"The Bandit Queen" Pearl Hart Notes:

Header Image Source: Photo by David Banning on Unsplash 

Other Images:

1. NARAL Pro-Choice America

2. Pearl Hart

3. Old stagecoach (FL Historical collection / Alamy) 

4. Pearl Hart in jail cell with bobcat

"Little is known about Pearl Hart’s early life. She was born in Ontario, Canada in 1871, and moved to Toronto as a child. She eloped when she was 16, but her husband abused her and the marriage did not last. Eventually, Hart took up with a dance-hall musician and minor gambler named Dan Bandman, and in 1892 the couple moved to Phoenix, Arizona. When Bandman left to fight in the Spanish-American War, Hart relocated to the Arizona mining town of Globe, where she began an affair with a German drifter named Joe Boot.

Short on money, the couple determined to hold up a stage, though neither of them appears to have had any prior experience as robbers. On this day in 1899, Hart (dressed as a man) and Boot stopped a stage on the run between Globe and Florence. After taking $421 in cash from the three passengers, Hart took pity on them and handed back $1 to each so they could buy something to eat when they arrived in Florence.

Unskilled in the art of the getaway, Hart and Boot left an obvious trail and the sheriff of Pinal County arrested the couple four days later. Boot was jailed in Florence, but since the town had no detention facilities for women, Hart was jailed in Tucson. Within several days, Hart had apparently charmed several men into helping her and she escaped. Her freedom, however, was short-lived. A lawman recognized her in Deming, New Mexico, and returned her to Tucson.

Tried and convicted in a Florence court, Boot was sentenced to 30 years and Hart to five. Neither served out their terms. After several years of good behavior, Boot was made a trusty and walked off while doing fieldwork, never to be heard from again. After about a year in prison, Hart became pregnant. Eager to save the Arizona Territory the embarrassment of having to explain how Hart arrived at this condition while imprisoned, Governor Alexander O. Brodie pardoned her on December 19, 1902.

Hart’s life after her release is shrouded in myth. According to the romantic version, Hart leveraged her single experience as a stage robber into a career in show business, billing herself as “The Arizona Bandit.” Some said she traveled for several years on the vaudeville circuit, others that she toured briefly with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Historians have been unable to verify either of these claims..."

Source: “Bandit Pearl Hart holds up an Arizona stagecoach” (History)

The Mount St. Helens Eruption Survival Story of Dave Crockett Notes:

Other Images:

1. Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption (Alamy)

2. Destructive aftermath of 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption (Alamy)

"[Mount St. Helens] is one of several active volcanoes in the Cascades range, whose towering conical peak once reached upwards of 9,600 feet. It erupted on May 18, 1980, after lying dormant for more than 123 years.

Leading up to the eruption, a new system of seismographs, which had recently gone into operation at the University of Washington, began recording a series of earthquakes beginning on March 20 that intensified over the next week. By March 27, magma building up beneath the mountain rose up high enough to come into contact with water beneath the surface. Like a pressure cooker, the force of the molten rock and steam started building up under the surface as more frequent earthquakes rocked the area throughout April and into May.

Shortly after 8:30 a.m. PDT on May 18, a huge earthquake caused a mile-wide portion of the mountain’s north face to collapse. The eruption produced a force equal to 10–50 megatons of TNT, the equivalent of 25,000 atomic bombs released over the city of Hiroshima during World War II, and superheated gas and rock exploded out of the volcano sideways at speeds of up to 400 mph. It was followed by a dense plume of thousands of tons of scorching ash that spewed 12 to 16 miles up into the atmosphere, turning the sky dark and the air suffocatingly thick. As 46 billion gallons of slush and water began to race down from the snow-capped mountain, it collected tons of mud, rocks, and trees. This lethal debris slurry, called a lahar, destroyed everything in its path..."

Source: “Mount St. Helens, Forty Years Later: How NOAA Monitors Volcanoes From Earth Orbit” (NESDIS) 2020