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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Escapades, and Other Lesser Known Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan January 21, 2020 33 min

William Carver - Butch Cassidy — Butch Cassidy, far right, The Sundance Kid, far left, and other members of the Wild Bunch gang. Wikimedia

1. One City’s Salvation Was Another City’s Doom

The radioactive plume from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, as seen from Koyagi-Jima, 9.6 miles away. Pintrest

When Bockscar reached Kokura, Big Stink, with which it was scheduled to rendezvous, was nowhere to be seen. So Bockscar circled around, waiting for the film plane to show up. After 40 minutes of flying around, Major Sweeney gave up on Big Stink, and proceeded to Kokura. By then, however, clouds, plus smoke from a conventional bombing raid on a nearby city, had combined to obscure Kokura.

Battered religious figures stand watch on a hill above a tattered valley in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Wikimedia

Over the next 50 minutes, Bockscar crisscrossed the skies above the target city, hoping for enough of a break in the cloud and smoke to drop its bomb. Below, the Kokurans went about their daily lives, innocently oblivious to the death circling above. After three failed bombing runs, Sweeney finally gave up, and flew at a new heading for his alternate target in case he was unable to bomb Kokura: Nagasaki. One city’s salvation proved to be another city’s doom.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Arab America – Al Mutanabbi: The Greatest Arab Poet

BBC, September 26^th, 2013 – Stanislav Petrov: The Man Who May Have Saved the World

China Knowledge – The Red Eyebrows and Lulin Uprisings

Daily Beast – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Last Tango

Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Mutanabbi

Encyclopedia Britannica – Butch Cassidy

Encyclopedia Britannica – Red Eyebrows, Chinese Rebel Group

Forbes, August 27^th, 2013 – How Martin Luther King Improvised ‘I Have a Dream’

Gabriel, Richard A. – Subotai the Valiant: Genghis Khan’s Greatest General (2004)

History – When Teddy Roosevelt Was Shot in 1912, a Speech May Have Saved His Life

Independent, The, August 9^th, 1995 – City Remembers Day it Escaped the Bomb

Military History Matters: The Novgorod: Circular Ironclad

New York Times, August 7^th, 1995 – Kokura, Japan, Bypassed by A-Bomb

Schama, Simon – Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1990)

Wikipedia – Flight to Varennes

Wikipedia – Russian Monitor Novgorod

Wikipedia – Subutai the Valiant

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.