Elmer Mccurdy: The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw

Elmer Mccurdy: The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw PDF Author: Mark Svenvold
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Story of an obscure outlaw who, after being shot to death, had his corpse displayed in carnivals, museums, and as a movie prop.

Elmer Mccurdy: The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw

Elmer Mccurdy: The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw PDF Author: Mark Svenvold
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Story of an obscure outlaw who, after being shot to death, had his corpse displayed in carnivals, museums, and as a movie prop.

Elmer Mccurdy

Elmer Mccurdy PDF Author: Mark Svenvold
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780465083497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
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.

Elmer McCurdy

Elmer McCurdy PDF Author: Mark Svenvold
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Brigands and robbers
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Story of an obscure outlaw who, after being shot to death, had his corpse displayed in carnivals, museums, and as a movie prop.

Big Weather

Big Weather PDF Author: Mark Svenvold
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805080148
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The author profiles real tornadoes and severe weather patterns over six thousand miles of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, known as Tornado Alley.

The Skull Collectors

The Skull Collectors PDF Author: Ann Fabian
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226233499
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
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.

100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters & Lawmen

100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters & Lawmen PDF Author: Laurence Yadon
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
ISBN: 1455600040
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
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.

Butch Cassidy

Butch Cassidy PDF Author: Charles Leerhsen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501117491
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
"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"--

Captain Jack and the Dalton Gang

Captain Jack and the Dalton Gang PDF Author: John J. Kinney
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Detectives
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
" ... 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.

The Life and Crimes of Railroad Bill

The Life and Crimes of Railroad Bill PDF Author: Larry L. Massey
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059445
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
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.

The Amusement Park

The Amusement Park PDF Author: Stephen M. Silverman
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
ISBN: 0316416479
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 764

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Book Description
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 Railroad barons Andrew Mellon and Henry E. Huntington The men who ultimately destroyed the parks, including Robert Moses and Fred Trump Gifted artisans and craft-people who brought the parks to life An amazing cast of supporting players, from Al Capone to Annie Oakley 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.