What is an air dance?
An air dance is an execution by hanging.
Other slang terms for hanging: air jig, air polka, and air rumba.
Detroit lawmen coined the term in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They realized that Saturday night holdups were committed with handguns purchased in quick one-hour trips to Toledo, Ohio. There, guns could be bought at filling stations and flower shops for $5 or $10, without time restrictions.
Philadelphia-born John T. Noland (1896-1931) earned it early in his career. As a teenager, he joined a gang called the Hudson Dusters, which stole packages from the backs of trucks. For his ability to dodge police in his efforts, he was nicknamed Legs. Diamond was one of his chosen surnames.
At about 11:20 A.M. (CST), on November 24, 1963, the twenty-four-year-old Oswald was shot by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby (formerly Rubenstein). Lee Harvey Oswald was shot while he was being transferred from jail to an armored truck. He was killed by one shot of a .38-caliber snub-nosed revolver.
While hanging may have occurred earlier in U.S. history, the practice of lynching was probably started by Colonel William Lynch of Virginia in the 1780s. Lynch organized a vigilante band aimed at ridding Pittsylvania County of its bad element. An 1836 editorial by Edgar Allan Poe discusses Lynch’s career.
Yes, and it still is a crime to kiss in public in some places. In 1656 in Boston, a Captain Kimble was placed in the stocks for kissing his wife in public on the Sabbath. To this day, it is illegal in Indiana for a mustached man to “habitually kiss human beings.” In Cedar Rapids,…
Kim Philby was recruited by the Russians in the early 1930s. He entered the British Secret Service in 1939 and remained a double agent until 1962, when he escaped to the Soviet Union. His orders, he said, were to penetrate British Intelligence and “it did not matter how long I took to do the job.”…