Download or read book Elmer Mccurdy The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw written by Mark Svenvold and published by . This book was released on 2002-10-11 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story of an obscure outlaw who, after being shot to death, had his corpse displayed in carnivals, museums, and as a movie prop.
Download or read book Elmer Mccurdy written by Mark Svenvold and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2003-10-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of Elmer McCurdy, a failed plumber from Bangor, Maine, who drifted west to become a failed outlaw. He arrived in Oklahoma a few decades after the golden age of outlaws and attempted to resurrect the lost art of train robbing. In 1911, after a short spree of comically bungled robberies, a sheriff's posse caught up with him and shot him dead.In death, Elmer McCurdy accidentally found fame. From the Oklahoma funeral home that propped up his preserved corpse and charged a nickel-a-look, to the sideshows of the Great Patterson Carnival, where he was exhibited as a felled outlaw, McCurdy became big business. His post-mortem career in show business lasted until 1976, when he was discovered painted orange and hanging by the neck in a California amusement ride. Mark Svenvold has reconstructed the bizarre itinerary of the corpse through sixty years of freakshows, sideshows, carnivals, and exploitation movies, capturing some of this country's greatest fantasies and most elaborate publicity stunts.
Download or read book Elmer McCurdy written by Mark Svenvold and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Story of an obscure outlaw who, after being shot to death, had his corpse displayed in carnivals, museums, and as a movie prop.
Download or read book Big Weather written by Mark Svenvold and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author profiles real tornadoes and severe weather patterns over six thousand miles of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, known as Tornado Alley.
Download or read book The Amusement Park written by Stephen M. Silverman and published by Black Dog & Leventhal. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience the electrifying, never-before-told true story of amusement parks, from the middle ages to present day, and meet the colorful (and sometimes criminal) characters who are responsible for their enchanting charms. Step right up! The Amusement Park is a rich, anecdotal history that begins nine centuries ago with the "pleasure gardens" of Europe and England and ends with the most elaborate modern parks in the world. It's a history told largely through the stories of the colorful, sometimes hedonistic characters who built them, including: Showmen like Joseph and Nicholas Schenck and Marcus Loew DIV 0pt? 0in MARGIN:Railroad barons Andrew Mellon and Henry E. Huntington/div DIV 0pt? 0in MARGIN:The men who ultimately destroyed the parks, including Robert Moses and Fred Trump/div DIV 0pt? 0in MARGIN:Gifted artisans and craft-people who brought the parks to life/div DIV 0pt? 0in MARGIN:An amazing cast of supporting players, from Al Capone to Annie Oakley/div And, of course, this is a full-throttle celebration of the rides, those marvels of engineering and heart-stopping thrills from an author, Stephen Silverman, whose life-long passion for his subject shines through. The parks and fairs featured include the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Coney Island, Steeplechase Park, Dreamland, Euclid Beach Park, Cedar Point, Palisades Park, Ferrari World, Dollywood, Sea World, Six Flags Great Adventure, Universal Studios, Disney World and Disneyland, and many more.
Download or read book Butch Cassidy written by Charles Leerhsen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For a century Butch Cassidy has been the subject of legends about his life and death, spawning a small industry of mythmakers and a major Hollywood film. Charles Leerhsen sorts out fact from fiction to find the real Butch Cassidy, who is far more complicated and fascinating than legend has it"--
Download or read book The Skull Collectors written by Ann Fabian and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-10-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Philadelphia naturalist Samuel George Morton died in 1851, no one cut off his head, boiled away its flesh, and added his grinning skull to a collection of crania. It would have been strange, but perhaps fitting, had Morton’s skull wound up in a collector’s cabinet, for Morton himself had collected hundreds of skulls over the course of a long career. Friends, diplomats, doctors, soldiers, and fellow naturalists sent him skulls they gathered from battlefields and burial grounds across America and around the world. With The Skull Collectors, eminent historian Ann Fabian resurrects that popular and scientific movement, telling the strange—and at times gruesome—story of Morton, his contemporaries, and their search for a scientific foundation for racial difference. From cranial measurements and museum shelves to heads on stakes, bloody battlefields, and the “rascally pleasure” of grave robbing, Fabian paints a lively picture of scientific inquiry in service of an agenda of racial superiority, and of a society coming to grips with both the deadly implications of manifest destiny and the mass slaughter of the Civil War. Even as she vividly recreates the past, Fabian also deftly traces the continuing implications of this history, from lingering traces of scientific racism to debates over the return of the remains of Native Americans that are held by museums to this day. Full of anecdotes, oddities, and insights, The Skull Collectors takes readers on a darkly fascinating trip down a little-visited but surprisingly important byway of American history.
Download or read book Route 66 Quick Reference Encyclopedia written by Drew Knowles and published by Santa Monica Press. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed Route 66 Adventure Handbook returns with Route 66 Quick Reference Encyclopedia. In one handy volume, novices and seasoned roadies alike have fast and easy access to all of the essential information about America’s most famous, beloved, and culturally significant highway. Presenting a list of important terms accompanied by descriptive articles and illustrations, the guide details the route’s history—including the origins of the term "Mother Road" and the slogan "Get Your Kicks on Route 66"—as well as its commemorative festivals, quirkiest attractions, and useful highway terms. Fascinating trivia will allow road warriors to impress friends and fellow travelers with their knowledge of the route, while a supplemental list directs dedicated fans to more detailed information on one of the most historic and treasured drives in America. Finally, a set of maps provides both general orientation and points out significant attractions through the use of custom icons. Route 66 Quick Reference Encyclopedia is truly an A-to-Z guide to the absolute best of the Mother Road!
Download or read book Alcatraz Ghost Story written by Brian Stannard and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-01-23 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Incredible True Story of the Most Hunted Man in Pacific Coast History––and the Woman He Loved Before the 1920s found their roar, a charismatic gambling addict named Roy Gardner dominated news headlines with daring train robberies and escapes from incarceration. Nicknamed "the Smiling Bandit," Gardner spilled no blood––except his own––as he cut a felonious path across the western United States, as the country hobbled through a recession in the aftermath of the First World War. Once imprisoned for the long term in federal prisons, including Alcatraz, the most notorious prison's second-most-notorious inmate won over some unlikely champions. Both Gardner's wife, Dollie, and a police officer who once arrested him launched extensive campaigns for Gardner's release on the vaudeville circuit, claiming a brain operation would cure his lawless ways. Was Gardner a good man who made bad decisions as the victim of injury and circumstance? Or was his charming personality merely the poker face of a scoundrel? Richly researched, drawing on contemporary newspaper accounts, Alcatraz Ghost Story explores the life of Roy Gardner in the context of his great love story and the larger backdrop of drug addiction, incarceration, and the racial and labor violence of the 1920s and 1930s.
Download or read book 100 Oklahoma Outlaws Gangsters Lawmen written by Laurence Yadon and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only thing wilder than Oklahoma in the late nineteenth century are the tales that continue to surround it. In the days of the Wild West, Oklahoma was teeming with assassins, guerillas, hijackers, kidnappers, gangs, and misfits of every size and shape imaginable. Featuring such legendary characters as Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Belle Starr, and Pretty Boy Floyd, this book combines recorded fact with romanticized legend, allowing the reader to decide how much to believe. Violent and out of control, the figures covered in 100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen often left behind numerous victims, grisly accounts, and unforgettable stories. Included are criminals like James Deacon Miller, the devout Methodist and hired assassin. Righteous and devious, he often avoided the gallows by convincing others to admit to his murders. Rufus Buck, a man of Native American descent, targeted white settlers. His crimes against them became so heinous as to cause the Creek nation to take up arms against him. The answer to criminals such as these came in the form of Hanging Judge Parker and other officers of the law. Although they were greatly outnumbered, they provided some balance to the chaos. This historical compilation covers every memorable outlaw and lawman who passed through Oklahoma.
Download or read book The Life and Crimes of Railroad Bill written by Larry L. Massey and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-09-11 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a year, Railroad Bill eluded sheriffs, private detectives hired by the L&N line, and bounty hunters who traveled across the country to match guns with the legendary desperado. The African American outlaw was wanted on multiple charges of robbery and murder, and rumor had it that he stole from the rich to give to the poor. He terrorized busy train lines from east of Mobile to the Florida Panhandle, but as soon as the lawmen got close, he disappeared into the bayous and pine forests--until one day his luck ran out, and he was gunned down inside a general store in Atmore, Alabama. Little is known about Railroad Bill before his infamy--not his real name or his origins. His first recorded crime, carrying a repeating rifle without a license, led him into a gunfight with a deputy and made him a wanted man throughout Florida in 1894. His most celebrated escape--a five-day foot chase with scores of men and several bloodhounds--led to tales of Railroad's supernatural ability to transmogrify into an animal or inanimate object at will. As his crimes progressed from robbing boxcars to wounding trainmen to murdering sheriffs, more and more reward money was offered for his capture--dead or alive. Today, Railroad Bill is the subject of many folk songs popularized by singers such as Paul McCartney, Taj Mahal, Gillian Welch, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot. But who was he? Where did he come from? What events led to his murderous spree? And why did some view him as a hero? In Railroad Bill, Larry Massey separates fact from myth and teases out elusive truths from tall tales to ultimately reveal the man behind the bandit's mask.
Download or read book Captain Jack and the Dalton Gang written by John J. Kinney and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... chronicles the tale of Captain John Kinney--chief detective for the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas ("Katy") Railroad--and his confrontation with the Dalton gang" on July 14, 1892, at Adair, Indian Territory. Also includes material on his work as "the chief detective for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, a Texas Ranger, and a U.S. deputy marshal affiliated with "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker's court."--Book description.
Download or read book Notorious Kansas Bank Heists written by Rod Beemer and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015-12-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bank robbers wreaked havoc in the Sunflower State. After robbing the Chautauqua State Bank in 1911, outlaw Elmer McCurdy was killed by lawmen but wasn't buried for sixty-six years. His afterlife can be described only as bizarre. Belle Starr's nephew Henry Starr claimed to have robbed twenty-one banks. The Dalton gang failed in their attempt to rob two banks simultaneously, but others accomplished this in Waterville in 1911. Nearly four thousand known vigilantes patrolled the Sunflower State during the 1920s and 1930s to combat the criminal menace. One group even had an airplane with a .50-caliber machine gun. Join author Rod Beemer for a wild ride into Kansas's tumultuous bank heist history.
Download or read book The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians written by Richard J. Chacon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume mainly focuses on the practice of taking and displaying various body parts as trophies in both North and South America. The editors and contributors (which include Native Peoples from both continents) examine the evidence and causes of Amerindian trophy taking. Additionally, they present objectively and discuss dispassionately the topic of human proclivity toward ritual violence. This book fills the gap in literature on this subject.
Download or read book Julia Pastrana written by Christopher Hals Gylseth and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a dusty corner at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in norway lie the remains of Julia Pastrana, half hidden in a black plastic sack, all but forgotten. Yet in the middle of the nineteeth century, this 'ape woman' was renowed, visited by scientists of international repute, and drawing the populace of three continents to the freakshows in which she starred. just 4ft 6in tall, she was covered in hair, with a protruding jaw; but she also spoke several languages, married, had a child, made money. This is the compelling and strange story of how a woman born in the backwoods of Mexico came to be one of the most infamous women in Europe and America and how, nearly 150 years after she first set foot upon the stage, Julia is still being shown to others. The exhibition goes on.
Download or read book Kansas History written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Atlantic Monthly written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 896 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
