[OffTheHook]

Police kill famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde



On this day in 1934, notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police while driving a stolen car near Sailes, Louisiana.
Bonnie Parker met the charismatic Clyde Barrow in Texas when she was 19 years old and her husband (she married when she was 16) was serving time in jail for murder. Shortly after they met, Barrow was imprisoned for robbery. Parker visited him every day, and smuggled a gun into prison to help him escape, but he was soon caught in Ohio and sent back to jail. When Barrow was paroled in 1932, he immediately hooked up with Parker, and the couple began a life of crime together.
After they stole a car and committed several robberies, Parker was caught by police and sent to jail for two months. Released in mid-1932, she rejoined Barrow. Over the next two years, the couple teamed with various accomplices to rob a string of banks and stores across five states--Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico and Louisiana. To law enforcement agents, the Barrow Gang--including Barrow's childhood friend, Raymond Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Henry Methvin, Barrow's brother Buck and his wife Blanche, among others--were cold-blooded criminals who didn't hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, especially police or sheriff's deputies. Among the public, however, Parker and Barrow's reputation as dangerous outlaws was mixed with a romantic view of the couple as "Robin Hood"-like folk heroes.
Their fame was increased by the fact that Bonnie was a woman--an unlikely criminal--and by the fact that the couple posed for playful photographs together, which were later found by police and released to the media. Police almost captured the famous duo twice in the spring of 1933, with surprise raids on their hideouts in Joplin and Platte City, Missouri. Buck Barrow was killed in the second raid, and Blanche was arrested, but Bonnie and Clyde escaped once again. In January 1934, they attacked the Eastham Prison Farm in Texas to help Hamilton break out of jail, shooting several guards with machine guns and killing one.
Texan prison officials hired a retired Texas police officer, Captain Frank Hamer, as a special investigator to track down Parker and Barrow. After a three-month search, Hamer traced the couple to Louisiana, where Henry Methvin's family lived. Before dawn on May 23, Hamer and a group of Louisiana and Texas lawmen hid in the bushes along a country road outside Sailes. When Parker and Barrow appeared, the officers opened fire, killing the couple instantly in a hail of bullets.
All told, the Barrow Gang was believed responsible for the deaths of 13 people, including nine police officers. Parker and Barrow are still seen by many as romantic figures, however, especially after the success of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.


http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

[OffTheHook]

The campaign between Union commander Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, continues southward to the North Anna River around Hanover Junction. In early May, Grant crossed the Rapidan River with the Army of the Potomac and then clashed with Lee’s forces at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5 and 6 before racing to Spotsylvania Court House for an epic 12-day battle. Grant's continuous pressure on Lee would ultimately win the war, but he was racking up casualties at a rate that was difficult for the Northern public to stomach.
Grant believed that Lee could not maintain his position at Spotsylvania because two other Union armies under the command of Franz Sigel and Benjamin Butler were attempting to cut off the Confederate supply line in the Shenandoah Valley and the Rebel stronghold south of Richmond. But both were failing miserably.
By May 19, Grant had had enough of Spotsylvania. He pulled his troops to try another run around Lee to Richmond. Correctly predicting Grant's move, just as he had done two weeks before when Grant left the Wilderness for Spotsylvania, Lee raced the Yankees 20 miles south and beat Grant's troops to the North Anna River. The rail center here was crucial to his supplies.
At the North Anna, Grant found Lee's position to be even stronger than at Spotsylvania. The river had high banks, and Lee's side was higher than the Union side in several places. Still, Grant made an attempt to dislodge the Rebels. He made two assaults, but neither came close to breaking the Confederate lines. He would try again the next day before moving south to Cold Harbor, Virginia.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-histo...r-virginia

[OffTheHook]

The Crow scout Curley, the last man on the army side to see Custer and the 7th Cavalry alive, is buried at the National Cemetery of the Big Horn Battlefield in Montana.
Born around 1859 near the Little Rosebud River, Montana, from an early age Curley had participated in fights with the Crow's hated enemy, the Sioux. Like many of his people, Curley viewed the Anglo-American soldiers as allies in the Crow war with the Sioux. When he was in his late teens, he signed on as a cavalry scout to aid the army's major campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne in the summer of 1876.
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry arrived in the Powder River country of southern Montana in early June 1876. As Custer proceeded toward the Little Big Horn Valley, he found increasing signs that a large number of Indians lay ahead. On June 22, Curley and five other Crow scouts were detached from a different unit and sent to Custer to bolster his Arikara scouts.
On the morning of June 25, Curley and the other scouts warned Custer that a massive gathering of Indians lay ahead that far outnumbered his contingent of 187 men. Custer dismissed the report and made the unusual decision to attack in the middle of the day. Both the Crow and Arikara scouts believed this would be suicidal and prepared to die.
Right before the battle began, however, Custer released the Crow scouts from duty. All of the scouts, except for Curley, obeyed and rode off to relative safety. However, since the hills were now swarming with small war parties of Sioux and Cheyenne, Curley initially thought he would be safer if he remained with the soldiers. As the fighting gradually began to heat up, Curley reconsidered. He left Custer and rode to the east. Concealing himself in coulees and ravines, Curley avoided attack and made his way to a ridge about a mile and a half to the east. There he watched much of the battle through field glasses, the last man from the army side to see Custer and his men alive. When it had become clear that Custer's army was going to be wiped out, Curley abandoned his looking post and rode away to warn the approaching Generals Terry and Gibbon of the disaster.
In the weeks following the battle, Curley provided an accurate and valuable account of the final moments of Custer's 7th Cavalry. Unfortunately, some interviewers later pushed the eager-to-cooperate Curley to revise his account and others simply misrepresented his testimony to fit their own theories. Consequently, for many years Curley was dismissed as a liar. Later historians, however, have vindicated the accuracy of Curley's initial story.
Little is known about Curley's life after the Little Big Horn, but at some point he moved to the Crow Agency in Montana where he died of pneumonia on May 21, 1923. Two days later, he was buried at the National Cemetery at the Little Big Horn Battlefield.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-histo...e-big-horn

[OffTheHook]

At Sag Harbor, New York, Patriot troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs capture several British vessels and burn Redcoat supplies. With the help of two local men, Meigs and his Connecticut raiders grabbed the British commander from his bed in the wee hours of the morning, firing only one gunshot. Instead of guns, the Patriots used silent but deadly bayonets to capture the British fort, successfully avoiding announcing their presence with gunfire.
The British had built their fort on the site of a burial ground because it was the highest land in the area and had the best view of the harbor. The Redcoats desecrated colonists' family gravesites, and in the process, lost the important battle for the hearts and minds of the residents. Nearly half of Sag Harbor's families fled to Connecticut during the British occupation.
With six Redcoats dead and 53 captive from their success on land, the Patriots moved from the hilltop fort towards the harbor. The British ships anchored there eventually noticed the body of men moving towards them and opened fire. The Patriots, though, went on to burn 24 British ships and their cargoes of hay, rum, grain and other merchandise. With an additional 37 prisoners in custody, the 170 Yankee raiders returned to Connecticut without having lost a single man in their party.
The Sag Harbor ambush was the only successful Patriot attack on Long Island between the British takeover in 1776 and their departure following the Treaty of Paris in 1783.


http://www.history.com/this-day-in-histo...ong-island

[OffTheHook]

JRVanHoose would love this stuff.

[WideRight05]

Good information!

[Mr. Pike Central]

13 years ago today...Owen Hart was tragically killed.

R.I.P Owen

[Bob Seger]

JRVanHoose would love this stuff.

I aint JR but I love this stuff too. Does that count? lol... One of the better threads that's been posted on here IMO. Good job Hook.

[Granny Bear]

I liked this too OTH!!
Thanks!!

[OffTheHook]

^You're Welcome.

[judgementday]

Good read....

Thanks...

[nky]

Plus there is only 222 days left in the year

[nky]

or 211 till the end of the world (if you believe in the Mayan thing)

[Spud]

I feel so much smarter now! lol

Thank You

[TidesHoss32]

General George Armstrong Custer..graduated dead last in his class, however, was one of the better officers for the Union during the Civil War, serving at the First battle of Bull Run, leading his troops during Appomattox, and was present during Lee's surrender..then Little Big Horn happened, and it overshadowed everything else, lol..