Fifteen-year-old William Henry McCarty was arrested for the first time in Silver City, New Mexico, after stealing clothing and two pistols from a Chinese laundry. Working with his boardinghouse mate George Schaefer, the teenager who would become known as Billy the Kid had acted as a lookout while Schaefer robbed the establishment. This seemingly minor crime marked the beginning of one of the American West's most notorious criminal careers.

The arrest came just over a year after McCarty's mother died, leaving him orphaned and struggling to survive. Born sometime between 1859 and 1861, possibly in New York or Indiana, he had moved frequently with his family across the frontier, but after his mother died from tuberculosis in 1874, the young man was left in the care of an absent stepfather and had been living in boarding houses, gradually falling in with rougher crowds.

McCarty was charged with larceny and thrown in jail, but his incarceration didn't last long. Just two days later, on September 25, 1875, he managed to escape by shimmying up through the jail's chimney. His escape made the local Silver City Herald the next day, marking the first newspaper story ever written about him. At just 15 years old, he had officially begun his life as an outlaw.

This first arrest set the pattern for McCarty's brief but violent career. He would go on to use various aliases including Kid Antrim and William Bonney, eventually earning the nickname Billy the Kid. Over the next six years, he would be linked to multiple murders and become one of the West's most wanted men before Sheriff Pat Garrett finally tracked him down and killed him at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in 1881 at age 21.

At 7:30 PM on Sunday night, television history was made when The Jetsons premiered as ABC's first-ever color television program. Produced by Hanna-Barbera as a Space Age counterpart to The Flintstones, the animated sitcom introduced audiences to the futuristic Jetson family living in the year 2062. However, ABC lacked the technical equipment to broadcast in color, creating an unusual behind-the-scenes arrangement to make the historic broadcast possible.

Each week, ABC had to transport film copies to NBC's Burbank facilities on Sunday afternoons. NBC would then simultaneously play both 35mm and 16mm copies down two AT&T lines to ABC New York for the East Coast broadcast, repeating the process later for the West Coast feed. This complicated arrangement was necessary because only a handful of ABC's owned stations in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles could actually broadcast the show in color.

The show's color presentation was crucial to its visual impact, featuring bright, shiny animation that depicted flying cars, robot maids, and elaborate futuristic gadgets. However, fewer than 3% of American households owned color television sets in 1962, meaning most viewers still watched the groundbreaking show in black and white. The immersive world of The Jetsons appeared much more flat and less engaging without its vibrant colors.

Despite being a technical milestone, The Jetsons struggled in ratings during its original run, competing against Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on NBC and other established Sunday night programming. The show was cancelled after just 24 episodes, though it later found success in Saturday morning reruns. The series became a cultural touchstone, helping define American expectations of the future and remaining influential decades later as "the single most important piece of 20th century futurism."

The 1904 Olympics🐀
The 1904 Olympic Marathon in St. Louis was so insane that the winner had been given rat poison as a stimulant. Thomas Hicks won after drinking brandy mixed with strychnine (rat poison) as a performance enhancer, while other runners were chased by wild dogs, drank from a horse trough, and one guy hitchhiked part of the way - it was less a race than a death march.

Medieval Punishment🔥
Medieval trial by ordeal included forcing accused people to carry red-hot iron bars or plunge their hands into boiling water. If your burns healed cleanly, you were innocent - if they festered, you were guilty and executed - medieval justice literally depended on how well your body handled severe burns.

Egyptian Mummification🐊
Ancient Egyptians mummified millions of animals including cats, birds, and crocodiles for religious purposes. Entire industries existed just to kill, mummify, and sell animals to pilgrims - archaeologists have found catacombs containing millions of mummified cats, creating literal mountains of preserved pets.

Roman ‘Decimation’🥊
Ancient Romans had a 25-year military service requirement, and deserters were beaten to death by their own comrades. Roman soldiers who tried to flee battle were tied up and beaten to death with clubs by their fellow soldiers in a ritual called "decimation" - your own brothers-in-arms would literally murder you for cowardice.

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