Ten years ago today gay college student Matthew Shepard died after having been savagely beaten, left alone for 18-hours and found tied to a fence five days prior on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. America was stunned by the vicious hate crime. As his mother, Judy, pushes for passage of the Matthew Shepard Act, advocating for federal hate crimes legislation, and directs the Matthew Shepard Foundation, folks in Laramie ask: "...how has the town changed since 1998? ...how do we measure that change?" And yet 10 years after Matthew's death the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law has not been expanded to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability due to a veto threat by President Bush. [more inside]
posted by ericb on Oct 12, 2008 - 170 comments

September 2, 1885, Rock Springs, Wyoming (horrible music warning). A mining town on the frontier, the Rock Springs of 1885 was consumed with race and labor tensions, and witnessed an unparalleled event during the history of Chinese-Americans in the U.S. west. The little known Rock Springs Massacre, was perpetuated by white miners on Chinese miners and left at least 28 of the latter dead and dismembered. [more inside]
posted by IvoShandor on Sep 2, 2008 - 11 comments

Wonkette asks: How many Escalators are there in Wyoming? [more inside]
posted by Lord_Pall on Mar 27, 2008 - 112 comments

The Daily Coyote: "Charlie came into my life when he was just ten days old, orphaned after both his parents were killed. He lives with me and a tomcat in a one-room log cabin in Wyoming."
posted by fandango_matt on Dec 1, 2007 - 54 comments

During the 70s and 80s a new phenomenon appeared. Television Hijacking. It started in 1977 when a man in England hijacked the sound broadcast of a newscast. In 1986, a hijacker known as Captain Midnight hijacked HBO in response to their scrambling of television signals. The year after (20 years ago as of today), a character disguised as Max Headroom (a television character) infiltrated two Chicago television studios in one night. First the man infiltrated Channel 9 (WGN) for a few seconds with no sound, and then moved on to attack another Chicago station, this time with sound. After the Max Headroom incident, television hacking incidents were rare in the United States except for this one in Wyoming.
posted by ooklala on Nov 22, 2007 - 38 comments

Bush out of favor in 47 out of 50 states. The SurveyUSA 50-state-poll shows some interesting details on Bush's approval rating, which has fallen to just 35% in North (and South) Carolina, 29% in Missouri, and 42% in Texas. He remains popular in only three states: Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Could the Democrats have a shot even in Utah in the not-too-distant future? A lot of Utahns think so.
posted by insomnia_lj on May 16, 2006 - 89 comments

Tracks of Swimming Dinosaur found in Wyoming The tracks of a previously unknown, two-legged swimming dinosaur have been identified along the shoreline of an ancient inland sea that covered Wyoming 165 million years ago, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder graduate student.
posted by hostile7 on Oct 19, 2005 - 15 comments

Real-Time Biological Natural Gas Generation. A research lab has discovered that microbes living in Wyoming's Powder River Basin are generating methane (natural gas) through their natural metabolism of local coal beds. In relation to the many Peak Oil discussions here, could be way to get more energy for the future. (via SpaceDaily.com)
posted by zoogleplex on Nov 17, 2004 - 22 comments

Natural gas provides a quarter of our nation's energy. Most of it is produced domestically as well. One arid region of Wyoming finds itself in the middle of this boom.
posted by split atom on Oct 25, 2004 - 13 comments

How We Got Homeland Security Wrong -- If all the federal homeland-security grants from last year are added together, Wyoming received $61 a person while California got just $14, according to data gathered at TIME's request by the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonprofit research organization. Alaska received an impressive $58 a resident, while New York got less than $25. On and on goes the upside-down math of the new homeland-security funding. The TIME article uses AIR Worldwide Corp.'s Terrorism Loss Estimation Model.
posted by amberglow on Mar 22, 2004 - 20 comments

Phelps to erect anti-Matthew Shepard monument. Anti-gay crusader Fred Phelps' planned monument (PDF, from Phelps' site), to be installed in City Park in downtown Casper, Wyo. (Shepard's home town), would contain the inscription, "Matthew Shepard, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God's Warning: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as womankind; it is an abomination.' Leviticus 18:22." (More inside...)
posted by boredomjockey on Oct 5, 2003 - 146 comments

model rocketry woes. the article mentions a wyoming senator who wants to amend the bill, but the homeland security act is/would put the squeeze on model rocketry, as the fuel of some engines will/would be classified as an explosive. whoa. wonder if the NHRA is gonna follow this. hate to see 'em stop the top fuelers.
posted by asparagus_berlin on Feb 26, 2003 - 7 comments