this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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Gotta be the "high noon duel" in western movies. That didn't happen much in the real wild west.
Citizens shooting at gangs during bank robberies? Yup.
Shootout at The OK Corral? Yup.
Lynching of accused criminals before a judge could come to town? Oh hell yes.
But that trope of lawman/outlaw facing off in the middle of the street for a prearranged gun duel just didn't really happen.
Makes me wonder where the trope came from…
People definitely used to do pistol duels at prearranged times, but maybe that fell out of favor in the West?
Duels did happen from time to time in the 19th century. For example, California Senator David Broderick in 1859 became the only US Senator to die in a duel, and there's a difficult to validate tale of two French men in 1808 holding a gun duel in hot air balloons!
Actually I have a history book about the history of ballooning called Aeronauts that I found at a thrift store. If I remember I'll see what that has to say about this tale because it does call out other largely fabricated tales as such
But like most fictions, the fiction of Wild West duels contains some kernels of truth and certainly makes for great drama