Red Shirt Gordon

Red Shirt Gordon was a criminal who escaped from Folsom Prison in California as leader of the "Big Break" in 1903. Gordon and twelve other prisoners overpowered guards, took hostages, and escaped from the prison, which at the time had no walls. Six fugitives were captured (one in 1910), and one was killed. Two of the men were executed and three received life sentences. Five escapees, including Gordon, were never recaptured.

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Name Gordon, Red Shirt
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Famous quotes containing the words red, shirt and/or gordon:

    It might become a wheel spoked red and white
    In alternate stripes converging at a point
    Of flame on the line, with a second wheel below,
    Just rising, accompanying, arranged to cross,
    Through weltering illuminations, humps
    Of billows, downward, toward the drift-fire shore.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Sir Eglamour, that worthy knight,
    He took his sword and went to fight;
    And as he rode both hill and dale,
    Armed upon his shirt of mail,
    A dragon came out of his den,
    Had slain, God knows how many men!
    Samuel Rowlands (1570?–1630?)

    I would rather ... have a nod from an American, than a snuff- box from an emperor.
    —George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)