Interesting Missouri facts. (Kansas City, St. Louis, Springfield: foreclose, insurance, credit)

[aliasfinn]

Did you know?

John Wilkes Booth was once arrested in St.Louis for making anti-government remarks.

The first US flyer to shoot down a German plane in WW1 was a Missouri boy named Stephen Wilkins Thompson.

There are 41 civil war Generals buried in Missouri.

The last man executed by hanging in Missouri was Roscoe Red Jackson in 1937.

Frances Tumblety, A man suspected of being Jack The Ripper died in St.Louis.

Outlaw Sam Bass ran away from his Indiana home as a teenager and went to St.Louis but didn't stay long because he thought the city was too dangerous.

Albert Berry is credited with being the first person to jump from a powered plane using an attached parachute over Jefferson Barracks.

Legend has it that there was a UFO crash with aliens 6 years before Roswell in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Geronimo sold his autographs for .25 cents each at the St.Louis Worlds fair but was only allowed to keep .10 cents from each one.

It was estimated that there were 2 trillion locusts during the great swarm of 1875 and that they chewed all the bark off of trees and handles off of shovels.

[aliasfinn]

Did you know?

In the 1800s, The real Grizzly Adams invested every cent he owned to start a business in St.Louis selling camping gear to all the people heading west to look for gold. The great fire of 1849 destroyed everything he had and he decided to live with the bears in the wilderness. I think I would too.

It is rumored that the pirate Jean Lafitte fled to St.louis where he lived out the rest of his life.


Every time I come across this next story on the internet,it changes a little but this is pretty much how it goes. Sometime in the 1870s, Frank and Jesse James were riding in a bad thunder storm after one of their robberies when they spotted an isolated house in the woods,they decided to rest their horses and knock on the door. An old woman let them in and hung their jackets by the fireplace and proceeded to dish out some warm stew for them. Frank said to Jesse, " She reminds me of mama " While they were eating, she told them that she was a widow and the bank was going to foreclose on her house in the morning because she didn't have $ 800.00 to pay them. Frank thanked her for the stew and the old woman insisted they stay the night till the storm cleared. When she woke she noticed the boys had gone and left a note with money on the table. The note read, " We left you money to pay the banker, make sure you get a receipt. " When the banker showed up she payed him and got her receipt. As the banker left to go back to town he was abushed by the James boys and robbed of $ 800.00.


James Addison Reavis was born in Missouri and was one of the best forgers of all time. He served in both the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil war, mainly forging furloughs for soldiers. When the war was over he concocted a scheme to forge Spanish land grants and he almost ended up owning most of Arizona. A movie was made about him called " The Baron Of Arizona " Starring Vincent Price, another Missouri boy.


The Great Blue Norther of 1911 set weather records across the country that still stand for the greatest temperature drop in one day. In Missouri it went from 80 degrees to 10 degrees and spawned tornadoes every where.

[aliasfinn]

Did you know?

Captain Thomas B. Targee was the first U.S firefighter killed in the line of duty during the St.Louis fire of 1849.

The last train robbery in Missouri was by Jack " Quail Hunter " Kennedy in 1922.

Buffalo Bill Cody married a woman from Arnold Missouri.

In 1873 thousands of frogs fell from the sky over Kansas City.

Marie Ruoff Byrum was the first Missouri woman voter on 8-31-20.

Wyatt Earp had a cousin, George Washington Earp (1864-1960) b. Missouri. who was also a lawman. He lived long enough to see the Wyatt Earp tv series.

Arlayne I. Brown (1916-1961) b. St.Louis. Was a sharpshooter at age 12 and travelled with the circus. She was reported to be a better shot than Annie Oakley. There is a short Youtube video of her.

Piasa was a giant bird engraved on rocks near the Mississippi river by ancient Indians. There have been sightings of giant birds with 20 ft wingspans from 1673 up until the 1970s over Alton and St.Louis.

General George Patton was stationed in Missouri in 1915.


Judge Roy Bean used to visit his brother Sam in Missouri who was a teamster for a wagon company.

Judge Isaac Parker (The Hanging Judge) of Arkansas, was a Missouri circuit judge who was against the death penalty.

[Arrby]

The James Brothers story is very popular. I have seen it in print citing many different outlaws, including Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, and I am pretty sure I once saw it attributed to the Daltons.

Random interesting items -

The first large scale Texas cattle drive was to the railhead in Sedalia, Mo. It turned out the longhorns carried a tick-borne disease to which they were immune, but Missouri Cattle were not. The next year they were met with violence, and were forced progressively westward.

The Brown, of Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education fame, graduated from high school in the newly desegregated Central High School.

Television and movies notwithstanding, stand up gunfight showdowns were incredibly rare. In the first, and one of very few documented, Wild Bill Hickok killing Dave Tutt in Springfield, Mo., July 21, 1865.

The first steam boat to reach St. Louis arrived in 1817, just 10 years after the very first commercially successful steam boat was built by Robert Fulton.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 (St. Louis World's Fair) introduced, or at least popularized: the ice cream cone, hot dog with mustard, hamburgers, peanut butter, ice tea, cotton candy, Dr. Pepper, air conditioning, possibly others. The Wright Brothers briefly thought of showing off their new invention, but their patents were not ready, nor were they.

The National World War I memorial and museum is across from the old Union Station in Kansas City, Mo.

[aliasfinn]

Yeah, that 1904 Worlds Fair produced a lot of interesting history. I wasn't aware of the steamboat in 1817. Speaking of steamboats, Do you know the worst maritime disaster in U.S history was the SS Sultana in 1865? It was based out of St.Louis and killed more people than the Titanic, mostly Union soldiers released from prison camps. Conspiracy has it that Confederate agents in St.Louis sabotaged it with a coal torpedo but you can tell by looking at the photo that it was over crowded plus they did a poor job fixing one of the boilers.

Missouri outlaw Polk Wells claimed to have been hung twice, stabbed twice and shot 33 times but died in prison of consumption.


Did you know all of these people called Missouri home at one time or another?

JIM BRIDGER
KIT CARSON
JOHN COLTER
DANIEL BOONE
JIM BOWIE
BIG NOSE KATE (Doc Holliday's girlfriend)
FRONTIER FREMONT
ZEBULON PIKE
JEDEDIAH SMITH
CAPTAIN BENTEEN (Little Bighorn fame)
GENERAL SHERIDAN


Harvey Logan (Kid Curry) and his brother Lonnie of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch grew up in Missouri. Ben Kilpatrick, also of the Wild Bunch was captured in St.Louis.


There were reports in the 1920s of a man roaming the streets of St.Louis stabbing women who was called " Jack The Stabber "

[aliasfinn]

Did you know?

When Northwest Plaza was built in St.Ann Missouri in 1963 it was the largest shopping center in the world.

The cholera epidemic of 1849 killed one-tenth of the population of St.Louis.

According to Wikipedia, There have been more tornado fatalities in St.Louis than any other U.S city.
I bet most of them came from those 3 big ones.

The worst Missouri train disaster occurred in Iron County in 1922. 34 deaths.

During WWII 15,000 German/Italian POWs were housed in 30 prison camps around Missouri.

[Versatile]

About 30 years ago i met an old man by the Name of Harrison he was 87 years old and lived in Cass County about 3 miles south of Snead's BBQ on Holmes Rd. He told me that his dad was the first person to bring a tractor into Cass County Mo. He also pointed out to me where he swore that KIT Carson had cabin and it was just on the left as you enter I-435 at State line. Between the on ramp and the highway it's self.

[aliasfinn]

I had one of those Guinness book of records when I was a kid and used to torment my family, " Did you know the heaviest cat on record was....? ", " Did you know the oldest man on record was....? ". If they were watching TV and saw me come into the room with that book they would get up and leave. I never did find out what happened to that book, I think my mom threw it away.

Did you know?

The great earthquake in New Madrid of 1811-1812 caused church bells to ring in Boston?


Abraham Lincoln visited Missouri on at least 3 occasions but never stayed very long.


The movie The Exorcist was based on a real event in St.Louis in 1949.

[aliasfinn]

Did you know?

The worst plane disaster in Missouri happened near Unionville on 5-22-62 when a passenger used 6 sticks of dynamite to blow up a plane for the life insurance. 45 deaths


Taum Sauk Caldera is a 1772 foot tall volcano in Missouri that last erupted 1.5 billion years ago.


The St.Francois Mountains in Southeast Missouri are older than the Appalachians and the Rockies combined age.


330 million years ago a meteorite 1200 feet long struck western Missouri (Weaubleau Structure)
It's the 4th largest impact crater in the United States.

[aliasfinn]

Has it been 8 years already?

The largest power outage in St.Louis history happened on July 19 2006 when we got hit by back to back derechos (winds up to 100 mph) 1,200,000 homes lost power with temperatures at 97 degrees. Florissant, Missouri was without power for 10 days. I think that is when some guy had 2 Ameren repairmen trapped in their basket up on the pole with his shotgun and wouldn't let them down till they turned his power on. I remembered that I had just filled my icebox and freezer with groceries and ended up pitching most of it.