Historic Crimes
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The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956
The first volume of The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, a history and memoir of life in a Soviet Union prison camp, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was first published in Paris in the original Russian on Dec 28, 1973. “… authorized for Western publication only after the Soviet secret police seized a copy of the manuscript last August, …” The Soviets arrested Solzhenitsyn on February 12, 1974 taking away his citizenship and deporting him. Solzhenitsyn warned the Russian people, citizens of a severely, censorial, 1973 Russia, in the preface of his book The Gulag Archipelago (a three-volume work), that they must consider the reading of his writings as a “very dangerous” act. Learn more about life in Stalin’s Gulag.
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Lizzie Borden Lives On
Though the infamous ax murderer, Lizzie Andrew Borden, died years ago on June 1, 1927, her biology lives on. Scientist James Fallon found out that not only was Lizzie Borden a distant relative, but that he also shared her psychopathic brain. It was during a family research project on Alzheimer’s disease that he saw his own PET scan, not knowing it was his, and recognized the hallmark neurological deficits of the psychopathic population he was studying. As a neuroscientist Fallon worked with experts on brain abnormalities of the criminal kind and so was familiar with the brain scans that psychopaths present with. He was shocked to find out that the image he recognized…
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American Outlaws: Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid had many names. He was born William Henry McCarty Jr. on November 23, 1859 in New York City. Some of his aliases were Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonney. His life of crime started in youth after the death of his mother to tuberculosis when he was only 15. He and his brothers partook in thievery, before The Kid joined a violent gang in the west part of the country. Billy the Kid was shot dead July 14,1881 in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico. His executioner was Sheriff Patrick Garrett. Garrett wrote the first account of the Outlaw’s life helped along by other writers to follow in making Billy the…
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Gunfight at the Ok Corral as in the Movies
The movies Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, from the early 1990s, were not quite historically accurate dramatizations of the infamous gunfight at the OK Corral. See Facts A shootout of all shootouts having great popularity in the history of the American Wild West, though rumored to have lasted a mere 30 seconds or so. It was 3pm on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. At the rear of the Ok Corral and then several doors west, outlaws (Billy Claiborne, Ike & Billy Clanton, and Tom & Frank McLaury) and lawmen (Marshal Virgil Earp, Marshal Morgan, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday) shot it out.
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St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
It was about 10:30 in the morning on a cold Chicago day, Valentine’s Day to be exact, when seven men were gunned down gangster style in the Clark Street garage at 2122 N. Clark St. All of the victims, but one, (an unlucky optician who enjoyed the company of criminals) were gangsters marked for killing by Al Capone.Though Capone was the one behind ordering the killings, he wasn’t present that day. Instead he was at his vacation place in Palm Island, Fla. He had a solid alibi. No one was ever jailed for the shootings; not even the henchmen who did Capone’s bidding. The heinous slaughter accomplished Capone’s desired result, which was to permanently…