If you were to close your eyes right now, and
seriously, just for a second, and try to conjure
up the definitive image of the American Wild
West, what do you see? You probably see the landscape
first, the mesas, the dust, the sagebrush. Then
maybe you see the figures, the cowboy on the
horse, the outlaw on the black hat. But if you
try to narrow that down to a specific person
who embodies the showmanship, the skill, and...
the sheer mythic quality of that era, one name
usually rises to the top. It's Annie Oakley.
It almost has to be. It has to be. And that name,
Annie Oakley, has become so ubiquitous that it's
almost detached from the actual human being.
Completely. It's a brand. It's a Broadway musical.
It's a Halloween costume, a touchstone of American
folklore. It's even a noun in the dictionary.
And honestly, that is the perfect place to start
our deep dive today. Before we get into the heavy
history, and trust me, it gets surprisingly heavy,
we have to talk about how deep this woman's brand
sank into the American consciousness. Have you
ever heard someone refer to a free ticket to
a sporting event or a show as an Annie Oakley?
I have, actually. It feels like very old school
theater slang, something you'd hear in like a
1940s movie. Hey, grab me a couple of Annie Oakleys
for the show tonight. Precisely. And the origin
story of that slang term is actually the perfect
aha moment to understand her skill and her cultural
impact. Oh, I love this. So back in the late
19th century, if you were given a complimentary
ticket to a theater show or say a baseball game,
the box office would punch a hole in it. Okay,
sure. This was a purely practical measure to...
stop you from reselling it. It marked the ticket
as dead for resale purposes. Right. Just inventory
management. Exactly. But at the same time, Annie
Oakley was touring the world with Buffalo Bill.
And one of her signature tricks, the one that
made people's jaws drop in London, Paris and
New York, was throwing a playing card into the
air. Yeah. And riddling it with bullet holes
before it hit the ground. So when people looked
at their free tickets with the holes punched
in the center, they said, hey, this looks like
an Annie Oakley. That is just such a vivid connection.
It really drives home that she wasn't just famous.
She was like a reference point for daily life.
She was the archetype. But here's our mission
for this deep dive. We need to rescue the woman
from the musical. Annie, get your gun. Most people
know that version, the boisterous, loud singing
cowgirl who can't get a man because she's too
good with a gun. But the reality, the reality
is so much more intense and frankly, a lot darker
and more impressive. I was really struck by that
in the sources. We are looking at a stack of
sources today, census records, court transcripts,
biographies, her own letters to presidents that
paint a picture of someone who overcame a Cinderella
style nightmare childhood to become a woman of
immense. political influence, and financial savvy.
And grit. I think that's the word that kept coming
up in the reading. Unbelievable grit. Absolute
grit. And to help us navigate this, because there
is so much material to cover, I want to frame
her life around three specific pillars. If you
want to understand the real Annie Oakley, you
have to look at survival, celebrity, and integrity.
Survival. Celebrity integrity. I like that structure.
It's the only way to make sense of her. Survival
is her childhood. How she physically managed
to not die. Literally. Celebrity is how she essentially
invented the international superstar persona.
And integrity. That's the part most people don't
know. Her later years were defined by a massive
high stakes legal battle that tells you exactly
who she was as a person. So let's unpack this.
Let's start with pillar one. Survival. And to
do that, we have to rewind the clock all the
way back to 1860. Right. We are in Dark County,
Ohio. This is rural country right on the Indiana
state line. Annie is born Phoebe Ann Mosey. Mosey.
Not Oakley. Not Oakley. Now, you'll see her last
name spelled Moses. Mosey, Mosey and different
records is just, you know, standard illiterate
census taking of the time. But the family said
Mosey. And the context here isn't the romantic
little house on the prairie vibe. Oh, no. It's
grim. It's desperate. Her parents were Quakers
from Pennsylvania. And that Quaker background
is crucial because it influences her personality
later. She was always quiet, modest, teetotaling.
She wasn't a rowdy cowgirl. Not at all. But when
Annie was just six years old, disaster struck.
Her father, Jacob, got caught in a blizzard.
A blizzard. Yes, he was out dealing with livestock
or supplies. Got caught in a severe storm, made
it home, but developed hypothermia. That turned
into pneumonia, and he died shortly after. Wow.
So we have a widow, Susan, with a house full
of, what, seven or eight children? A home like
that, yeah. In a log cabin in rural Ohio, in
the dead of winter, with no income. It is a recipe
for catastrophe. This is 1866. There is no social
safety net, no insurance. Her mother, Susan,
tries to keep things afloat. She even remarries,
but then the second husband dies shortly after.
They are destitute. It gets so bad that Susan
has to make the heartbreaking choice to bind
out her children just to ensure they are fed.
Annie, at age nine, is sent to the Dark County
Infirmary. Infirmary sounds so clinical, almost
like a hospital. It's a polite euphemism for
the poorhouse. The poorhouse. This was an institution
for the destitute, the insane, and the orphaned.
She is nine years old, separated from her mother,
living in a state institution. That alone is
traumatic enough to define a life. But then the
story takes a turn that honestly reads like a
horror movie. A local couple comes to the infirmary.
looking for a child to help them and this was
a common practice at the time it was called being
bound out it was essentially indentured servitude
but usually there was a verbal agreement the
child works for the family and in exchange the
family provides education food and clothing right
this couple promised annie's mother that annie
would get an education and earn 50 cents a week
Which would be, what, about $12 or $13 today?
Around that, yes. It sounded like a job opportunity,
a way to help her mother. But that is not what
happened. No. It was a trap. Annie later referred
to this couple only as the Wolves. The Wolves.
In her autobiography, written decades later when
she was a global star, she still refused to write
their names. We think it was a family named the
Studebakers, but she erased them from her history.
They treated her as a slave. That really chills
me to the bone. The Wolves? It suggests a predatory
nature. It was predatory. They wanted a larger
girl who could do heavy farm labor pumping water,
cooking for field hands, carrying heavy loads.
Instead, they got a nine -year -old. The abuse
was physical and mental. There is one specific
anecdote in the sources that just breaks your
heart. The snow incident. The snow incident.
Annie is about 10 years old. She has been working
all day, cooking, cleaning. She is exhausted.
She's trying to darn socks by candlelight late
at night, and she nods off. Understandable. The
wife, the female wolf, wakes her up in a rage.
As punishment for falling asleep, she throws
Annie out of the house. Into the snow. Into the
snow. Without shoes. Barefoot. In an Ohio winter,
she locked the door. Annie was left out there
for hours, freezing. It's incredible that she
survived that. Physically, but mentally. When
you see the photos of her later, this polished,
smiling Victorian lady in the Wild West show.
It is hard to reconcile that she survived this.
But that survival is what built the shooter.
That's the key connection. She wasn't just talented.
She was hardened. She eventually ran away around
age 12, which took immense courage and managed
to make her way back to her mother. Wow. But
the poverty was still there. Her mother was still
struggling to keep the farm. And this is where
Phoebe Ann Mosey stops being a victim and starts
being a provider. Right. She picks up a gun.
Now, we need to make a really important technical
distinction here for the listener. When we say
she started shooting, she wasn't out there sport
shooting. This wasn't a hobby. No, correct. This
was market hunting. Market hunting. This is a
profession that basically doesn't exist anymore
because of conservation laws. But in the 1870s,
there was a massive demand for game meat in hotels
and restaurants in growing cities like Cincinnati.
So she's a commercial hunter. Exactly. Annie
was hunting grouse, quail, squirrel, and rabbit
to sell. And the economics of this are fascinating.
She was using a muzzleloader at first, right?
Right. An old rifle. Yes, an old cap and ball
Kentucky rifle. And think about the mechanics
of that. You have to pour the powder, patch the
ball, ram it down, place the cap. It takes time
to reload. And more importantly. Ammunition costs
money. Powder. Shot. Caps. That all comes out
of your pocket. So if you shoot at a squirrel
and miss... You have literally thrown money away.
You are in the red. You have lost the cost of
the shot, and you have lost the sale of the meat.
So she learned accuracy out of financial panic.
Precisely. She learned to shoot the animal on
the head so she wouldn't ruin the meat with lead
shot, which would lower the price. She became
a machine. Wow. There's a staggering statistic
in the sources. By the time she was 15 years
old, this little 5 -foot -tall girl had earned
enough money from shooting game to pay off the
mortgage on her mother's farm. 15. Imagine that
scene. Just visualize it. A 15 -year -old girl,
barely 5 feet tall, walking into a bank or a
land office in rural Ohio and slamming down a
stack of cash that she earned one bullet at a
time. It's the definition of agency. She took
control of her life through the barrel of a gun,
and that leads us directly to the moment her
life changed forever. The shooting match. The
shooting match. This is the part of the story
that feels like a rom -com, but with more gunpowder.
The timeline is a little fuzzy. Sources say either
Thanksgiving 1875 or maybe 1881, but the beat
is the same. There's a traveling marksman named
Frank E. Butler. Frank Butler. He's an interesting
character, an Irish immigrant, a traveling showman.
He does trick shooting in variety shows. He's
passing through Cincinnati or maybe Greenville,
and he's feeling confident. He places a $100
bet with a local hotelier named Jack Frost. And
we should clarify, $100 in 1875 is huge money.
It's massive. roughly equivalent to $3 ,000 today.
He bets he can beat any local shooter. He's expecting
a big, tough guy. Exactly. He's expecting a burly
farmer or a Civil War veteran or a local militia
guy, someone who looks the part. Right. Instead,
the hotelier brings out a 15 -year -old girl
in a homemade dress. Oh, no. Frank Butler must
have thought it was a joke. He actually admitted
later that he almost called the bed off because
he felt bad taking their money. He thought he
was going to humiliate this child. But the match
starts. And they aren't shooting clay pigeons
like we do today. No, no. They are shooting live
birds' pigeons released from traps. This was
the standard sport of the day. Okay, so it goes
shot for shot. Shot for shot. The crowd must
have gone silent. Frank hits. Annie hits. Frank
hits. Annie hits. You can imagine the sweat starting
to form on Frank's forehead. Oh, yeah. This little
girl isn't missing. They get to the 25th bird.
Frank misses. And Annie? She steps up, raises
that heavy gun, and drops the bird. Dead center.
He loses. Frank Butler loses the match, loses
his $100, and loses his reputation as the best
shot in town. But he wins a wife. He does. And
what I love about this is that Frank Butler didn't
have an ego meltdown. You have to remember, the
era of Victorian masculinity was very rigid.
Losing to a girl should have been humiliating.
Should have crushed him. But Frank was immediately
smitten. He started courting her. providing her
with tickets to his shows, writing her letters.
They married, likely, in 1882. And this began
one of the most successful partnerships in entertainment
history. But it wasn't just a romance. It was
a business strategy that flipped the traditional
script. Right. I mean, usually in this era, the
husband is the star and the wife is the assistant.
Sure. And initially they toured that way. Frank
was the shooter. Annie was the assistant holding
the targets. But Frank was smart. He realized
very quickly that he was a good shooter. But
she was a prodigy. She was lightning in the bottle.
The audience loved her. So he stepped back. He
voluntarily demoted himself. He became her manager,
her press agent, and her assistant. He held the
targets for her. He realized that the money and
the fame lay with her talent, not his. That takes
a remarkably secure man in the 1880s. Incredibly
secure. He dedicated the rest of his life to
making her a star. And that's when she officially
adopts the stage name Oakley. Where did that
come from? The leading theory is that it was
the name of a neighborhood in Cincinnati where
they lived for a while. It sounded better than
Phoebe and Mosey. Annie Oakley does have a rhythm
to it. Yeah, it's punchy. It sounds like a star.
So they have the name. They have the act. They
are touring vaudeville. But the rocket fuel was
joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in 1885.
This is the big leagues. You have to understand.
Buffalo Bill Cody's show wasn't just a circus.
It was a traveling phenomenon. It was a massive
reenactment of the frontier myth. Right. It had
hundreds of people, herds of buffalo, elk, horses.
It traveled on its own customized train. Joining
this show was like headlining the Super Bowl
halftime show, but every single night. And Annie
became the star attraction immediately. Right.
Let's talk about the stunts. Because reading
about them is one thing, but trying to visualize
them, she wasn't just hitting targets. She was
doing things that seemed physically impossible.
It was precision shooting on a level that is...
Hard to comprehend. She would shoot a cigar out
of Frank's mouth. Which, again, speaks to Frank's
trust level. Immense trust. But the one that
always gets me is splitting a playing card edge
on. Wait, explain edge on for the listener. Okay,
so imagine someone holding a playing card. Usually
you shoot the face of the card, the king or the
queen. That's a decent target. Sure. But edge
on means they turn the card sideways. The target
area is just the thickness of the card stock.
It's a line, basically. A sliver. A sliver. She
would stand 30 paces away and fire. She had to
hit that thin edge perfectly to slice the card
in half. That is wild. She also hit dimes thrown
into the air. She would jump over a table and
shoot a glass ball before it hit the ground.
And she did all this while looking like a proper
Victorian lady. That contrast was key, right?
Oh, absolutely. She made her own costumes, modest
knee -length skirts, high collars. She looked
like a school teacher or a kindly aunt, but she
was lethal with a Winchester. That contrast...
was the entire hook. She was safe, she was feminine,
but she was powerful. And she was paid like it.
The sources say she earned more than anyone in
the troop except Buffalo Bill himself. Which
is saying something. She was earning more than
the President of the United States at one point,
but her value wasn't just in the shooting, it
was in her persona. Right. And that brings us
to her relationship with Sitting Bull. This blew
my mind. Sitting Bull the Lakota holy man and
leader who had defeated Custer at the Battle
of the Little Bihorn. He ends up in this show.
It's one of those historical collisions that
feels like fiction. Sitting Bull was essentially
a prisoner of war who was allowed to tour with
the show for a season. He was a symbol of resistance,
a legend. And he saw Annie perform in Minnesota,
I believe. He watched her knock the cork off
a bottle and snuff out a candle with a bullet.
And he was mesmerized. He was. He insisted on
meeting her. He didn't just want an autograph.
He offered $65 for a photo with her, which was
a lot of money. But more than that, he symbolically
adopted her. his daughter why do you think they
connected on paper they are worlds apart he's
a lakota warrior she's a white woman from ohio
but are they so different think about it both
of them were people of immense skill and dignity
who were in a way being displayed for crowds
that's good point Sitting Bull was touring because
his way of life had been destroyed. Annie was
a survivor of extreme poverty and abuse who was
using her skill to survive in a man's world.
I think they recognize a shared grit in each
other. A mutual respect. A mutual respect that
transcended the racial and political tensions
of the time. He gave her the Lakota name Watanya
Sisila. Which translates to... A little sure
shot. A little sure shot. That nickname wasn't
a marketing slogan cooked up by Buffalo Bill's
PR team. It was a name bestowed by Sitting Bull.
That gave her an authenticity that money couldn't
buy. But speaking of tensions, it wasn't all
friendship backstage. There was a rivalry, a
real all about Eve situation with a younger shooter
named Lillian Smith. Ah, yes. Lillian Smith.
She joined the show in 1886. She was 15 years
old, the same age Annie had been when she started.
And she was the anti -Annie. The anti -Annie.
How so? She was a Californian. She wore flashy
loose clothes. She was loud. She bragged. Annie
hated it. Right, because Annie cultivated this
very specific image. Exactly. Polite, ladylike,
professional. Lillian was the opposite. And the
press started playing them against each other.
This is actually why Annie started lying about
her age. Oh, really? I saw that in the notes.
She shaved six years off. Right. Because Lillian
was 15 and getting all this press for being a
prodigy, Annie, who was in her mid -20s, felt
the pressure. So she started claiming she was
born in 1866 instead of 1860 so she could still
compete as a girl wonder. That's fascinating.
It created this weird friction where Annie actually
left the show for a couple of seasons just to
get away from Smith. But she came back. She came
back once Lillian was gone, just in time for
the 1889 Paris Exposition. And that takes us
to Europe. Okay. And if she was a star in America,
she was a sensation in Europe. This is the celebrity
pillar reaching its peak. Absolutely. Kings and
queens were lining up to see her. She performed
for Queen Victoria, who was notoriously hard
to impress, but she called Annie a very clever
little girl. She performed for King Umberto of
Italy. But the most famous incident involves
the Kaiser of Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II. Yep.
And this is one of those what if moments in history
that keeps you up at night. It really is. So
the newly crowned Kaiser Wilhelm sees the show
in Berlin. He's a bit of a pompous figure obsessed
with the military. He asks Annie to perform her
famous trick, shooting the ashes off a cigarette.
And Frank usually holds the cigarette. Usually.
But the Kaiser wants to get involved. He volunteers.
He wants to hold the cigarette himself. No. Yes.
Okay, stop and think about the pressure here.
You are holding a Winchester rifle. You are aiming
at the face of the head of state of a major European
power. And you are doing it in front of his entire
imperial guard. If you miss by an inch, if you
sneeze, if the wind blows, if the cartridge is
overloaded, you don't just fail a trick. You
assassinate an emperor. You start a war. Wow.
And she didn't miss. He didn't miss. She shot
the ash right off the cigarette. But the kicker
is what happened later. Decades later. Yes. Flash
forward to World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm is now
the enemy of the United States. He has plunged
Europe into a devastating war. Right. Annie Oakley,
who is now retired and older, writes a letter
to the Kaiser. She essentially says, I'll give
you a second shot. Oh, my gosh. Implying she
wouldn't aim for the ash this time. Exactly.
She asked for another chance to take the shot.
She famously said later, if I shot the Kaiser,
I might have saved the lives of several millions
of soldiers. That is just, it's dark humor, but
it shows she understood her place in history.
She absolutely did. And speaking of her place
in history, we have to talk about her impact
on media. She wasn't just a live performer. The
Edison film. 1894, Thomas Edison. He had his
famous Black Maria studio in New Jersey. He invited
Annie to perform for his kinetoscope. So we actually
have footage of her. You can go online right
now and watch Annie Oakley shooting glass balls
in 1894. She was a multimedia star before the
term even existed. Exactly. So things are going
great. She's rich. She's famous. She's happily
married. She has conquered Europe. And then 1901,
everything crashes, literally. A train accident.
As I mentioned, the Buffalo Bill troop traveled
by train. In North Carolina, there was a head
-on collision with a freight train. It was horrific.
Many animals were killed. Annie. She was thrown
from her bunk while she was sleeping. The injuries
were severe. Paralyzed. She was temporarily paralyzed.
She had internal injuries. She had to undergo
five spinal operations. That sounds like a career
ender. For anyone else, it would have been. Her
hair reportedly turned white from the trauma
of the event, but she clawed her way back. She
just kept going. She couldn't do the rough riding
and the acrobatic shooting in the same way immediately,
so she shifted gears. She started acting in a
play called The Western Girl. It was less physically
taxing, but she still got to shoot guns on stage
using blanks. So she adapts. But just as she's
recovering from this physical trauma, she gets
hit with a reputational bomb. This is the William
Randolph Hearst story. And this is where we see
that third pillar, integrity. This is a crucial
chapter that often gets left out of the biographies.
But it defines her. In 1903, a woman was arrested
in Chicago. She was a burlesque dancer, she was
addicted to cocaine, and she was stealing a pair
of trousers to support her habit. When the police
arrested her, she lied. She told them, I'm Annie
Oakley. And the press ran with it. William Randolph
Hearst's newspaper Empire ran with it. They published
a sensational story. Annie Oakley in jail. Annie
Oakley, a cocaine addict. Oh, that's brutal.
Yeah. For a woman who built her entire brand
on being this wholesome, teetotaling Quaker lady,
this is the ultimate insult. It was devastating.
The real Annie Oakley was quietly living in New
Jersey, sipping tea, recovering from her back
surgery, when she found out she was furious.
I bet. Most papers retracted the story immediately
when they realized the mistake, but Hearst, Hearst
fought it. Why? Ego, money, power. He didn't
want to admit he was wrong and he didn't want
to pay the damages. He actually sent a private
investigator down to Dark County, Ohio to dig
up dirt on Annie's past. He tried to find a scandal.
He wanted to find something, a secret lover,
an illegitimate child, anything to discredit
her character so he wouldn't have to pay. And
what did the investigator find? Nothing. He found
a hardworking girl who paid her mother's mortgage.
Her reputation was absolutely bulletproof. So
what did she do? She sued. She went on a warpath.
She filed 55 libel lawsuits against newspapers
across the country. And you have to understand
the effort involved here. This is 1904. You can't
just zoom into court. Right. She had to travel
by train to courthouses all over America to testify.
And the cost must have been astronomical. She
spent more money on legal fees and travel than
she ever won in judgments. So it wasn't about
the money. It was never about the money. It was
about integrity. She said, the one thing I have
is my name. She was willing to bankrupt herself
to clear it. And she won. She won 54 of the 55
suits. 54 wins. That is obsession. It's honor.
It proves that the Annie Oakley persona wasn't
just a costume. It was a code she lived by. That
code of honor extended to other women, too. We
need to talk about her views on women and guns.
She wasn't a suffragette in the traditional sense,
was she? No, not really. She wasn't out there
marching for the vote necessarily, but she was
a fierce advocate. her brand of feminism was
very practical call it ballistic feminism ballistic
feminism i like that she believed that women
should know how to handle guns as naturally as
they handle babies that's a great quote she saw
it as a matter of self -defense and independence
she taught over 15 000 women how to shoot over
the course of her life 15 ,000. She viewed it
as mental and physical discipline. She wanted
women to be safe, not helpless. And she even
tried to get women into the military, right?
Multiple times. In 1898, during the Spanish -American
War, she wrote to President McKinley offering
a company of 50... Lady sharpshooters. No way.
She promised they would provide their own arms
and ammunition. She said every one of them is
an American and a good shot. And McKinley. He
rejected it, probably threw the letter away.
She tried again in World War I with President
Wilson, rejected again. But she was decades ahead
of her time in thinking about women in combat
roles. It's funny. She's this mix of very traditional
Victorian values. She always wore skirts. She
expected men to be gentlemen. But then she's
proposing an all -female sniper unit. That contradiction
is what makes her so interesting. She subverted
gender roles by perfecting them. She entered
a man's world shooting, but did it so ladylike
that men couldn't be threatened by it. They could
only applaud it. She hacked the system. So let's
look at the final chapter, the final years. She
survived the wolves, the Wild West, the train
crash, the libel suits. How did she spend her
60s? Surprisingly, she kept shooting. At age
62, she entered a shooting contest in North Carolina.
Okay. She hit 100 clay targets in a row from
16 yards. 100 in a row at 62. She never lost
the touch. But the body was wearing out. In 1922,
she was in a car accident, another major injury.
She had to wear a steel brace on her leg. But
she still performed. She still performed again
afterward. Believable. And the money. She'd earned
a fortune over her life. But she didn't keep
it. After she died, it was discovered that there
was very little left in the estate. Where did
it go? She gave it away. She spent her later
years funding charities, specifically orphanages
and organizations that helped young women get
an education. She remembered where she came from.
She never forgot being that little girl. Never.
She never forgot that little girl in the Dark
County infirmary. She wanted to make sure other
kids had a chance. And her ending? Yeah. Honestly,
it's like something out of a romance novel. It's
heartbreaking. It is. Deeply sad, but poetic.
She died in 1926 in Ohio of pernicious anemia.
She was 66 years old. Frank Butler, her husband
of over 50 years, the man who had stood by her
side and held her targets and managed her career.
He was so distraught that he just stopped. He
gave up. He stopped eating. He died 18 days later.
They couldn't exist without each other. They
really couldn't. They were buried together in
Brock Cemetery in Ohio. It was a partnership
to the very end. That is heavy, but it feels
right for them. It does. So as we wrap this up,
what is the legacy here? Obviously, we have the
cowgirl image. Yes, she is the mother of the
American cowgirl. Before her, women in the West
were depicted in fiction mostly as victims to
be rescued or as saloon girls. She created the
image of the capable, independent Western woman.
She paved the way. Paved the way for Dale Evans
and every cowgirl since. She's in the National
Women's Hall of Fame. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame,
the Trap Shooting Hall of Fame. But beyond the
plaques and the halls of fame. I think her legacy
is simpler. She proved that talent doesn't have
a gender. She beat the men at their own game
shooting, and she made them love her for it.
She forced the world to respect a woman with
a gun. And she did it all, starting from absolutely
nothing. Less than nothing, she started in the
negative. I want to leave you with that provocative
thought we hinted at earlier. The Kaiser's cigarette.
It haunts me. Think about the 20th century, World
War I, the trenches, the mustard gas, the collapse
of empires, the rise of ideologies that followed
communism, fascism, all of that history hinged
on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm II. He was the
domino that tipped it all over. He was. And on
a sunny day in Berlin in 1889, a poor girl from
Dark County, Ohio, aimed a Winchester rifle at
his face. If she had sneezed, if the wind had
blown, if she had just been a tiny bit less perfect.
The 20th century looks completely different.
It's a reminder of how fragile history is and
how strange it is that a sharpshooter from Ohio
held the fate of the world in her trigger finger
for a split second. It really makes you wonder.
That's it for this deep dive on the real Annie
Oakley. Not just the musical star, but the survivor,
the provider, and the legend. An incredible life.
Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the
next one.