Butch Cassidy wanted to call his gang The Train Robber's Syndicate, but the name never stuck. The gang's core members - most notable among them
The Sundance Kid - and a revolving cast of supporting outlaws were most commonly called The
Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and
The Wild Bunch, and their goal was to be the most successful train robbers in history. The
Butch and Sundance site is a comprehensive collection of "the hundreds, if not thousands, of theories, legends and folk tales" surrounding the gang, including an exhaustive
list of biographies of the members, their associates, the lawmen who pursued them and the women who loved them, an
archive of transcribed news articles dating from the 1880s (including a
letter to the editor from Sundance himself), a
picture gallery and more.
[more inside]
posted by amyms
on Jul 22, 2008 -
26 comments
In 1977 Chris Haynes, a set decorator for The Six Million Dollar Man was setting up a scene to be filmed on location in the spookhouse ride of a Long Beach, CA amusement park called The Pike. While moving the various interior props around, Haynes discovered that the paper mache "mummy" hanging in the corner of the ride
was in fact a homicide victim, a fact that had gone unnoticed by years of amusement park visitors.
The story of how Elmer McCurdy's body was shot to death in 1911, only to be re-discovered &
buried over six decades later, makes for an interesting read.
posted by jonson
on Mar 29, 2007 -
26 comments
When Everybody Called Me Gah-bay-bi-nayss - an ethnographic biography of Paul Peter Buffalo, son of Ojibwa medicine woman and grandson of the great chief Pezeke. Buffalo died in 1977, but spent his last dozen years chronicling his heritage and the things the elders told him. Be sure to check out the entry on John Smith, a wonderful character more popularly known as
Wrinkle Meat.
posted by madamjujujive
on Nov 16, 2006 -
8 comments
