Jonathan Eaton's Blog - Posts Tagged "danger"
12 Ways to Die in the Wild West
I've been reading 1860's and 1870's editions of Dallas Newspapers, and I have a pretty good idea of some of the surest ways to meet your maker in the "Wild West." So if you are putting the finishing touches on your time machine, and are planning a vacation on the Texas frontier, take note:
1) Step on another man's toes while dancing at a "ball". I assume this does not mean you are dancing with another man, but the papers are never really clear on the subject. Generally, the paper simply quotes the killer as saying something like "He stepped on my toes while I was dancing so I killed him".
2) Ride in a horse-drawn carriage.
3) Work in a tannery. Apparently there were machines in a tannery that, if you weren't careful, would drag you in and turn you into guacamole.
4) Be an actor or actress, or I suppose any job requiring travel. Trains fell through bridges. Steamboat boilers exploded. Theaters and Hotels caught on fire.
5) Accuse a man of stealing a melon.
6) If you called a man a liar, you might live another day, if he wasn't in a particularly bad mood. But if he called you a liar, and you shot back with the clever retort of the day: "Oh, yeah? Well you're a damn liar!" then one of you would be sleeping six feet under ground in the very near future.
7) I mentioned steamboats above. But just to be perfectly clear, on your time-travel vacation, skip the steamboat ride (dyspepsia is always a good excuse). The most horrific deaths I read about were steamboat accidents, particularly boiler explosions. You'd be paddling up or down the Big Muddy and next thing you know you're in the river with your skin steamed off. If you were lucky, you drowned, because you were going to die anyway and it would be four or five hours before the doctors showed up with the morphine.
8) Be flammable. Everything caught fire all the time, and despite that fact, not much thought was given to how people might get out of a building (or off a boat, or train) that was on fire.
9) Get bit by a dog. Lots of rabies back in the day. Interestingly, there were rabies deniers in America in the 19th century. Because it often took months after a dog bite for the victim to show symptoms, there were those who believed the dog-bite/rabies connection was a figment of people's imaginations. One physician even recommended post-dog-bite "lectures" as a cure for rabies. If you could convince your loved one that rabies didn't exist, they wouldn't get it.
10) Be black.
11) Be Native American.
12) Get drunk. Life was dangerous in Texas in the 19th century, and to survive, you had to be on your game. Get drunk and you might slip up and step on another man's toes while dancing, accuse someone of stealing a melon, get on a steamboat or pet a strange dog.
1) Step on another man's toes while dancing at a "ball". I assume this does not mean you are dancing with another man, but the papers are never really clear on the subject. Generally, the paper simply quotes the killer as saying something like "He stepped on my toes while I was dancing so I killed him".
2) Ride in a horse-drawn carriage.
3) Work in a tannery. Apparently there were machines in a tannery that, if you weren't careful, would drag you in and turn you into guacamole.
4) Be an actor or actress, or I suppose any job requiring travel. Trains fell through bridges. Steamboat boilers exploded. Theaters and Hotels caught on fire.
5) Accuse a man of stealing a melon.
6) If you called a man a liar, you might live another day, if he wasn't in a particularly bad mood. But if he called you a liar, and you shot back with the clever retort of the day: "Oh, yeah? Well you're a damn liar!" then one of you would be sleeping six feet under ground in the very near future.
7) I mentioned steamboats above. But just to be perfectly clear, on your time-travel vacation, skip the steamboat ride (dyspepsia is always a good excuse). The most horrific deaths I read about were steamboat accidents, particularly boiler explosions. You'd be paddling up or down the Big Muddy and next thing you know you're in the river with your skin steamed off. If you were lucky, you drowned, because you were going to die anyway and it would be four or five hours before the doctors showed up with the morphine.
8) Be flammable. Everything caught fire all the time, and despite that fact, not much thought was given to how people might get out of a building (or off a boat, or train) that was on fire.
9) Get bit by a dog. Lots of rabies back in the day. Interestingly, there were rabies deniers in America in the 19th century. Because it often took months after a dog bite for the victim to show symptoms, there were those who believed the dog-bite/rabies connection was a figment of people's imaginations. One physician even recommended post-dog-bite "lectures" as a cure for rabies. If you could convince your loved one that rabies didn't exist, they wouldn't get it.
10) Be black.
11) Be Native American.
12) Get drunk. Life was dangerous in Texas in the 19th century, and to survive, you had to be on your game. Get drunk and you might slip up and step on another man's toes while dancing, accuse someone of stealing a melon, get on a steamboat or pet a strange dog.
