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The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. The subject matter may be disturbing for some readers.
“Big Nose” George Parrot got his nickname for the fact that he had a very large proboscis, but his real claim to fame comes from something much stranger than a prodigious schnoz.
THE (NOT SO) GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
In the late 1870s, a band of Wyoming outlaws called the Sim Jan gang decided to try their hand at robbing Union Pacific trains. Most banking was done by cash in the 19th century, and much of the cash moved by rail. This made trains very tempting targets for criminals looking for big scores.
Some gangs, the James-Younger and Hole-in-the-Wall gangs among them, became quite adept at train robbery. Sim Jan and his gang never did: When, for example, they tried to derail a train out of Medicine Bow, Wyoming, by loosening a length of rail, a railroad crew on a handcart came by and discovered the damage to the track. After repairing the track, the crew sped off to report the incident to the sheriff, all in plain sight of the gang, who were hiding in the bushes nearby. The next day the gang shot it out with the two lawmen sent to find them, Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and railroad detective Henry Vincent, killing them both. They were the first Wyoming lawmen killed in the line of duty.
FRONTIER JUSTICE
Frank Tole was the first member of the gang to pay for his crime; he was killed a few weeks later while trying to rob a stagecoach. Then came “Dutch” Charlie Buress, who was arrested for the murders and put on a train bound for Rawlins, Wyoming, where he would have gone on trial had he lived long enough to see a trial. He didn’t: when his train made a stop in the town of Carbon, which was deputy Widdowfield’s hometown, an angry mob pulled him from the train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.
"Big Nose" George Parrot
Next up for justice: “Big Nose” George Parrot. His turn might never have come at all, had he not gotten drunk in Montana two years after the killings and been overheard boasting of his in
volvement in the crimes. He, too, was arrested and put on a train bound for Rawlins; when the train pulled into Carbon, history seemed about to repeat itself, because once again a lynch mob was waiting. But Big Nose managed to talk the mob out of the hanging by admitting his guilt and promising to tell all if they let him live long enough to face trial. Had he known what fate awaited him, he probably would have preferred being lynched.
DOPE ON A ROPE
Big Nose George lived long enough to be sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out in 3 and 1/2 month’s time. But he didn’t live long enough to see the sentence carried out, because when he nearly killed a guard trying to escape from jail, the lynch mob decided that a speedier, unofficial hanging would do just fine. On March 22nd, 1881, a crowd of about 200 people dragged Big Nose George from the jail and hanged him from the crossarm of a telegraph pole.
Twice.
The mob had to hang him twice because the first rope broke. After a sturdier rope was found, Big Nose George, still very much alive, was hanged again. By now, however, George had managed to untie his hands from behind his back without anyone noticing. Then, when he was strung up the second time, he swung himself -by the noose around his neck- over to the telegraph pole, wrapped his flailing arms around it, and held on for dear life.
more …
When Mother Teresa died in 1997, she was buried at the Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta. Now that she is expected to be canonized as a saint, the government of Albania has asked that her remains be disinterred and turned over to Albanian authorities. India has formally rejected the demand.
“Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.
A spokeswoman for the nun’s Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as “absurd”.
Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.
Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.
Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha said his country will continue the quest to regain Mother Teresa’s remains before the 100th anniversary of her birth next year. Link -via Arbroath
