94 Photos That Prove History Was A Lot Stranger Than You Might’ve Thought

The smiling photograph helped create a romantic outlaw image, but their actual crime spree involved robbery, kidnapping, car theft, and k***ings. When officers ambushed and k**led the pair near Sailes, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934, authorities believed they had committed 13 m**ders. They were partners but, contrary to the common description, they were never married.

On November 24, 1971, a man using the name Dan Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305, claimed to have a b*mb, and demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills.

After releasing 36 passengers in Seattle, he ordered the plane back into the air and parachuted from its rear stairs into the night. His identity and fate remain unknown.

In February 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram found these decaying bills on a Columbia River sandbar. Their serial numbers matched Cooper's ransom; the $5,800 discovery remains the only recovered portion of the money. “D. B.” was a press-created name the hijacker called himself Dan Cooper.

Central Park recorded 21 inches of snow from March 12–14, while much of the region received far more. The blizzard paralyzed transportation, snapped overhead telegraph and telephone lines, and k**led more than 400 people across the affected region about 200 of them in New York City.

The men belonged to the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps, an experimental unit of Black enlisted soldiers based at Fort Missoula. Each bicycle carried camping equipment, food, a rifle, ammunition and repair gear. The corps rode from Montana to St. Louis through mud, sand, rocks and mountain weather to test the bicycle as a military transport. The experiment ended as the Army shifted its attention to the Spanish-American War and, later, motor vehicles.

George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. designed the wheel as America's answer to the Eiffel Tower. It stood 264 feet tall and carried 36 passenger cars, each capable of holding 60 people—a total capacity of 2,160 riders.