Saturday, November 1, 2014

Ten Things You Might Not Know About Stunts-- Part 3

8.  BRETT HULSEY,  a Democrat candidate for governor of Wisconsin, announced in May that he planned to hand out Ku Klux Klan hoods outside the state's Republican convention to protest racism.  But, when he showed up, he had no hoods, and he told reporters he had left them in his car.

He did not go stunt-free, however, wearing a makeshift Confederate soldier uniform he had assembled from thrift store purchases.  Hulsey, denounced by officials of both parties, lost his primary race in August with 17% of the vote.

9.  At the turn of the last century, people loved watching trains crash.  It all started in 1896 when William Crush, an enterprising employee for the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway looking to make a name for himself and the railway, hatched a scheme to crash two locomotives into each other.

Given the green light, he set up a pop-up town named Crush in a remote area of Texas.  The event was free, but the train ticket to Crush was $2.  As many as 50,000 reportedly made the trip.  It looked like a runaway success, but despite assurances the locomotives wouldn't blow up, they did, spraying the crowd with shrapnel.

Three people were killed and dozens injured.  That didn't stop survivors posing for photographs with the wreckage.

--Cooter




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