United States
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Pat Garrett
Patrick Floyd Garrett was born in Cusseta, Alabama, and grew up on a Louisiana plantation near Haynesville in northern Claiborne Parish, just below the Arkansas state line. His parents were John Lumpkin Garrett and Elizabeth Ann Jarvis. Garrett would always stand out because he was well over six feet tall. He is probably most famous for being the man who killed “Billy the Kid”. Garrett left home in 1869 and found work as a cowboy in Dallas County, Texas. In 1875, he left to hunt buffalo. In 1878, Garrett shot and killed a fellow hunter who charged him with a hatchet during a disagreement over buffalo hides. As he lay…
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Jayne Mansfield
Vera Jayne Palmer was born on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She was the only child of Herbert William Palmer and Vera (Jeffrey) Palmer. She was an American actress in film, theatre, and television and was also a nightclub entertainer, a singer, and one of the early Playboy Playmates. She was a major Hollywood sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s and 20th Century Fox’s alternative to Marilyn Monroe who came to be known as the “Working Man’s Monroe”. She was one of Hollywood’s original blonde bombshells. Mansfield became a major Broadway star in 1955, a major Hollywood star in 1956, and a leading celebrity in 1957.…
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Robert F Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on November 20th 1925, the seventh child of nine, to Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald. His father was a prominent Politician, and his maternal grandfather, his father’s main political rival. Robert’s great grandparents on his father’s side were all Irish Catholic immigrants to America, fleeing the 19th Century potato famine. Kennedy’s family have since become synonymous with American politics, his older brother John was US president until his 1963 assassination, his younger brother Edward was a US senator until his death from brain cancer. The oldest Kennedy son, Joseph Junior was the only one of the sons who did not enter…
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Helen Keller
Helen Adams Keller was the eldest daughter of Arthur H Keller and his second wife Kate Adams. Arthur was a confederate soldier during the American Civil War, and later an editor of the North Alabamian in their hometown of Tuscumbia, Alabama, where they lived on a former cotton plantation which had been in the Keller family for some time. His mother was a second cousin of US Confederate General Robert E Lee. Keller believed that black people were sub-human although it is stated in various sources that he wasn’t an unkind man. The family employed black servants, one of whom, the cook had a daughter Martha, who would become Helen’s…
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The Confederacy and the road to war
With all the high-profile news stories we have seen recently regarding the South Carolina shootings and the ensuing commotion over flags associated with the Confederacy I thought it was about time we did a post regarding the history and causes of the Civil War. But before I begin I want to make it absolutely clear, that not only am I completely against racism in any shape or form (and this goes for all the Naked History team) but that as a Historian, the contents of this post are unbiased and objective. We condemn racial violence in all its forms, and any discussion regarding this post MUST remain tolerant of all…
