140 years ago, Friday, July 14, 1882, the lifeless body of notorious Old-West outlaw John Peters Ringo (1850-1882), better known as “Johnny Ringo,” was found sitting under a tree by passing teamster John Yoast, at the western end of Turkey Canyon in the Chiricahua Mountains of Cochise County in Arizona Territory -- shot through the head -- dead at the age of 32.
Ringo’s .45-calibre revolver, with one spent cartridge in the cylinder, was found hanging by one finger of his right hand. His feet were wrapped in pieces of his undershirt. His horse was found two weeks later, with Ringo’s boots tied to the saddle -- a common method to keep scorpions out of boots. Despite the lack of powder burns, the coroner’s ruling was suicide.
Author Louis L’Amour (1908-1988) wrote that he had found nothing in Old-West history to commend John Ringo as a particularly noteworthy “bad man.” According to L’Amour, Ringo was a surly, bad-tempered man who was worse when he was drinking, & his main claim to fame was shooting the unarmed Louis Hancock in an Arizona Territory saloon in 1879 for ordering beer after Ringo told him to order whiskey. L’Amour wrote that he did not understand how Ringo earned such a strong reputation as a “bad man” in legend. Other authors have concluded that perhaps Ringo’s memorable name, coupled with his confrontations with the canonically “good” Earp brothers, contributed to his latter-day reputation.
The circa-1880 photograph depicts the moustachioed visage of Johnny Ringo at around the age of 30.
The Kiska invasion fleet at Adak harbor, Aleutians, Alaska, in August 1943.
Tuesday, July 14, 1846, world–renowned Norwegian-American pogonotrophist-extraordinaire Hans Nilson “King Whiskers” Langseth (1846-1927) was born at the village of Eidsvoll in Akershus County, Norway.
Hans Langseth’s claim to fame is his beard, which was the longest ever recorded at 18 feet 6 inches when it was measured at the town of Barney, North Dakota in 1912 when he was 66 years of age.
In 1867, Hans Langseth emigrated to the United States. He spent much of his life as a farmer, but for a while he toured with a travelling freak show, exhibiting his beard to the public. He eventually tired of show business & left the freak show after numerous nonbelievers yanked his whiskers to see if they were real. Late in his life, Langseth made the decision to cut off his beard, but he only got part way through it & couldn’t finish the job.
Langseth met his earthly demise at the venerable age of 81 on November 10, 1927 when he died from the effects of unspecified natural causes at the town of Wyndmere, in Richland County, North Dakota. He was buried in Elk Creek Church Cemetery in Kensett, Iowa. When he died, his beard measured 17 feet, 5 inches. In 1967, Hans Langseth’s famous beard was donated to the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Hopi girls. Arizona. 1879. Photo by John K. Hillers