Westerns & the Old West

"The Lookout" A drawing I did a few months ago. Cheers! 🤠🍻🤠

Such a great thread.

After removing his shackles, George hid in the jail's washroom & waited for jailer Robert Rankin. Once Rankin arrived, George swung his shackles across Rankin's skull, fracturing it. Rankin tried to fight back, but finally had to call out to his wife Rosa for help...

Big Nose George was locked up in the Rawlins, Wyoming jail to await his hanging, but he had other plans. Using a piece of sandstone & a pocket knife, he was able to wedge & file the rivets on his ankle shackles. On March 22, 1881, George finally made his move...

For two years, George continued his life of crime. One night in Miles City, Montana, George & fellow gang member Dutch Charley got drunk & bragged to some saloon girls about killing two Wyoming lawmen. They were arrested soon after. On April 2, 1881, George was sentenced to hang...

Big Nose George Parrott was born in France in 1834. At some point he came to Wyoming & eventually he & a gang of outlaws started robbing stagecoaches near the Powder River. One day they decided to expand their operations to train robbery...

Dr. Lillian Heath, who was the 1st female doctor in Wyoming, was known to keep a skull cap in her office that she used as an ashtray, pen holder or doorstop. When her skull cap was put on the unearthed skull, it fit perfectly. That's when she told the story of Big Nose George...

On May 11, 1950, while working on the Rawlins National Bank in Wyoming, a construction crew unearthed a whiskey barrel that contained a human skeleton with its skull cap sawed off & an odd pair of shoes. Dr. Lillian Heath, now in her 80s, was asked if she knew anything about it...🧵

Happy Birthday to the late Renato Casaro, born 91 years ago today

Happy Birthday to the late, great Don Siegel, born 114 years ago today

Wait, there's more! Compare: Hardin - "If you had met our party that day you would have seen..." True Grit - "If you had chanced to be riding up the Texas Road on that bright December morning you would have met..." Portis is clearly building on Hardin's awkward prose here.

The Italian eggers had sent 1 of their 3 boats for a landing when everyone opened fire. After 20 min of gunfire, a Pacific Co man who'd been gut-shot was dead. 5 of the Italians were injured, including a man who died a few days later from being shot in the throat...

In 1863, 3 boats of Italian eggers led by David Batchelder sailed to the Farallones. Batchelder had recently been ousted from the Farallones by the Pacific Egg Co (twice, in fact), but now he had 27 gun-toting Italian cronies & a 4 lb cannon. A gunfight ensued, of course...

Of course, True Grit's climactic reins-biting gunfight is identical to an illustration of a shootout w/ vaqueros in Hardin's book, though he never says he bit the reins. There was a myth that Bushwhackers like Cogburn did this in the Civil War, but Frank James himself denied it

When I first posted this, I got overzealous & linked to my 🧵 about the history of the phrase "bust a cap" & its usage in True Grit, without posting the excerpts in this 🧵 Anyway, here's Ned Pepper saying, "bust a cap" in True Grit & Hardin writing, "burst a cap" in his autobiography

Une histoire incroyable

Once, a boat of rival eggers spent days hiding from the Pacific Egg Co inside the Great Murre Cave, where many of them were killed. Not by bullets, but by the ammonia from all of the falling bat turds...

The Pacific Egg Co figured it had exclusive rights to the Farallones & were willing to hold title with violence. According to an 1859 Alta California article, the Pacific Egg Co fought off gangs "armed to the teeth". Gunfights were common on "land", hijacking was common at sea..

One of the problems with murre eggs is that, according to one account, if they went stale, it would take 3 months to get the taste out of your mouth. To ensure they only got fresh eggs, eggers would smash all the eggs left behind, so when they returned there would only be fresh ones...

The trip to the Farallones was arduous for Doc. He lost 1/2 his cargo sailing back on the rough seas, but still made $3000 from the murre eggs. Even with that haul, Doc vowed to never return to the Farallones, instead investing in a pharmacy & a theater...

Word got out about Doc's success. The Pacific Egg Co was formed & soon droves of eggers swarmed the Farallones Egging the Farallones was dangerous. Men fell to their deaths scaling the ancient granite cliffs as seabirds dove towards them. Those not dashed by the rocks fell in shark-infested water

The "white" of the egg is translucent & the yolk is orange, almost red. I've attached a contemporary account of someone first seeing the strange yolks & a couple of photos of penguin eggs, which are reportedly very similar to murre eggs...

Murres are penguin-like seabirds that lay eggs from spring to early summer. Their eggs have hard, speckled shells & range from off-white to turquoise & are almost twice the size of chicken eggs. As for their yolks...

In 1849, a pharmacist from Maine named David "Doc" Robinson had an idea: he'd sail out with his brother-in-law to the Farallon Islands (an archipelago 27 miles from the San Francisco coast) to collect the eggs of seabirds, specifically those of the murre...

San Francisco didn't have the infrastructure to accommodate such dramatic growth & as the human population grew, the chicken population dwindled. The protein found in their eggs was essential to miners & costs skyrocketed to $1 an egg (about $30 today)...

After gold was found at Sutter's Mill in 1848, an influx of people poured into San Francisco in the hopes of striking it rich. By 1850, the population had grown from 800 to 20,000, making it the fastest growing city in the world...

Here's a🧵about the San Francisco Egg Wars of the 1800s. It has bloody gunfights, marauding pirates, a bunch of (literally) batshit deaths & some nasty looking eggs...

A beauty of a thread.

Happy Birthday to the late Tyrus Wong, born 116 years ago today (he lived to 106!)

This is fantastic.

Just a reminder that if you're not following David on here, you're missing out on some of the best history you've likely never read. (And great film stuff, too)

Thread of fun.

Had never heard of Climax Jim before I read this thread, and I can now say with certainty that’s he’s the man

Oh my god, please do read the whole thread about the lesser known outlaw, Climax Jim!

Climax was born in 1876 in DC & moved to Arizona in 1890. He got a job with the Hashknife cattle outfit & was first arrested for selling stolen cattle to a slaughterhouse. He escaped. Then he stole a horse & was chained to a tree (common in Old West towns without jails). He escaped again...

While bathing himself, Climax spied a horse tied to a nearby hitching post. Despite being naked as a jaybird, he ran over, mounted the horse & made his escape, riding fully nude through two towns before disappearing into the hills...

In Springerville, AZ, Climax got caught after a long, sweaty day of rustling cattle. He stunk so bad his captors decided he needed a bath. They gave him soap & a scrubber & directed him to the nearest horse trough...

One of the lesser known outlaws of the Old West was Rufus Nephew, aka Climax Jim. That's unfortunate because the man's life was a never ending series of crimes, arrests, acquittals, convictions & daring escapes. Here's a sampling of some of his very stupid adventures... 🧵

Happy 67th Birthday to "Weird Al" Yankovic

Happy 70th Birthday to Dwight Yoakam