Decidedly Grim

Today’s Bushwhacked Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On December 19, 1854, Dr. Bolivar A. Sparks, James C. McDonald and Captain Jonathan R. Davis, a 38-year-old veteran of the Mexican War, were trekking on a miner’s trail along the North Fork of the American River in El Dorado County, California.  As they hiked through Rocky Canyon, they were bushwhacked by a motley group of bandits.  The international bouquet of thugs included a Frenchman, two Americans, two Brits, four Mexicans and five Australians.  All of the men were ruthless killers who had robbed and killed four American miners the day before and six Chinese miners the day before that. 

The gang rushed the men with guns ablaze, instantly killing McDonald and fatally wounding Dr. Sparks.  Captain Davis, who was known as a skilled marksman and expert fencer, wasted no time in taking down the bandits.  He pulled out both of his pistols and blazed away at the outlaws, killing them one by one.  He killed seven bandits in as many seconds.  Four more outlaws charged Captain Davis, three of them wielding Bowie knives and one a sword.  Davis pulled out his Bowie knife and, like the swordsman he was, fought off the four men, killing three and cutting off the nose and several fingers of the fourth man.  The last three bandits thought better of taking on Captain Davis and fled into the hills.  Despite six bullet holes in the captain’s hat, he had only a few minor flesh wounds.

Even though the fight took place deep in the boondocks, a group of miners saw the entire melee from a nearby hilltop.  Three of them ran to the scene, startling the captain, who quickly went for a dead man’s gun to defend himself.  The miners quickly explained that they had witnessed the attack and invited him and the gravely wounded Dr. Sparks back to their camp. 

In the evening, the entire mining camp of eighteen men and Captain Davis returned to the scene of the crime.  Three of the wounded bandits had died.  The group searched the bodies and found almost five hundred dollars in gold and silver coins, four ounces of gold dust, and nine gold and silver watches.  The noseless, seven-fingered bandit confessed to being party to the blood baths of the previous day.

The next morning, the noseless bandit died and was buried with the rest of the dead men, including McDonald.  The miners formed a coroner’s jury and seventeen miners signed a statement, testifying that they had seen the attack and witnessed Captain Davis’s defense.  Captain Davis then carried Dr. Sparks down from the mountains to his home in Coloma, where he died on Decebmer 26.

Culled from: California Justice by David Kulczyk

Facts

Today’s Cold and White Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Wellington Avalanche Debris

The Wellington avalanche was the worst avalanche, measured in terms of lives lost, in the history of the United States. For nine days at the end of February 1910, the little town of Wellington, Washington was assailed by a terrible blizzard. Wellington was a Great Northern Railway stop high in the Cascades, on the west side of the first Cascade Tunnel, under Stevens Pass. As much as a foot of snow fell every hour, and, on the worst day, 11 feet (340 cm) of snow fell. Two trains, a passenger train and a mail train, both bound from Spokane to Seattle, were trapped in the depot. Snow plows were present at Wellington and others were sent to help, but they could not penetrate the snow accumulations and repeated avalanches along the stretch of tracks between Scenic and Leavenworth.

Late on February 28, the snow stopped and was replaced by rain and a warm wind. Just after 1 a.m. on March 1, as a result of a lightning strike, a slab of snow broke loose from the side of Windy Mountain during a violent thunderstorm. A ten-foot high mass of snow, half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, fell toward the town. A forest fire had recently ravaged the slopes above the town, leaving very little to impede the avalanche.

The avalanche missed the Bailets Hotel (which also housed the town’s general store and post office), but hit the railroad depot. Most of the passengers and crew were asleep aboard their trains. The impact threw the trains 150 feet downhill and into the Tye River valley. Ninety-six people were killed, including 35 passengers, 58 Great Northern employees on the trains, and three railroad employees in the depot. Twenty-three passengers survived; they were pulled from the wreckage by railroad employees who immediately rushed from the hotel and other buildings where they had been staying. The work was soon abandoned; it was not until 21 weeks later, during late July, that it was possible for the last of the bodies to be retrieved. This was not the only avalanche in the region that winter. Three days later, 63 railroad workers were killed in an avalanche nearby in British Columbia.

Culled from: Wikipedia 

Facts

Today’s Remote Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Hermann Hospital, 1925

When philanthropist George H. Hermann died in 1914, he devoted a large portion of his $2.6m estate for building and maintaining a hospital for the poor and sick of Houston. Although Hermann did not specify any location for the hospital in his will, there is evidence that Hermann had in fact chosen a site downtown, near his family home and accessible to the poor, for whom transportation was a problem. The new trustees tasked with building the hospital decided that location was too small and began construction on the far outskirts of town. Probably not coincidentally, the new location was near the wealthy white neighborhoods that were being built outside Houston. One nearby subdivision was being developed by one of the hospital’s new trustees. A second trustee had close friends and family living relatively close to the substitute site. Though convenient for these men, the location was isolated from most of the city. It was a place so remote that, when the hospital bulding was finally completed in 1925, it had to be ringed with a hurricane fence to keep out the wolves, who were attracted by the odor of the sick and dying.

Culled from: First, Do No Harm

Facts

Today’s Superstitious Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Nooses, Woody Guthrie’s song notwithstanding, do not usually have thirteen loops, nor do scaffolds necessarily have thirteen steps. The morbid tradition may have originated in 19th century England, where hangman William Marwood used a thirteen-foot length of Italian silk-hemp rope bound with chamois leather. The use of the number thirteen was reinforced in American lore by the scaffold in the Western District of Arkansas, to which the “Hangin’ Judge,” Isaac Charles Parker, sent some eighty-eight men. Parker’s executioner, George Maledon, the “Prince of Hangmen,” used thirteen loops on his knots, though there were only twelve steps up the gallows. Before the electric chair was introduced to Huntsville, Alabama, the condemned were hanged in the basement below death row, which was reached by a staircase of thirteen steps. The same was true in San Quentin.

Culled from: The Last Face You’ll Ever See

Facts

Today’s Foolhardy Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

It’s the Fourth of July 1970 in Portland, and Ken Bowers, Mike Gaskell and Roger Adams have been out and about. You know, drinking a little Boone’s Farm wine. Cruising Broadway, back when it was the cool thing to do. Around midnight, however, this starts to get boring. So they decide to go up to the zoo. Of course the zoo is closed, but that’s never been a problem before. They jump the fence on the Washington Park side and proceed to check out the animals. At the bear pit, Roger, who is 19 and the youngest of the three, does something very stupid, obviously trying to impress them. He lowers himself over the edge of the pit and hangs there by his fingers. “Don’t do that stuff, man,” they tell him. “It’s crazy.” Roger smiles and pulls himself out of the pit.

Next stop is the penguin pool, where they talk Roger into trying to catch one of the penguins. He never does, but it’s funnier than you-know-what to see them running all over the place, trying to get away from him. When they get tired of that, they just sort of wander around the empty zoo. Mike is off doing something. Ken doesn’t know where Roger is, but he must have heard something, because when he turns around, there’s Roger lowering himself over the lion pit. Below, a female lion watches intently. As Roger straightens his arms, she springs, missing him with her big paw by about a foot and a half. “Get outta there!” screams Ken. And Roger’s head is actually above the ledge when she springs again, catching him just under the knee and pulling him down into the pit, where she begins to toy with him the way a cat toys with a mouse it’s just caught.

At almost the same time, Ken and Mike spot one of those 50-gallon garbage cans. All they have to do is throw it down to Roger and he can crawl in it but it’s chained and locked to a bench. Ken runs for the security guard. The guard takes one look and says, “Oh, my God.” Then he runs back to his office and locks the door behind him, looking away as Ken pleads for the keys to the garbage cans. When Ken returns, Mike is throwing anything he can get at the cat, trying to distract it. If a bottle breaks nearby, she stops for a few seconds, then goes back to toying with her prey. “Play dead!” Ken yells – but Roger can’t. Every time the cat hits him, he moans.

Then Ken sees the male lion, which had been resting at the far end of the pit, rise to his feet. He’d heard it somewhere: Females do the hunting, but the males do the killing. “Roger!” he yells. “If he gets any closer, get up and start fighting.” Roger can’t help but see the lion as it slowly walks toward him. He’s lying on his back, facing in that direction. But he can’t get up. “Bye, Kenny,” he says. Those are his last words. The male lion walks up, grabs him by the neck and twists. Then, nonchalantly as before, he walks back and sits down.

When the police finally arrive, they ask Mike and Ken some questions, then give them a ride home. The next morning, Ken calls the zoo and speaks to someone in the head office. He asks the man if they’re going to put down the lions. A few years earlier, a bear had mauled one of the zookeepers, and they’d put down the bear. “No,” says the person on the phone. “Well, if you’re not, then I am,” says Ken. “Yeah, right,” says the man. That night, accompanied by a friend, Ken jumps the fence and shoots both lions with a hunting rifle. Of course the cops know who did it, but they don’t have any witnesses. Ken doesn’t go to jail, at least not yet.

The nightmares are worse, anyway. They won’t let him sleep. He tries drugs, hard liquor. Nothing works. A year goes by. The friend who went with him the night of the shooting gets picked up on a couple of burglaries. In exchange for leniency, he gives the DA Ken. Ken pleads guilty to one count of destruction of an animal, serves seven months in jail and pays $1,200 in restitution. And of course, if he didn’t have to go to sleep at night, that might be the end of it. But you know it isn’t. On the good nights, Ken, who’s 54 now (circa 2009) and has a sheet metal business in east Portland, catches himself before they get to the lion pit. Then he goes out into the living room and watches TV till dawn. Most nights, though, it’s just like this.

Culled from: Portland Tribune (written by Phil Stanford)

Facts