Scott Joplin heard about, and perhaps even saw, a collision between two locomotives in Texas, and memorialized the event in his classic style in the Crush Collision March. Someone recently called it the best silent film villain song he had heard; someone else imagined a robber getting away while the damsel in distress was about to be hit by the train. 

The real story is more bizarre. The villain here was the MKT Railroad who staged the collision as a publicity event in Texas in 1896. It was witnessed by 40,000 people, 3 of whom were killed when the boilers of the two locomotives exploded during the collision. Americans do some pretty crazy stunts.

Henry Morton Stanley was working for an American newspaper when he “staged” the finding of Livingstone, who did not think he was lost and was not interested in being found. In this chapter, the American Creighton Wellman begins his career as a medical missionary, and performs some amazing feats among the “natives” - much of it sleight of hand. Then he returns to the US, and his self-promotion and deception start ballooning. He created the template for smoke and mirrors in tropical medicine.

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