By Kim McGuire
FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the “Little Dixie” area of Western Missouri, James and his family maintained strong Southern sympathies. He and his brother Frank James joined pro-Confederate guerrillas known as “bushwhackers” operating in Missouri and Kansas during the American Civil War. As followers of William Quantrill and “Bloody Bill” Anderson, they were accused of committing atrocities against Union soldiers and civilian abolitionists, including the Centralia Massacre in 1864.
After the war, as members of various gangs of outlaws, Jesse and Frank robbed banks, stagecoaches, and trains across the Midwest, gaining national fame and often popular sympathy despite the brutality of their crimes. The James brothers were most active as members of their own gang from about 1866 until 1876, when as a result of their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, several members of the gang were captured or killed. They continued in crime for several years afterward, recruiting new members, but came under increasing pressure from law enforcement seeking to bring them to justice. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was shot and killed by Robert Ford, a new recruit to the gang who hoped to collect a reward on James’s head and a promised amnesty for his previous crimes. Already a celebrity in life, James became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death.
Popular portrayals of James as an embodiment of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, are a case of romantic revisionism as there is no evidence his gang shared any loot from their robberies with anyone outside their network. Scholars and historians have characterized James as one of many criminals inspired by the regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the Civil War, rather than as a manifestation of alleged economic justice or of frontier lawlessness. James continues to be one of the most (in)famous figures from the era, and his life has been dramatized and memorialized numerous times.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Question of the Day
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Puzzle of the Day
Died
- Robert Burns (poet) –
- Alan Shepard, Jr. (astronaut) –
- Robert Young (actor, television’s iconic dad of Father Knows Best) –
- Jerry Goldsmith (composer who created the memorable music for scores of classic movies and television shows ranging from Star Trek and Planet of the Apes to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Dr. Kildare) –
Born
- George Frederick Dick (American pathologist) –
- Hart Crane (poet) –
- Ernest Hemingway (author) –
- Isaac Stern (violinist) –
- Don Knotts (actor) –
- Robin Williams (actor) –
- Brandi Chastain (soccer player) –
- Josh Hartnett (actor) –
- David Carr (football player) –
Events
- Battle of Falkirk: England’s Edward Longshank defeated William Wallace’s Scottish rebels–
- Canada’s first public railway (Champlain and St. Lawrence) opened–
- The first major military engagement in the Civil War took place at Bull Run Creek, Virginia–
- Jesse James held up the Rock Island Express and escaped with $3,000. It was his first train robbery–
- John T. Scopes found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100–
- The world’s first nuclear-powered merchant vessel, the Savannah, launched–
- Captain Gus Grissom, piloting the Mercury 4 capsule Liberty Bell 7, became the second American to go into space (sub-orbital flight)–
- In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushed a worker against a safety bar in the first known robot-related death in the U.S.–
- Discovery of the subatomic particle tau-neutrino announced–
Weather
- The worst flooding in 20 years hit Mercer County, New Jersey, in 1975, when six inches of rain fell in ten hours. Railway service between New York City and Washington, D.C., was cut off for two days, and about 1,000 people were left homeless from the floods.–
- World-record cold temperature, -128.6 degrees F, recorded at Vostok Station, Antarctica (a new world record of -136 degrees F was set in 2010)–
- Macon, Georgia, had its 10th day above 100 degrees F–
- Columbia, South Carolina, had its 15th day above 100 degrees F–
- 301-foot-tall, 103-year-old Kinzua Viaduct (steel railroad bridge), McKean Co., Pennsylvania, destroyed by F1 tornado. When the structure was built in 1882, it was the highest railroad bridge in the world. It spanned 2,053 feet and weighed 3,105,000 pounds.–
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