Page 13 - Together We Are Better - AFI-LLC Newsletter December 2021

Together We Are Better - AFI-LLC Newsletter December 2021

Tom Horn is Hanged in Wyoming for the Murder of Willie Nickell (11/20/1903)
Closer to our home, in Cheyenne WY (and home to many in our family – and during this time…)
On November 20, 1903, the infamous hired killer Tom Horn is hanged for having allegedly murdered Willie Nickell, the
14-year-old son of a southern Wyoming sheep rancher. Some historians have since questioned whether Horn really
killed the boy, pointing out that the jury convicted him solely on the basis of a drunken confession that Horn supposedly
made to a detective. The jury also seems to have failed to give adequate weight to the testimony of a number of
credible witnesses who claimed Horn could not possibly have committed the crime. Yet even Horn’s defenders in the
Nickell case do not dispute that he was a brutal hired killer who was unquestionably responsible for many other deaths.
-- continued at www.history.com/this-day-in-history/tom-horn-is-hanged-in-wyoming-for-the-murder-of-willie-nickell

Garrett Morgan Patents Three-Position Traffic Signal (11/20/1923)
On November 20, 1923, the U.S. Patent Office grants Patent No. 1,475,074 to 46-year-old inventor and newspaperman
Garrett Morgan for his three-position traffic signal. Though Morgan’s was not the first traffic signal (that one had been
installed in London in 1868), it was an important innovation nonetheless: By having a third position besides just “Stop”
and “Go,” it regulated crossing vehicles more safely than earlier signals had.
-- continued at www.history.com/this-day-in-history/garrett-morgan-patents-three-position-traffic-signal

The FBI Crime Lab Opens its Doors for Business (11/24/1932)
The crime lab that is now referred to as the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens in Washington,
D.C., on November 24, 1932. The lab was initially operated out of a single room and had only one full-time employee,
Agent Charles Appel. Agent Appel began with a borrowed microscope and a pseudo-scientific device called a
helixometer. The helixometer purportedly assisted investigators with gun barrel examinations, but it was actually more
for show than function.
-- continued at www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-fbi-crime-lab-opens-its-doors-for-business

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