Wyatt Earp (1848- 1929) was at different times in his life a constable, city policeman, county sheriff, teamster, buffalo hunter, bouncer, saloon-keeper, gambler, brothel owner, pimp, miner, and boxing referee.
Earp spent his early life in Iowa. He landed in the cattle boomtown of Wichita, Kansas, where he became a deputy city marshal for one year and developed a solid reputation as a lawman. In 1876 he followed his brother James to Dodge City, Kansas, where he became an assistant city marshal.
Wyatt Earp at age 21[22] in 1869 or 1870,
The "Gunfight at the OK Corral" took place at about 3:00 p.m. on October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and Doc Holliday shot it out with Ike Clanton's gang. Three members of Clanton's gang were killed; Earp's brothers were wounded. It is generally regarded as the most famous shootout in the history of the American Wild West.
Tombstone, Arizona in 1881 photographed by C. S. Fly.
Unlike his lawmen brothers Virgil and James, and Doc Holliday, Wyatt was never wounded in any of the gunfights, which only added to his mystique after his death.
Wyatt Earp was also a boxing referee. His reputation suffered irreparably when he refereed the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey boxing match in 1896 and called a foul that led everyone to believe he fixed the fight.
In 1901, Earp moved to Southern California. In his later years he became friends with a young actor named Marion Morrison, or more famously, John Wayne. Earp became a fixture on silent Western sets, telling stories of his younger years.
The black-and-white 1923 Western Wild Bill Hickok starring William Hart was the first film to depict Wyatt Earp.
Wyatt Earp at home on August 9, 1923, at age 75. Picture by John H. Flood Jr
When he died in Los Angeles on January 13, 1929, Earp was better known for his notorious handling of the Fitzsimmons-Sharkey fight than the O.K. Corral shoot out. An extremely flattering, largely fictionalized, bestselling biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, published after his death created his reputation as a fearless lawman.
Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal omitted Earp's common-law wife of 46 years after his widow threatened to sue the author.
Chester Greenwood of Farmington, Maine patented the earmuff.at the age of 15. He grew frustrated at trying to protect his ears from the bitter cold while testing a new pair of ice skates and made two ear-shaped loops from wire. Greenwood then asked his grandmother to sew fur on them.
Greenwood patented an improved earmuff with a steel band which held them in place on March 13, 1877. In the patent document No.188,292, the invention is described as “Improvement in Ear-Mufflers”.
Having patented Greenwood’s Champion Ear Protectors, he established Greenwood’s Ear Protector Factory, which by 1883 was making 50,000 pairs a year.
Earmuffs’ as one word was first used in 1889.
By the time of Chester Greenwood's death in 1937, he had over 100 patents including a folding bed, a tea kettle, a steel tooth rake, an advertising matchbox, and a mousetrap that used fake cheese.
Every year, on the first Saturday of December, the town of Farmington celebrates "Chester Greenwood Day" with a variety of activities. A parade in Greenwood's honor is a part of the festivities. Everyone participating in the parade must wear earmuffs.
National Earmuff Day on March 13th recognizes the creation of the protection that keeps our ears warm.
Amelia Earhart was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas, in the home of her maternal grandfather, Alfred Gideon Otis, a former federal judge, president of the Atchison Savings Bank and a leading citizen in the town.
Amelia was the second child of German American Samuel "Edwin" Stanton Earhart (1867-1930) and Amelia "Amy" Otis Earhart (1869–1962), after an infant stillborn in August 1896.
Amelia Earhart as a child
Amelia Earhart was known as “Millie” in her youth.
As a child, Milly spent long hours playing with her younger sister Pidge, climbing trees, hunting rats with a rifle and "belly-slamming" her sled downhill.
Earhart wasn't impressed the first time she saw an airplane at the age of 10. In Last Flight, a collection of diary entries published posthumously, she recalled feeling unmoved by “a thing of rusty wire and wood” at the Iowa State Fair in 1908.
Amelia graduated from Chicago’s Hyde Park High School in 1916. She is listed in the school’s yearbook as “the girl in brown who walks alone.”
Earhart volunteered as a nurse's aide for returning World War I soldiers and for victims of the influenza epidemic of 1918. She also worked early jobs as a telephone operator and tutor.
Earhart found her passion for aviation years later, when she worked as a nurse’s aide at Toronto’s Spadina Military Hospital. She and some friends would spend time at hangars and flying fields, talking to pilots and watching aerial shows.
Earhart didn't actually get on a plane herself—and then only as a passenger—until 1920.
She bought her first plane within six months of her first flying lesson. Earhart named it The Canary. The used yellow Kinner Airster biplane was the second one ever built.
Earhart was a social worker at Denison House in Boston when she was invited to fly across the Atlantic for the first time on June 18, 1928. (She was a passenger; Wilmer Stultz, the pilot and Lou Gordon the mechanic). When they landed at Burry Port, near Llanelli, Wales, she became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Amelia Earhart completed the first transatlantic solo flight by a woman on May 21, 1932. She took off in her Lockheed Vega 5B from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland on May 20th and bad weather forced her to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, approximately 15 hours later the next day.
The New York Times reported that Earhart packed one vacuum bottle of hot soup and three cans of tomato soup for sustenance and a toothbrush for the journey.
Lockheed Vega 5B as seen on display at the National Air and Space Museum. By Sergio Caltagirone Wikipedia Commons
Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California on January 11, 1935. Although this transoceanic flight had been attempted by many others, her trailblazing flight was mainly routine, with no mechanical breakdowns. In her final hours, Earhart even relaxed and listened to "the broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera from New York."
Earhart was among the first aviators to promote commercial air travel through the development of a passenger airline service. Along with Charles Lindbergh, she represented Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT) and invested time and money in setting up the first regional shuttle service between New York and Washington, DC.
Earhart studied sewing as a girl and for a number of years had sewn her own clothes. She launched a clothing line of cotton and parachute-silk separates. Amelia Earhart Fashions were affordable separates sold exclusively at Macy's and Marshall Field's, for which she made her own samples.
Amelia Earhart was one of the first celebrities to found her own line of clothing and luggage, and was a major icon of women's fashion in the 1930s.
She married publisher George P. Putnam, who was known as GP, on February 7, 1931, in Putnam's mother's house in Noank, Connecticut. Earhart insisted on an open marriage to the point where she included the stipulation in her prenup.
Earhart and Putnam in 1931
Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific Ocean while attempting to make the first equatorial round-the-world flight on July 2, 1937. Earhart was declared dead on January 5, 1939.
Amelia Earhart likely survived and sent distress signals for weeks after disappearing, but the authorities immediately presumed all signals to be hoaxes with no further investigation. It is believed Earhart and Noonan landed safely on an uninhabited atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati and ultimately died as castaways.
A Carmelite monk Père Sebastian Jean Truchet invented the ear trumpet in the 17th century. His pioneering model was basically a long horn with a large pointed opening at one end.
By the 18th century collapsible conical ear trumpets were being made by instrument makers on a one-off basis for specific clients. Well known models of the period included the Reynolds Trumpet (specially built for painter Joshua Reynolds)
Reynolds had to resort to using an ear trumpet after catching a cold whilst in Rome, which brought on his deafness. He'd been studying the frescoes in a draughty corridor of the Vatican.
The first firm to begin commercial production of the ear trumpet was established by Frederick C. Rein in London in 1800.
Madame de Meuron using an ear trumpet
F. C. Rein and Son of London ended its ear trumpet manufacturing activity in 1963, as the last (and first) company of its kind.
According to the ancient Chinese, long earlobes were associated with a person having a long life.
The penalty for an adulteress in 11th century Britain was to forfeit the nose and both ears.
Spectacles were introduced in Italy in 1268 but arms to clip them round the ears were added only in 1727 by English optician Edward Scarlett.
The British once went to war over a sailor’s ear. It happened in 1739 when a Spanish officer supposedly sliced off the ear of a ship's captain named Robert Jenkins. The pickled ear was presented to an incensed Parliament who decided that Spain needed to be taught a lesson. War was declared on October 23, 1739 The subsequent three-year conflict was dubbed the War of Jenkins’ Ear.
Robert Jenkins hands a dismissive Prime Minister Robert Walpole his severed ear
In November 2012, Lasha Patraya of Georgia set a world record by pulling an eight-ton truck 21.5 metres with his ears.
HUMAN EARS
Your right ear hears speech better and your left ear hears music better.
The human ear is so sensitive that it can hear sound waves that move the eardrum less than the width of a hydrogen atom.
After age 30, human ears increase in size by by 0.22 millimeters, or 0.0087 inches, per year.
The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes, a stirrup-shaped bone in the middle ear.
Your ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren't.
Asians and Native Americans have dry earwax; Caucasians and Africans have moist earwax.
Every human is born with the ability to wiggle their ears. If you don't discover it early, the muscle atrophies.
Some people can voluntarily control the tensor tympani, a muscle within the ear. Contracting these muscles produces vibration and sound. The noise it makes is usually described as a rumbling sound.
The human earlobe is an erogenous zone because of its nerve endings. Otherwise the organ has no use in a human body.
Ted Richards, a 56-year-old Englishman from Bristol, had both of his ears removed in an effort to look more like his pet parrots.
Half of all British women have their ears pierced - the average age of which they have it done is seven.
In Japan, ear-cleaning parlors are popular places to relax—a normal session includes wax picking and an ear and shoulder massage.
In America, Noddy's friend Big Ears was called Whitebeard to avoid offending large-eared people.
The idea of using a bald eagle to symbolize America was proposed in 1782 when a drawing of the bird was presented to Congress. It was immediately accepted and five years later, the eagle was officially adopted as the emblem of the US.
Benjamin Franklin wrote to his daughter to tell her that he was unhappy that the bald eagle had been chosen as the national bird of the United States. The American constitution signee said that he wanted the turkey rather than the eagle to be the United States national symbol. He considered the eagle to be "a bird of bad moral character as it lives by shaping and robbing."
The eagle featured on U.S. currency was modeled on a real bald eagle named Peter who used to live on top of the U.S. Mint. After his death in 1836, Peter was stuffed and is still on display inside the very building upon which he once nested.
An eagle named Goldie created a national sensation when he escaped from London Zoo for two weeks. He caused huge traffic jams around Regent's Park as thousands of people come to see him swooping from tree to tree.
Irish airline Aer Lingus flew an exhausted bald eagle back to the US on December 22, 1987 after storms blew it across the Atlantic Ocean. For its return trip, the eagle flew first-class aboard an Aer Lingus jet from Shannon Airport, in Ireland, where Prime Minister Charles Haughey gave it an official send-off. “I wish Godspeed to our feathered friend. May he live long and happily in the wild, back in his natural habitat,” Haughey said,
The Harpy Eagle, Panama's national bird, is the biggest and most powerful of the eagles found in the Americas.
Male Harpy Eagle, shot at Parque das Aves, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. By http://www.birdphotos.com - Wikipedia Commons
An adult golden eagle's claw has nine times the grip of an adult human male's hand.
When a bald eagle loses a feather, it will automatically shed the same feather on it’s other side to maintain balance.
The American Bald Eagle sounds like a seagull. The mighty screech that is often dubbed over the image of a bald eagle is actually the cry of a Red Tailed Hawk.
When eagles swim, they do the breaststroke.
Eagles can view something the size of a rabbit from three miles away. They see more colors than humans, and can also see in the UV range of light (allowing them to see the urine trail of prey)
The Crowned Eagle is the only known bird to be confirmed as having viewing humans as prey.
An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
The sea eagle, Britain's largest bird of prey, was hunted to extinction in the UK with the last bird shot on Shetland in 1916. They were reintroduced to Scotland in the 1970s.
The Philippine eagle has an 8 ft wingspan making it the largest eagle in the world. It also known as the monkey-eating eagle, as it has been known to kill and carry off prey as large as deer and monkeys.
The word 'bald' in 'bald eagle' has nothing to do with the definition as a lack of hair. Rather, the term comes from the Old English word 'piebald' meaning "white." It is in reference to their white heads and tail feathers in contrast to the darker color of the rest of their bodies.
Bald Eagles (see below) are so named because "balde" is an Old English word meaning "white."
Female bald eagles are 25 percent larger than males.
Bald eagles share parenting duties: The male and the female take turns incubating the eggs, and they both feed their young. They usually mate for life too.
For such a powerful bird, the call of the American Bald Eagle is surprisingly weak. It is usually a series of high-pitched whistling or piping notes.
The Bald Eagle is one of the greatest conservation success stories ever. Populations dwindled in the 1900's due to the insecticide DDT which caused eggs to break. After the banning of DDT, eagles can now be found in 49 out of 50 US states.
Eagles normally build their nests, called eyries, in tall trees or on high cliffs.
Bald eagles build the largest tree nests of any bird.
