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American History

The Death Row Baseball Team and Other Odd Episodes in History

Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder - State Penitentiary
Alston's All Stars. Daily Mail

2. Jay Gould Was Not Into Forgiving and Forgetting

Jay Gould. Wikimedia

For many months after jumping bail, the fake Lord Gordon-Gordon’s whereabouts were unknown, and his trail went cold. His most prominent victim, Jay Gould, offered a $25,000 reward for the arrest of His Lordship. Eventually, word arrived that the conman was living in Manitoba, Canada.

Gould tried to get him extradited to the US, but Gordon-Gordon convinced the Canadian authorities that the charges against him were false. The fact that His Lordship had offered to buy large tracts of Manitoba – an investment that promised to bring great prosperity to Canada – might have played a role in the Canadian authorities’ reluctance to extradite him.

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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.

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