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Brigham Young became an explorer and hero to many when he embarked on the best-organized westward migration in U.S. history in 1847. Motivated by a vision to find a safe haven for his religious ideas, he brought the Mormon Church to Utah and, in so doing, helped shaped the American West.

When he came upon the Great Salt Lake Valley, he said, “It is enough, this is the right place.” For thirty years he supervised Mormon settlements in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, and California. Before Young died at the age of seventy-six in 1877 of acute appendicitis, he had more than fifty wives.

To learn more about Brigham Young and others like him who left their mark on the American West read More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

Enter now to win a copy of the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

Pocahontas, a nickname meaning “little spoiled one,” was born Amonute, daughter of Chief Powhatan in 1595. She was an extrovert from a young age, inquisitive and naturally good-natured. At eleven years old she played a minor role in securing John Smith’s survival. Later she was the go-between for trade among the settlers and Indians bartering at Jamestown.

The fictionalized version of her love affair with Smith may, in fact, bear some truth, but in a much more disturbing way for our modern sensibility. Today, a thirty-year-old having sex with a preteen is pedophilia and a crime. But, in the era, intercourse with non-Christian pagans of any age was not considered wrong. Pocahontas was known to have “long, private conversations” with Smith during her frequent visits to the Jamestown complex, yet the true dimensions of these encounters are a matter of conjecture.

A few years later she was betrothed to the older Englishman John Rolfe, only after she agreed to be baptized in 1614. Two years later Rolfe took her to London, where she was received as a celebrity, billed as a real live Indian princess by high society, and held an audience with King James. In 1617, she believed the smoky air of London was the cause of her coughs and bouts of weakness and wished to return to Virginia, but the vessel only made it to the end of the Thames River before it turned back. Pocahontas died in London at age twenty-two of a disease called the king’s evil, a form of tuberculosis characterized by swelling of the lymph glands.

To learn more about Pocahontas and others like her who left their mark on the American West read More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

Sir Tony Robinson and the giant.

I’m deviating from my usual giveaway today to review my life as a giant. Recently I have had my picture taken alongside several fine people and I look like Andre the Giant’s sister in all of them. I did a documentary for the BBC with actor and knight Sir Tony Robinson a few weeks ago, and in the photos taken after the shoot of the two of us and I look like Ruth Buzzi if she were stung by a thousand bees.

I’ve always been big. My father used to try and console be about my height and general size by assuring me that I wasn’t fat just big boned. The last I looked there were no bones in the area that I’m most concerned about. But the effort, Pop was most appreciated.

Now physical exercise is not the answer. Years ago I remember watching a beefy President Bill Clinton exercising. He was living proof that physical exercise could be a complete waste of time. The more he jogged, the bigger he got. I recall thinking, if this guy is reelected, the leader of the free world will be Bib the Michelin Man.

I do notice I’m suffering from a chin crisis as I get older. If I don’t keep my head above sea level when pictures are taken I resemble the dinosaur that got into the jeep with the lost traveler in the first Jurassic Park movie.

When I think about I, the only exercise program that has ever worked for me is occasionally getting up in the morning and jogging my memory to remind myself exactly how much I hate to exercise. Well-meaning friends have suggest I start walking. Walking? If it’s so good for you, how come my mailman looks like Jabba the Hut with a quirky thyroid?

The treadmill? You take your eyes off the thing for one second and you end up like Gary Busey on…well, let’s say, any weekend.

I’ve thought about joining a gym, but honestly I think they’re too complicated. You know, there’s nothing quite as humiliating as finishing a thirty-minute workout on a piece of gym equipment only to have the instructor tell you you’ve been sitting on it backward.

I guess I only really have one fitness goal. I’d like to be able to run a few down and outs with the kids in my Bible study without having to take a two hour nap afterwards.

Enjoy the photos of the giant that accompany this diatribe. I guess we are what we are. Now, where’s that pizza?

Members of the WWA Players. I’m the giant on the far right.

It’s just a dead Giveaway! Enter now to win a copy of the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

In 1839 Samuel Colt patented the revolving-chamber pistol. As a teen he had worked as a sailor and had spent long hours staring at the ship’s wheel. He used this principle to invent a gun that could shoot multiple bullets without reloading. He excelled at both invention and marketing and today would be considered a compulsive workaholic.

He struggled with a way to produce his guns cheaply but was forced to find a method of mass production after he received an order from the U.S. government in 1847 for 1,000 revolvers. By the time he died of exhaustion at age forty-seven, Samuel Colt had produced more than 400,000 Colt .45 revolvers. At his funeral in 1862 it was said of the Colt .45 he invented: “God created man, but Sam Colt [the Colt .45] made them all equal.”

To learn more about Samuel Colt and others like him who left their mark on the American West read More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

It’s just a dead Giveaway! Enter now to win a copy of the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

Stephen Foster was the first full-fledged American composers, born, no less, on the Fourth of July, 1826, near Pittsburgh. Anyone who ever sat for a piano lesson has played his favorites including “Oh! Susanna”, “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair“, and “Beautiful Dreamer.” By the age of twenty-five Foster had published twelve original songs and had engaged in earnest as a professional composer.

He labored to make his songs appeal to the sentiments of his contemporary America, and he is considered the country’s first pop artist. However, the struggle to get paid for his work was the things that did him in. Foster attempted to keep an exact accounting and even wrote out the first semblance of a royalty contract with the publisher, but he couldn’t prevent another sheet music company from printing and selling his songs royalty-free. Nor did he receive anything for performance rights.

For a lifetime of labor he earned $15, 091.08, all the while composing, bickering to get paid, and drinking. Drinking he did with equal passion so that by the age of thirty-seven he was holed up in a cheap hotel room in New York City’s theatre district suffering from fever induced by alcoholism and liver failure. The exact cause of his death was lacerations to his head. When he tried to get out of bed, he fell and shattered a porcelain washbasin, suffering a deep gouge. It took three hours before he was taken to the hospital, where he died three days later in 1864. He had thirty-eight cents in his pockets.

To learn more about Stephen Foster and others like him who left their mark on the American West read More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.