Shoot-Out at the Vacant Lot...

between Harwood's House and Fly's Loding House.  Of course if historians called it this you wouldn't really think twice about it or even be interested in reading about it.  So maybe that was a bad choice of title.  Oh well.  What am I talking about you ask?  The Shoot-Out at the O.K. Corral of course.  I have to admit that I agree with author and historian John Richard Stephens.  It should have been called "the Gunfight in Tombstone."  But alas this discussion isn't telling the story now is it?  There is so much to this story that I will break it up into a few post so as not to overwhelm you. 
In the southeast corner of Arizona is a little town called Tombstone.  On October 26, 1881 the famous gunfight took place.  In November of 1879 the Earps arrived in Tombstone.  At that time the population was about 900.  That was almost double what it was two months prior.  In the next two months it doubled again.  By the time of the shoot-out Tombstone's population as up to about 5000.  This was do to the major influx of money from nearby silver mines. 

Lingering hostilities from the Civil War created friction between townspeople and country folk.  The country folk were ranchers, cowboys, rustlers, and bandits who mostly where Southerners from Texas.  The townspeople were largely Northerners who came there to advance themselves and create an Eastern-type society where they were at the top.  They wanted things nice and orderly and quiet.  On the other hand the cowboys, were drunks and hell-raisers who came in off the range to party.    Mainly they wanted to get drunk, find a prostitute and shoot up the place.  Add the mining and gambling factions into this and an already volatile situation was made worse. 

Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, Warren, and James Earp were townspeople.  They had come to Tombstone with their wives to get ahead and establish themselves at the top of society.  Since Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan had all worked in law enforcement in the past they continued to do so in Tombstone.  When Tombstone's marshal was killed by William "Curly Bill" Brocius, Viril took the job.  He was also a U.S. marshal.  Wyatt and Morgan occasionally worked as policemen and Wyatt was planning on running for county sheriff in the next election. 

Policework pay was adequate, but it still wasn't uncommon for those in law enforcement to also work in gambling establishments.  This helped to supplement their income.  The Earps did the same.  Wyatt primarily thouht of himself as a saloonkeeper.  He had a piece of the ambling concession at the Oriental Saloon.  James, the oldest, was also a saloonkeeper, and Warren primarly was a laborer, although he did doa little policework for Virgil while he was in Tombstone.  At the time of the shoot-out Warren was away from Tombstone and although James was, he didn't play a part in it.  At this time Morgan was mostly riding shotun on the Wells Fargo stage to Benson. 

John "Doc" Holliday, a former dentist, who when he discovered he was slowly dying from tuberculosis, headed out west and turned to gambling to make a living.  Gambling was a considered an honorable profession and successful gamblers were highly respected.  Doc was successful, but he was tempermental, belligerent, and an alcoholic, in addition to having a quick temper.  He becamed involved because he was a close friend of Wyatt's and he'd had a few altercations with the rustlers himself. 

All The Presidents

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There have been 44 presidents in the history of the our country.  Can you name them?  Before you read any more of this post get a piece of paper and a pencil and see how many you can name.  You will be surprised at how many you really know.  I could actually name 20 of them and no clue I knew more then the eight that had served in my lifetime plus a few more famous ones. 

Now here are the 44 presidents of the United States of America. 

18th Century

1. George Washington       2. John Adams

19th Century

3. Thomas Jefferson        15. James Buchanan

4. James Madison            16. Abraham Lincoln

5. James Monroe             17. Andrew Johnson

6. John Quincy Adams       18. Ulysses S. Grant

7. Andrew Jackson            19. Rutherford B. Hayes

8. Martin Van Buren           20. James Garfield

9. William Henry Harrison  21. Chester A. Arthur

10. John Tyler                   22. Grover Cleveland

11. James K. Polk             23. Benjamin Harrison

12. Zachary Taylor            24. Grover Cleveland

13. Millard Fillmore           25. William McKinley

14. Franklin Pierce         

20th Century

26. Theodore Roosevelt     35. John F. Kennedy

27. William Howard Taft    36. Lyndon B. Johnson

28. Woodrow Wilson          37. Richard M. Nixon

29. Warren G. Harding       38. Gerald R. Ford

30. Calvin Coolidge            39. James Carter

31. Herbert Hoover            40. Ronald Reagan

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt    41. George H. W. Bush

33. Harry S. Truman           42. William J. Clinton

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower

21st Century

43. George W. Bush            44. Barack Obama

 

Now that that you named all the presidents see how many states and capitals you can name.  I did way better on the states then the capitals.  I know you can do better then me.

Alabama - Montgomery
Alaska - Juneau
Arizona - Phoenix
Arkansas - Little Rock
California - Sacramento
Colorado - Denver
Connecticut - Hartford
Delaware - Dover
Florida - Tallahassee
Georgia - Atlanta
Hawaii - Honolulu
Idaho - Boise
Illinois - Springfield
Indiana - Indianapolis
Iowa - Des Moines
Kansas - Topeka
Kentucky - Frankfort
Louisiana - Baton Rouge
Maine - Augusta
Maryland - Annapolis
Massachusetts - Boston
Michigan - Lansing
Minnesota - St. Paul
Mississippi - Jackson
Missouri - Jefferson City
Montana - Helena
Nebraska - Lincoln
Nevada - Carson City
New Hampshire - Concord
New Jersey - Trenton
New Mexico - Santa Fe
New York - Albany
North Carolina - Raleigh
North Dakota - Bismarck
Ohio - Columbus
Oklahoma - Oklahoma City
Oregon - SalemPennsylvania - Harrisburg
Rhode Island - Providence
South Carolina - Columbia
South Dakota - Pierre
Tennessee - Nashville
Texas - Austin
Utah - Salt Lake City
Vermont - Montpelier
Virginia - Richmond
Washington - Olympia
West Virginia - Charleston
Wisconsin - Madison
Wyoming - Cheyenne

Don’t Copyright a Secret!

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I find the KKK to be so despicable.  I do not understand how you can hate someone just because they have a different skin tone then you.  But there are those that do.  I however found this little bit on information to funny.  It just shows how dumb people can be.

 

Joseph Simmons, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, issued the following “Imperial Decree” on June 26, 1916.  From his “Aulic in the Imperial Palace in the Imperial City of Atlanta”:  “The Kloran is the book of the Invisible Empire and it is therefore a sacred book with our citizens, and its contents must be rigidly safeguarded.  The book or any part of it must not be kept or carried where any person of the ‘alien’ world may chance to become acquainted with its sacred contents as such.  In warning: A penalty sufficient will speedily be enforced for disregarding the decree in  profanation of the Kloran.”

 

Simmons decided six months later that a book as important as the Kloran should be officially recognized.  He applied to Washington for a copyright.  Like any author, he forwarded one dollar and two copies of the book to the Register of Copyrights.  From that time forward The Book of the Invisible Empire was available to anyone who asked for it at the Library of Congress.

A Few Facts About George Washington

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• Washington’s family motto was “Exitus acta probat” (the end justifies the means.
• Introduced the jackass to America.
• Provided in his will for the emancipation of his slaves upon the death of Martha, his wife.  Washington was the only member of the Virginia dynasty to free all his slaves.
• Washington was one of the richest men in America.  At his death his holdings were worth about half a million dollars and included: 33,000 acres of land in Virginia, , Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and the Northwest Territory; $25,000 worth of stocks; 640 sheep; 329 cows, 42 mules; and 20 workhorses.

There are many things in the country named after George Washington.  Below is  just a partial list of things I could find.

1 state

7 mountains

8 streams

9 colleges

10 lakes

33 counties

121 towns and villages

Meds in the Victorian Era!

 

Technorati Tags: history,drugs,cocaine,morphine,opium,victorian ear,1800s,1900s,children,pain,toothache,American,medication,pharmacetical,patent-medicine,heroin

Introduced into drugstores across the country in 1898 by the Bayer pharmaceutical firm came a new medication for bad coughs.  Heroin!  Pushing hard drugs in the American market was common place.  With no government regulation,  easy accessibility, and medical ignorance, drug abuse was a major social problem. 

 

Available through the mail or at the local drugstore you could find Cocaine tablets for throat and nerves, baby syrups spiked with morphine, opium for newborns, cocaine drops for toothaches (tauted to take the pain away and make children happy.) and many more. 

 

 

Alcohol was the base of most liquid medications.  Experts have  estimated that nineteenth-century Americans imbibed more spirits from patent medicine than from bottled liquor.  It  wasn’t until 1909, when the Narcotics Drug Act was enacted, that the government began to regulate the quality of  of medications.

 

Drug ads were as numerous as the products they promoted.  The pages, of Life, Harper’s, the Sears Catalog, and the New York Times were filled with a virtual onslaught of drug touting notices.  Congressman William Everett of Massachusetts told the story of one church congregation that found the advertising barrage to be especially trying.  Needing new hymnals and no money to buy them, the church contacted a patent-medicine manufacturer who agreed to defray a large percentage of the hymnal cost in return for advertising space in the new books.  On December 24th the new books arrived. Christmas Day the congregation filled the church sanctuary only to find in their hymnals:

Hark! The herald angels sing

Beechan’s pills are just the thing.

Peace on earth and mercy mild

Two for man and one for child.

Sources: Otto L. Bettmann, The Good Old Days: They were Terrible ( New York: Random House, 1974), p.152.

Edward Boykin, ed., The Wit and Wisdom of Congress ( New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1961), p. 376.