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The Death Row Baseball Team and Other Odd Episodes in History

Khalid Elhassan May 18, 2020 34 min

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

1. Jay Gold’s Thirst For Vengeance Almost Started a War With Canada

Jay Gould was not a forgiving man. ThoughtCo

An understandably incensed Jay Gould was not about to let things slide and let Lord Gordon-Gordon get away with conning him. The robber baron financed a Minnesota posse that crossed the border into Canada, and kidnapped Gordon-Gordon off his front porch in Manitoba. The plot failed however when the kidnappers were stopped at the border, arrested, and thrown into a Canadian jail. An international incident then ensued, and American newspapers urged an invasion of Canada to free the kidnappers. Eventually, things simmered down, and the Americans were released through diplomacy.

Lord Gordon-Gordon settled down to enjoy his loot, but then in 1874, he was finally identified as the “Lord Glencairn” who had fleeced the London jewelers in 1868 for £25,000. As the Canadian authorities moved to deport him to Britain, Lord Gordon-Gordon, realized that the jig was finally up. Not wishing to spend the rest of his life behind bars, he hosted a farewell party in his hotel room, then shot himself on August 1^st, 1874.

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

Agriculture Victoria – Red Fox

Ancient History Encyclopedia – The Roman Funeral

Bright Side – 10 Things Ancient People Did That Would be Totally Weird Today

Cracked – 5 Bonkers Supervillain Plans Real Governments Actually Tried

Daily Beast – What Fueled the Child Sex Abuse Scandal That Never Was?

Daily Mail, September 14^th, 2014 – Playing For Time: The Death Row Inmates Who Received Stays of Execution For Every Baseball Game They Won

Encyclopedia Britannica – Al Hakim, Fatimid Caliph

Gonick, Larry – Cartoon History of the Universe: From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (1990)

Gonick, Larry – Cartoon History of the Universe III: From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (2002)

Guardian, The, December 1^st, 2006 – Lawyers Warned Eden That Suez Invasion Was Illegal

Harvey, Brian K. – Daily Life in Ancient Rome: A Sourcebook (2016)

Iter Newsline 196, October 26^th, 2011 – “Proyecto Hueumul”: The Prank That Started it All

Kazanjian, Howard, and Enss, Chris – The Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder (2014)

Medical Daily, October 7^th, 2016 – The Use of Poop in Medical Treatments Throughout History

Museum of Hoaxes – Lord Gordon-Gordon

New York Post, September 14^th, 2014 – The Death Row Inmates Forced to Play Baseball For Their Lives

NSA, (b)(3)-PL 86-36 – Mokusatsu: One Word, Two Lessons

Politico – Congress’ Hare-Brained Scheme to Shoot Rain From the Sky

Rabbit Free Australia – The Rabbit Problem

Smithsonian Magazine, September 4^th, 2018 – When the US Government Tried to Make it Rain by Exploding Dynamite in the Sky

Suetonius – The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Texas Monthly, August, 2003 – Rain of Error

Wikipedia – Death Row History

Yorkshire Post, November 30^th, 2016 – How the Suez crisis sank the British empire

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.