13 Trivia Tidbits About The Wild West (They Didn’t Teach At School)
![13 Trivia Tidbits About The Wild West (They Didn’t Teach At School)](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/3/803563_320x180.jpg)
One of the Old West's greatest heroes, Buffalo Bill Cody, had a knack for foregoing. His new vulnerabilities as a guardsman as well as wild boar hunter have been chronicled in books, magazine articles, and other publications. He even staged and recreated his escapes, launching his Wild West show in the 1800’s.
We bet you didn’t know that camels were originally planned for settling the western part of the U.S. It turns out that while the camels were effective at transportation all across the desert – one gathering even traveled 1,200 miles from Texas to just a Los Angeles observation post – the Civil War disrupted the experiment, and many of the animals were sold at auction off, eventually ended up in circus acts, mines, and rail building, while others escaped and roamed free.
Although some movie generalizations are accurate, the real Old West is differentiated throughout many ways from what you'd expect, with camels, cannibalism, and more famous people than it would be possible to count.
There’s more mind bending examples below:
![The Old West was very, very gay (but, it turns out, nobody talked about it). It wasn't too uncommon for men to have sex, largely because there were so few women, but the widespread attitude was Don't ask, don't tell. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/3/803573.jpg)
![The infamous John Henry Doc Holliday was an actual doctor (of dentistry). Way before he was in the shootout at the OK Corral, he'd gotten a dentistry degree and started running a practice that turned out to be successful. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/6/803576.jpg)
![The kind of quick-draw duel you see in + Westerns almost never happened. The extremely famous one involving Bill Hickok is so famous because of its rarity - it's not at all a representative example of what people would do. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/4/803574.jpg)
![In the 1870s, people in a town in the West staged fake gunfights and robberies. It was basically a show for passengers who were coming to town on the new railroad - it might have all been a ploy to boost tourism. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/5/803575.jpg)
![Generally, guns were more strictly regulated in the Old West than they are today. For example, you usually couldn't openly carry guns in towns - you could only do that if you were outside town limits or inside your home. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/0/803570.jpg)
![The little pocket-in-a-pocket in jeans is actually a relic of the Old West. The tiny pocket was put there so cowboys could safely keep their pocket watch in (it probably helped when they were on horseback). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/2/803572.jpg)
![In the 1880s, people in the Old West made a whole DIY telephone system. They took the barbed wire used throughout the countryside, and turned it into telephone lines (barbed wire carried a telephone signal with no problems). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/7/1/803571.jpg)
![At least on some trails in Texas, about 25% of all cowboys you'd see were Black. Turns out, Black cowboys were a lot more plentiful in the Old West than Western shows and movies would lead you to conclude. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/8/803568.jpg)
![Tumbleweeds are actually an invasive species that came from Russia. Russian immigrants apparently brought it by accident to South Dakota in the 1870s on contaminated flax seeds, and it spread from there. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/9/803569.jpg)
![The epic bank heists you see in Westerns almost never actually happened. BANK BANK S DOLLAR There were fewer bank robberies in a roughly 40-year span in 15 states in the Old West than there are in a year in modern-day Dayton, OH. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/5/803565.jpg)
![Turns out, the Wild West gave us the phrase riding shotgun (but not directly). In those days, someone with a shotgun or another weapon would sit next to a carriage driver, though they didn't call it riding shotgun. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/4/803564.jpg)
![Sitting Bull played himself in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show for a while. The job was easy (he just had to ride around the arena once a week) and the pay was good, but he got tired of it pretty soon anyway. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/6/803566.jpg)
![The US government tried to introduce camels into the Wild West. The idea was that the hardy animals would help explore the frontier, but it didn't work, and fugitive camels ended up roaming the West for years. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/6/7/803567.jpg)