256 pages, The Wild West Catalog can’t be comprehensive, but it is colorful, fun and sometimes fascinating, and doesn’t cost an arm or a leg. Don’t let the “catalog” title fool you, though; …
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Wild West Book Review: Navigating the Missouri
Navigating the Missouri: Steamboating on Nature’s Highway, 1819–1935 by William E. Lass, The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008, $45. William Lass’ research of Missouri River steamboating began with his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which led to his 1962 book, The History of Steamboating on the Upper Missouri River. More than four decades …
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Wild West Book Reviews: Let Them Eat Grass
Let Them Eat Grass: The 1862 Sioux Uprising in Minnesota; Volume One: Smoke by John Koblas, North Star Press of St. Cloud Inc., 2006, $16.95. Let Them Eat Grass: The 1862 Sioux Uprising in Minnesota; Volume Two: Fire John Koblas, North Star Press of St. Cloud Inc., 2006, $16.95. Let Them Eat Grass: The 1862 …
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Wild West Book Review: The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory
The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory: Nimiipuu Survival by J. Diane Pearson, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008, $34.95. When Chief Joseph finally surrendered to Colonel Nelson A. Miles’ forces in the Bear Paw Mountains of northern Montana Territory on October 5, 1877, the Nez Perce War was over. Most accounts of that tragic flight …
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Wild West Book Review: Icons of the American West
Icons of the American West: From Cowgirls to Silicon Valley edited by Gordon Morris Bakken, Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn., 2008, $175. Noah Webster defined icon as “an object of uncritical devotion.” But don’t let that dissuade you from reading this two-volume set. Icons offers greater latitude than the term might suggest, profiling the good, the …
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Sharps Carbines Were a Sure Bet At the 1872 Battle of Poker Flat
Although only single shot, they proved rugged and accurate. In 1870 an officer inspecting the 2nd U.S. Cavalry at Fort Ellis, Montana Territory, wrote, “The fire-arm of the Cavalry—the improved Sharps Carbine…I regard as an exceedingly satisfactory weapon.” He was referring to the .50-caliber Model 1868 carbine, which had only recently arrived at that remote …
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The Buffalo Bill Museum Celebrates the Showman
It’s at the heart of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. When asked how many dime novels are in the Buffalo Bill Historical Center collection, even John C. Rumm, acting curator of Western American History at the Buffalo Bill Museum, can only take his best shot. “I’m guessing there are 800 to 1,000 related to Buffalo …
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Ghost Town: Tuscarora, Nevada
In 1867 a prospecting party including brothers Steve and John Beard discovered gold 6,200 feet above sea level in the Goose Creek range of northeastern Nevada. Placer mining for gold on Beard Hill—to the tune of $12 per miner per day—ended in 1871, when W.O. Weed found a ledge of silver ore two miles northeast …
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The Hybrid Beast That Built the West
Although ungainly looking, hard kicking and as stubborn as itself, the mule proved indispensable, if not heroic, to many prospectors, emigrants, soldiers and farmers on the wild frontier. In the Wild West, a man could get hanged for horse theft yet thanked kindly for taking some- one’s no-account mule. The mule was, after all, an …
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Charley Nebo: The Forrest Gump of the Old West
Charley Nebo had a knack for showing up where the action was—driving Longhorns for Charles Goodnight, tending cattle for John Chisum, hobnobbing with Billy the Kid and riding amid the Sioux at the time of Wounded Knee. In the Academy Award–winning 1994 comedy the title character (played by Tom Hanks) describes what he did in …
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Monsters of the Plains
Buffalo were once considered as dangerous as grizzly bears— viewed with awe and hunted with abandon. That the vast herds would reach near extinction seemed about as likely as a railroad crossing the continent. As summer turned to fall in 1804, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s pirogues labored up the Missouri River past the …
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Living the Legend: Super Scout Buffalo Bill
Cody built his reputation as a chief scout, portrayed himself onstage, returned to the frontier to lift ‘the first scalp for Custer’ and then soared to uncharted heights in show business. Custer was dead. The news spread quickly through Colonel Wesley Merritt’s 5th U.S. Cavalry camp at Sage Creek, Wyoming Territory, on July 7, 1876. …
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Skin and Bones: The Plains Buffalo Trades Flourished
It was business as usual even after the bison all but vanished. Probably no late 19th-century American business venture affected Western settlement as profoundly as the buffalo trade. Even the railroads owed much to the ragged hide hunters; without them it would have been impossible to crisscross the Great Plains with tracks, let alone run …
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The Death of Crazy Horse: Fables and Forensics
Just who killed the Lakota fighting man remains in dispute. The scenario is familiar: Crazy Horse, greatest war chief of the Lakota Nation, harasser of George Crook and destroyer of George Custer, struggles to avoid being shut in the guardhouse at Camp Robinson, Nebraska, and is bayoneted by a soldier. Books and movies have depicted …
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Buffalo Jones Killed Many Buffalo, But Then Became a Preservationist
Writer Zane Grey sang his praises. He didn’t set out to save the buffalo. Like any hide hunter on the Plains, he wanted to kill as many as he could, as quickly as he could. But Charles Jesse Jones wasn’t the typical hide man. He was an innovator, an adventurer, a romantic, a visionary. And …
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With Two Well-Placed Shots, Ludwick Put Outlaws on Notice
The Texas Ranger was El Paso’s first real lawman. Before he arrived in El Paso, Mark Ludwick had been a farmhand, artist, harness maker and boiler operator. Standing 5-foot-6, with brown hair, hazel eyes and an unassuming countenance, he looked like the furniture dealer he would later become. But in 1879 he was the hard-riding, …
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Interview: Sandra K. Sagala Treads the Boards With ‘First-class Star’ Buffalo Bill
Before creating his own Wild West, Cody portrayed himself onstage. Just about every student of history knows that William F. Cody brought the Western story—or, at least, its myth—to millions of fans worldwide with his Wild West exhibitions. Yet before those shows began in 1883, Cody had entertained theatergoers in stage plays across the United …
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The Museum of the Mountain Man Treads in the Footsteps of Green River Trappers
Six fur trade rendezvous were held near present-day Pinedale. The Green River springs from the Wind River Range along the Continental Divide and meanders down through the Green River Valley, just west of modern-day Pinedale, Wyoming. It is there, at the confluence of the Green River and Horse Creek, that the legendary 19th century mountain …
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Ghost Town: South Pass City, Wyoming
Prospectors were panning gold from the Sweetwater near South Pass (in present-day Wyoming) as early as 1842, but the first real rush came in 1865 when a detachment from Fort Bridger discovered gold in the Wind River Range. One soldier found a large vein along Willow Creek, near the future Carissa Mine site, and thousands …
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Chasing the Elusive Joaquín Murrieta
No matter how many murders and robberies he actually committed, California’s most notorious bandit cast a wide shadow on the gold rush. But it is hard to catch a shadow. Like the American Forty-Niners, Joaquín Murrieta came to California to mine for gold. He found it near Sonora, the Tuolumne County town founded by fellow …
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The Search for the Captives of Elm Creek
A fall Indian raid in frontier Texas was as dramatic as any in fiction, but no more gripping than the odyssey of the female captives and their searchers. Comanche and Kiowa raiders swept down on the Fitzpatrick ranch, a two-story house formerly known as the Carter Trading Post, only a few miles northwest of Fort …
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Abraham Lincoln Looks West
Abraham Lincoln stood atop a hill outside Council Bluffs, Iowa, looking west. The broad Missouri River valley stretched from north to south before him. It was 1859, and this was the place, an acquaintance assured him, from which a transcontinental railroad across the Western expanses ought to originate. The view and that advice turned Lincoln’s …
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Audiobook Review: Vice Capades–Sex, Drugs, and Bowling from the Pilgrims to the Present
The post Audiobook Review: Vice Capades–Sex, Drugs, and Bowling from the Pilgrims to the Present appeared first on HistoryNet.
Wells Fargo’s Treasure Box Was Full of California Gold
The company trafficked in gold dust and mail. When Wells Fargo (Wells, Fargo and Company) established its express and banking business in the California gold country in July 1852, it inadvertently inspired two additional enterprises. As the company exchanged, stored and transported gold for miners, a succession of robbers emerged to steal the gold. Wells …
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Longtime Prisoner Geronimo Said He Found Christianity
Was his conversion a sham or a bid to find hope late in life? The news was a stunner: Geronimo had converted to Christianity. The story made headlines around the country in July 1903. The New York Times declared that the once-feared Apache war leader and medicine man had publicly confessed his many misdeeds while …
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From Spitfires to Saberjets: The Making of an Ace
The post From Spitfires to Saberjets: The Making of an Ace appeared first on HistoryNet.
Baron Walter von Richthofen: The Red Baron’s American Uncle
He invested in cattle, beer and milk in Denver, but his legacy is a castle. Getting rich or going broke can be a simple matter of timing. That’s how it worked out for Baron Walter von Richthofen, uncle and godfather of Manfred von Richthofen, the famed German flying ace of World War I. Frontier America’s …
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The Newly Formed California Rangers Had a Mission: Get Murrieta
They did deliver a head, but was it the right one? When gold was first discovered in California, more foreigners than Americans worked the claims. Most were from the Mexican state of Sonora, including Joaquín Murrieta. Needing funds and fearing that too much gold was being taken to other countries, the first California Legislature passed …
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Announcing! The 2018 Thomas Fleming Awards for Outstanding Military History Writing
The post Announcing! The 2018 Thomas Fleming Awards for Outstanding Military History Writing appeared first on HistoryNet.
Selasa, 27 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 28, 2018
This first lady added the Easter Bunny (a White House staffer in costume) to the Easter Egg Roll guest list and he has since attended each one.
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Wild West Book Review: Custer Into the West
Custer Into the West: With the Journal and Maps of Lieutenant Henry Jackson by Jeff Broome, Upton & Sons Publishers, El Segundo, Calif., 2009, $45. Those with no love for George Custer point not only to his overwhelming Little Bighorn defeat in 1876 but also to his lack of success in the Hancock campaign of …
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Wild West Book Review: Drawing Battle Lines
Drawing Battle Lines: The Map Testimony of Custer’s Last Fight by Michael N. Donahue, Upton and Sons, El Segundo, Calif., 2008, $150 for limited edition, $55 for trade edition. The author-artist is a Texan who harbors a longtime fascination with the Battle of Little Bighorn. This 413-page book— Volume VIII in the Battle of the …
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Wild West Book Review: Stricken Field
Stricken Field: The Little Bighorn Since 1876 by Jerome A. Greene, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2008, $34.95. Anyone who has set foot on Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana realizes the place is about far more than just George Custer’s defeat on June 25, 1876. Highly respected author Jerome A. Greene, a …
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Wild West Book Review: Custer and His Times
Custer and His Times, Book Five edited by John P. Hart, The Little Big Horn Associates, Inc., www.thelbha.org, 2008, $47.95 for members, $52.95 plus S&H for nonmembers. Devotees of George Armstrong Custer founded Little Big Horn Associates in early 1967 to promote research on the best-known participant in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. One …
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Wild West Book Review: Towers of Gold
Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California by Frances Dinkelspiel, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2008, $29.95. In Westerns, bank robbers tend to get a modicum of sympathy whenever the bankers themselves are depicted —generally as robbers in their own right who do it, to paraphrase Woody Guthrie, “with a …
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Wild West Book Review: Shadows at Dawn
Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History by Karl Jacoby, The Penguin Press, New York, 2008, $32.95. The Camp Grant Massacre has remained an obscure incident of frontier violence, much less known than the controversial engagements at Sand Creek, the Washita River and Wounded Knee. At dawn on April 30, 1871, …
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Wild West Book Review: Famous Firearms of the Old West
Famous Firearms of the Old West by Hal Herring, The Globe Pequot Press, Guilford, Conn., 2008, $24.95. Firearm guide books, like their subject, can be useful tools in the proper hands. Such books are worth their weight in lead to researchers and collectors. But to the layman, a jacketed gallery of guns can come across …
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Smith & Wesson’s Model No. 2 Was the First Large-Caliber Cartridge Revolver
The No. 1 just didn’t have enough firepower to suit most shooters. Although Colt revolvers were the most commonly used handguns during the Civil War and in the Old West, fledgling gunsmiths Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson were in some ways more accomplished innovators than Samuel Colt. The two men, as historian William B. Edwards …
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The Autry Center Showcases Its Grand Collection of Indian Artifacts
Exhibits proceed in the midst of renovation and expansion. The ever-expanding Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles—which comprises the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the American West and the Institute for the Study of the American West—continues to celebrate and explore both the Old and New West. …
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Ghost Town: Ironton, Colorado
In August 1882, prospector John Robinson was hunting game on Red Mountain, Colo., to feed his partners when he found a large chunk of lead and silver ore. The partners’ subsequent Yankee Girl, Orphan Boy and Robinson claims, coupled with the arrival that year of the Denver & Rio Grande Railway in nearby Silverton, sparked …
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Monumental Vision
Monument Valley, with its striking spires, breathtaking buttes and mesmerizing mesas, has enchanted Navajos for ages. Thanks to filmmaker John Ford and a vast cast of photographers, the valley exemplifies the American West for those who have seen it, either in person or in pictures. Ancient Origins Before director John Ford had a better idea …
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The Man Who Arrested Doc Holliday
Doc Holliday’s reputation was forged in blood in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, but his legend grew in Colorado, thanks to a pestiferous con man named Perry Mallon. Perry Mallon approached Doc Holliday for the first time during the second week of May 1882 at the Theatre Comique in Pueblo, Colorado. The small, bearded man informed the …
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Reckoning the West at the Centennial
Visitors to Philadelphia’s Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 saw evidence of growth and prosperity in the Western states and territories—but word of wild Indians and Custer’s demise blurred that pretty picture. Martha Ann Maxwell stood beside a fabricated Rocky Mountain populated by so many species of animals that one writer said it looked like Noah’s …
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Squaring Custer’s Triangle
The love between George and Libbie Custer is the stuff of legend on the Plains, but so is the romance between George and a captivating Cheyenne woman named Monahsetah. Sigmund Freud was still a teenager when George Armstrong Custer penned 1874. But you don’t need to read too deeply between the lines to My Life …
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Olmsted Was a Design Genius, But As a Mine Manager He Was a Fool
He was unable to head off a miners’ strike or bankruptcy. Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park in Manhattan and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. He defended California’s redwoods and Yosemite, prompted Abraham Lincoln to the early stirrings of a National Park System, laid out the campuses of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, …
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Bear Butte, Sacred to Cheyennes and Lakotas, Looms Near the Black Hills
Humans have gathered at the formation for four millennia. Crossing the South Dakota plains from the east, the traveler first sees the purplish Black Hills stretching across the western horizon. A singular massive peak stands apart, looming over the prairie as if placed there, a sentinel guarding the approaches to the hills. Bear Butte, which …
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The Ringo Family of Missouri Traveled a Hard-Luck Trail
Young John witnessed life-altering tragedies on the way to California. The trails to California were fraught with danger, but pioneers like the Missouri family of John Ringo were willing to face it in search of a better life. John, who was born on May 3, 1850, in Wayne County, Indiana, would become a mysterious and …
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Lawman Johnny Hudgens Proved Fearless During a May Day Shootout in Jerome
His opponent was a disoriented, hair-trigger saloon owner. It was a close-quarters gunfight between lawman and killer—the kind of sudden, violent exchange that bears all the hallmarks of a classic Old West shootout. And though the encounter sounds like it might have taken place in Tombstone in the 1880s, it actually unfolded in the mining …
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Wild West Review: The Rules With No Name
The Rules With No Name by Bryan Ansell, Foundry Publications, Nottingham, U.K., 2008, $84. This tabletop game (no electronics required) centers on miniature gunslingers and a rulebook to govern play. To start, opponents need at least four pewter models each, a deck of cards dictating action, six-sided dice and a tape measure. Characters come in …
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Wild West Review: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and El Dorado
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and El Dorado 2009, Paramount Centennial Collection, two disks each, $24.99 each. These classic 1960s Westerns share a larger-than-life John Wayne. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the Duke plays Tom Doniphon, the toughest hombre around, who serves as the fast gun behind Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart), …
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Wild West DVD Review: The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: The Complete Season One, 1955–1956 2009, Infinity Entertainment Group and Falcon Picture Group, five disks, 15 hours, $39.98. Wyatt Earp was about more than just Dodge City and Tombstone. Just ask Kevin Costner. Or else watch the first season of this ABC series that ran from 1955 to …
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Wild West DVD Review: Deadwood
Deadwood: The Complete Series, Seasons 1–3 HBO, 2007, two disks, 160 minutes, $170. If nothing else, David Milch’s Deadwood (2004–2006) defies those proper-minded souls who say that people who swear all the time have limited vocabularies. The #$%&$#@* vocabularies on display in the HBO series are unlimited in their vulgarity. It doesn’t matter if the …
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Wild West Book Review: Saddling Up Anyway
Saddling Up Anyway: The Dangerous Lives of Old-time Cowboys by Patrick Dearen, Taylor Trade, Lanham, Md., 2006, $22.95. Now and again a book will come along that merits a turn in the saddle for a second look. Saddling Up Anyway, a collection of harrowing true stories from cowboys who rode the Western range from the …
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Battle of Fort Pillow
The early spring of 1864 was cold and bleak in west Tennessee. For Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest and the 3,000 troopers he led from northern Mississippi that March–mostly Tennesseans who were eager to re-enter their home state–the land seemed devoid of warmth or welcome. Two years of Union occupation, interspersed with Confederate raids and …
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Capt. Bobby Lain: Leadership in the Midst of Tragedy
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Trailside – Fields of Fire: Route 50 in Bucolic Virginia
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Flitfire Flies Again
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Reviews | Fear vs. Freedom
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Valor | Mike Novosel
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Senin, 26 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 27, 2018
The inscription on this historic figure’s tombstone reads” “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”
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Wild West Book Review: Historic Photos of Texas Lawmen
Historic Photos of Texas Lawmen by Mike Cox, Turner Publishing, Nashville, Tenn., 2009, $39.95. Austin-based writer Mike Cox, author of The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900 (2008), now presents a volume full of images of Rangers and other Lone Star State lawmen. Despite the title, readers will also find photos of assorted characters …
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Wild West Book Review: The Sundance Kid
The Sundance Kid: The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh by Donna B. Ernst, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2009, $29.95. The names Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are inevitably linked in that order in stories about the Wild Bunch, just as the names Frank and Jesse James are forever linked in James Gang tales. …
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Wild West Book Review: Crooked River Country
Crooked River Country: Wranglers, Rogues and Barons by David Braly, Washington State University Press, Pullman, 2007, $24.95. Central Oregon is often overlooked in considerations of the thrilling days of yesteryear. But that region saw more than its share of wild and woolly goings-on involving fur traders, Paiutes, prospectors, herders and vigilante stockmen, not to mention …
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Wild West Book Review: Agnes Lake Hickok
Agnes Lake Hickok: Queen of the Circus, Wife of a Legend by Linda A. Fisher and Carrie Bowers, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2009, $29.95. Most students of Western history know Agnes Lake as the wife of James “Wild Bill” Hickok—and that’s about all they know. A circus performer, she married Hickok only five months …
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Wild West Book Review: Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed
Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth by John H. Monnett, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2008, $29.95. As with Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer’s debacle at the Little Bighorn, Montana Territory, on June 25, 1876, the annihilation of …
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Wild West Book Review: Jedediah Smith
Jedediah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man by Barton H. Barbour, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2009, $26.95. Comanche Indians cut short Jedediah Smith’s life in 1831, but the trapper and explorer had accomplished much in his 32 years. He had recognized the importance of South Pass in what would become northwest Wyoming. He was among …
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Daniel Moore Challenged the Big Boys With a Number of Reliable Handguns
His seven-shooter was popular but short-lived. Stories and anecdotes about Old West gunplay almost always mention one of the big three manufacturers— Colt, Remington or Smith & Wesson. But largely forgotten are the hundreds of other firearms inventors and companies whose handguns made their mark on the frontier. The name Moore is among the latter. …
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Arabia Steamboat Museum Captures Life on the Missouri in 1856
Showcases sunken treasures, harvested from a farmer’s field. Nineteenth-century pioneers quipped that the big Western rivers were “too thick to drink, too thin to plow.” Boatmen knew that beneath these turbulent, muddy waters lay hidden dangers, chief among them submerged tree trunks and branches. Such “snags” claimed nearly 300 of the 400 steamboats lost along …
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Ghost Town: Tinton, South Dakota
Tinton is tucked in the rugged recesses of Spearfish Canyon, 13 miles due east of Deadwood. Its crumbling edifices belie a remarkably resilient mining town. Edgar St. John discovered ore there during the mid-1870s Black Hills Gold Rush. The vein was short-lived, but rich silver diggings became Tinton’s lifeblood for the next two decades. By …
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Here Be Dragons
John Wesley Powell’s Colorado River Exploring Expedition completed its rapids-defying Grand Canyon passage 140 years ago, but the disappearance of three members remains a mystery. The explorers were in rough shape on August 27, 1869, when they reached the rapid where Precambrian Vishnu schist flanked the lowest thousand feet of the twisting, mile-deep canyon wall. …
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Westering Walker
Fur trader and explorer Joe Walker kept up his family’s wandering tradition and contributed mightily to U.S. expansion to the ‘far coast’. At the fur trade rendezvous of 1833 at Horse Creek, on the Green River in what is now Wyoming, Joseph Rutherford Walker signed up men for an expedition to California. Walker had proved …
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The Search for Jessie Evans
The noted outlaw and Lincoln County War player seemingly rode off the pages of history in 1882. But recent research provides clues to his true identity and how he spent his later years. On December 1, 1880, Jessie Evans entered the Texas state prison at Huntsville to serve a sentence of two to 10 years …
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Bat Masterson, Paladin of the Plains
The legendary lawman and gambler kept moving to answer the call, whether it came from the scales of frontier justice or the mouths of friends and relatives in need. Alternately fidgeting in his leather-backed bench seat and pacing the Southern Pacific railcar as it sped across the spectral Arizona landscape into New Mexico, Bat Masterson …
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Frontier Joints Thought Inside the Box To Woo Pleasure-Seeking Clientele
Box houses provided drinks, theater and more private pursuits. A “box house” of 19th-century frontier repute was not a house at all. Nor was it a place for pugilistic endeavors. The box house (aka “concert saloon” or “variety theater”) was a type of saloon compartmentalized into private boxes in which a patron could drink, gamble, …
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After Cochise Made Peace with the Army, He Made a Half Dozen Visits to Fort Bowie
The Apache leader wanted to show his good intentions. No figure offered more violent or effective resistance to white settlement of Arizona Territory than Chiricahua Apache Chief Cochise. Yet on March 27, 1873, there he was, riding into Fort Bowie with several of his children, including sons Taza and Naiche, two of his wives and …
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Frontiersman Andy Hall Served Major Powell and Wells Fargo
After exploring the Grand Canyon, he worked in Arizona. “I have not time to write to you now,” young Andy Hall scribbled to his mother from Green River, Wyoming Territory, in May 1869. “I am going down the Colorado River in boats with Major Powell….You need not expect to hear from me for some time, …
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Arkansas Tom, the Doolin Gang’s ‘Baddest Bad Man,’ Was a Survivor
He dodged bullets at Ingalls in 1893 and for decades afterward. Arkansas Tom Jones—real name Roy Daugherty—may have outlived his time, but he did not die a forgotten man. After detectives in Joplin, Missouri, finally gunned him down on August 16, 1924, some 5,000 people filed past his body at a local mortuary. While some …
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Wild West DVD Review: We Shall Remain
We Shall Remain PBS, 2009, three disks, 420 minutes, $49.99. The “we” here refers to American Indians, and considering the grim times and hardships they endured, we (Indians and non-Indians alike) are fortunate American Indians do remain. We’re also fortunate to have a documentary that refrains from beating viewers over the head with the obvious—that …
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Wild West Book Review: Red Light Women
Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains by Jan MacKell, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2009, $34.95. Coloradan author Jan MacKell has expanded her horizontal horizons with a book about Rocky Mountain whores. Back in 2004 she raised a few heads with her Brothels, Bordellos and Bad Girls: Prostitution in Colorado, 1860– 1930. This …
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Wild West Book Review: Pistols, Petticoats & Poker
Pistols, Petticoats & Poker: The Real Lottie Deno by Jan Devereaux, High-Lonesome Books, Silver City, N.M., 2009, $25. It is human nature to romanticize bygone times, to regard our forebears’ hardscrabble lives through the clouded pane of Old West myth. Few notions have persisted as long as that of the happy hooker, the saloon girl …
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Wild West Book Review: The Sutton-Taylor Feud
The Sutton-Taylor Feud: The Deadliest Blood Feud in Texas by Chuck Parsons, University of North Texas Press, Denton, 2009, $24.95. The longest, bloodiest feud in the history of the West was very much a product of time and place—Reconstruction-era Texas. The warring factions had both fought on the Confederate side, so the political motives were …
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Wild West Book Review: Soldiers West
Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier edited by Paul Andrew Hutton and Durwood Ball, University of Oklahoma Press, 2009, $34.95. “The history of the Army’s frontier campaigns and Western occupation has become the raw material of cultural legend and historical infamy in the United States and Europe,” Durwood Ball writes in his introduction to …
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Wild West Book Review: Fort Laramie
Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains by Douglas C. McChristian, The Arthur H. Clark Company, Norman, Okla., 2009, $45. Fort Laramie scores mention in frontier-related articles and books as much as any post west of the Mississippi, but until now this Wyoming bastion had not received the full historic treatment. Author Douglas McChristian, …
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The Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878 Was Extremely Advanced for Its Day
Hunters, frontiersmen and a Mormon scion favored it. Buffalo runners in the waning days of the great hunts, Rocky Mountain outdoorsmen and a son of Brigham Young were among the Westerners who took to the last and most advanced of the famous Sharps rifles, the Sharps-Borchardt Model 1878. As the Model 1874 had proved a …
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The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum Marks 40 Years of Showcasing Lawmen
Waco is the place to go for Ranger memorabilia. Texas and Rangers go together like Waco and Dr. Pepper or, if that’s not your drink, Waco and Big Red. This year the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco marks four decades of showcasing, interpreting and promoting the legendary Western law-enforcement agency. The …
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Ghost Town: Canyon Diablo, Arizona
In 1880 the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad began constructing a bridge over 250-foot-deep Canyon Diablo, midway between Winslow and Flagstaff. Financial difficulties halted the project, leaving an incomplete span at rail’s end. A town sprang up on the east side of the canyon, its population reaching about 2,000—mostly railroad workers, fugitives, gamblers and prostitutes. At …
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Giants in the Land
Monstrous frontier freight wagons rumble still in Ketchum, Idaho. Legendary Leviathans Generations of Westerners have handed down stories of wooden leviathans that rumbled along the Santa Fe Trail in the 1840s. Joseph Murphy of St. Louis designed the massive wagons to carry freight—lots of freight—and they reportedly dwarfed other wagons of the era. But while …
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The Poet Bandit of Arizona Territory
Daring rustler and train robber ‘Red’ McNeil taunted territorial lawmen with his written words. In early 1889, Pete Jacoby of Winslow, Arizona Territory, found the long-sought hideout of outlaw W.R. “Red” McNeil in a narrow canyon and reported his discovery to the local authorities. A posse, including future Coconino County Sheriff John Francis, went to …
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Wild and Woolly War of Words
A Western writer wages a one-man battle to choose the best frontier quote. Among the quotable contenders are Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday, John Wesley Hardin, Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull. Every good writer knows that a story doesn’t breathe until the characters speak. Quotes bring the reader behind the facts of the narrative to …
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Bank Cashiers Sometimes Dealt With Unauthorized Withdrawals
Jesse James tested the mettle of Joseph Heywood. As the U.S. banking system took form during and after the Civil War, the job to which every ambitious bank teller or clerk aspired was that of cashier. The cashier’s name appeared beside that of the president on the bank stationery. The cashier had final say regarding …
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Two Strong Lakota Leaders Shared the Name ‘He Dog’
Historians have long confused their biographies. He Dog was an Oglala Sioux leader. He Dog was a Brulé Sioux leader. Both statements are true. The confusion in certain histories of the Lakota people over whether He Dog (Sunka Bloka) was an Oglala or a Brulé stems from trying to meld two individuals into one. The …
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COW-Gun Fighter
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Silver Satire: The Frontier Humor Of Newspaperman William Forbes
He was hard-drinking, fun-loving and witty. When the first issue of The Humboldt Register rolled off the press on May 2, 1863, the information and entertainment-starved citizens of Unionville, Nevada, greeted it and editor William J. Forbes with a parade through town. One journalism fan donated a case of liquor to lubricate the festivities. It …
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Little More Than Neighborhood Thugs, They Still Left a Big Black Mark
The Blalock-Fry Gang pulled off a string of robberies. On the night of March 16, 1888, in Columbus, Kansas, John and William Blalock shot Constable David Gordon, then crossed the road to their home, where their mother, Ellen, asked them about the gunfire. John, 28, told her he and Bill, 26, had killed “some goddamn …
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The G-Man and the Spy
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Howe and Hummel: The Grifters’ Grifters
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Minggu, 25 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 26, 2018
This unsuccessful U.S. presidential candidate believed, “all the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.”
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Sabtu, 24 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 25, 2018
James Oglethorpe founded this U.S. state with the vision to make it a colony for English debtors.
The post Daily Quiz for March 25, 2018 appeared first on HistoryNet.
Jumat, 23 Maret 2018
Daily Quiz for March 24, 2018
Even today, there is debate if this explorer’s October 10, 1809 death was suicide or murder.
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Wild West Review: Call of Juarez, Bound in Blood
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, by Ubisoft, 2009, rated M for mature (strong language, suggestive themes, violence, blood). Techland’s energized prequel to its 2006 PC game Call of Juarez repeats that name but adds “Bound in Blood,” perhaps to remind everyone this is no “E for everyone” …
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Wild West DVD Review: Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre
Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre VCI Entertainment, complete first season on four disks, 870 minutes, B&W, $39.99. This Western anthology series ran on CBS for five seasons (1956–61) at a time when Westerns were top gun on the small screen and kids craved Zane Grey’s action-packed books. Some of the 29 first-season episodes were adapted …
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Wild West DVD Review: The National Parks
The National Parks: America’s Best Idea PBS, 2009, six disks, 720 mins., $99.99. Ken Burns’ latest PBS series focuses on the legacy of America’s national parks, a unique concept at the time of their genesis in the 19th-century West. No other country had set aside land for public enjoyment. It was a truly American idea …
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Wild West Book Review: Ten Deadly Texans
Ten Deadly Texans by Dan Anderson and Laurence J. Yadon, Pelican Publishing, Gretna, La., 2009, $16.95. Naturally, there were far more than just 10 such characters. In post–Civil War Texas, badmen virtually sprouted up between the Rio Grande and the Red River. The two Oklahoman authors, in fact, previously wrote 200 Texas Outlaws and Lawmen: …
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Wild West Book Reviews: Black Army Officer and Henry Flipper
The Fall of a Black Army Officer: Racism and the Myth of Henry O. Flipper Charles M. Robinson III, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2008, $29.95. The Trials of Henry Flipper, First Black Graduate of West Point by Don Cusic, McFarland Publishers, Jefferson, N.C., 2008, $35. Whether they should have or not, key events and …
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