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America Wanted to Nuke the Moon and Other Weird History

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 32 min

United States - List of nuclear weapons tests of China — Nuking the Moon. Stillness in the Storm

5. Death Row Team Meets Gambling Mad Town

george parrott shoes — Shoes made from the skin of George Parrot, a nineteenth century train robber who was lynched in Wyoming. ATI

Rawlins, WY, was a baseball-mad town, and The Alston All-Stars played before packed crowds. It was a harshly conservative community, which punished wrongdoers to the full extent of the law, and then some. The townspeople were not big on waiting for the law to run its course: desperados caught in the act of murder, rape, or robbery, were often killed on the spot. The vengeance continued even after the miscreants’ death: Rawlins’ vigilantes had a weird penchant for skinning their lynching victims.

The good people of Rawlins were not only baseball mad, but also gambling mad. That was one thing they had in common with the All-Stars, as well as with warden Felix Alston. Indeed, during the All Stars’ run, team captain George Saban developed a sideline as a bookie, going to local saloons and dives, taking bets on his team’s games, and pocketing a 20% commission.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.