We all know the story about how William Tell shot an apple off his son’s head. With that one shot of his crossbow he supposedly started a series of events that turned a few poor isolated settlements into what we now know as Switzerland. According to Swiss Chronicler Aegidius Tschudi, Tell was known as a strong man, a mountain climber, and an expert shot with the crossbow. During this time Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri and Tell became one of the conspirators of Werner Stauffacher vowing to resist Habsburg rule. Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole under the village linden tree,…