On This Day in History: April 24

Annie Oakley

AUDIO VERSION HERE

Imagine loving and trusting someone so much you let them shoot cigarettes out of your mouth in a crowded theatre.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 24, 1885--

Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in Ohio in 1860, Annie Oakley had a shitty childhood. Annie was the sixth of nine children, and seven of those children actually lived, which wasn’t bad for an impoverished 19^th-century family. Her dad died of pneumonia when Annie was five, transforming poverty into near destitution.

To help the family, young Annie began trapping and hunting, selling the game to local shopkeepers. But there was a two-year period from ages 9 to 11 where she was “bound out” in near enslavement to some horribly abusive motherfuckers on the broken promise of payment and an education. She didn’t shoot them, but she did run away, eventually returning home. She used her hunting skills to sell game and paid off the mortgage on the family farm by the time she was 15.

That same year, Annie made her public shooting debut.

In 1875 in Cincinnati, traveling show marksman Frank Butler made a bet with a hotelier that he could beat any local shooter. Annie’s skill had become well known, so the hotelier set up the competition between the two.

Annie won, but Frank was not bothered over being beaten by a young woman. Rather, he fell in love.

Ten years later, on April 24, 1885, the couple joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, cementing her fame. Annie stood only 5-feet tall. Fellow performer Sitting Bull named Annie “Little Sure Shot.” Before long, Annie was the highest-paid performer in the show, second only to “Buffalo Bill” Cody.

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Annie could cut a playing card held edge-on in half at 30 paces. She shot dimes out of the air. She could riddle a playing card flipped into the air with several holes before it hit the ground. Frank let her shoot cigarettes out of his mouth. The crowd loved her almost as much as Frank did.

Annie performed for kings, queens, and presidents. An advocate for equal rights, she taught thousands of women to shoot and donated most of her fortune to charities for women’s rights.

Annie died from pernicious anemia in 1926, at 66. Husband Frank was so distraught at losing the woman he’d loved for over half a century that he stopped eating, dying 18 days later.

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