A Deadly Hobby...!

If you ever wonder where some of of the colorful names of infamous acts came from, maybe this will help a bit.

Believe it or not, some acts of cruel justice were named after real people. Take this name, for instance.

Captain Lynch

Captain William Lynch was a man with a horrifying hobby. Nope, not stamp collecting. The captain was a man who believed in rough justice. And that meant one thing for the petty criminals and wrongly accused in his town. He and his “Lynch-men” would, well . . . lynch them.

Although the term today has connotations of racial violence, the original lynchings weren’t specifically targeted at black people. Lynch and his men felt the government was too remote to dispense justice on outlaws, so they launched their vigilante group to target them.

Unfortunately, their methods were less like Batman and more like the Punisher. Captain Lynch and his men tortured, strung up, and murdered so many strangers that his name became synonymous with one of the cruelest forms of mob rule in US history.

Well, there ya go. Another little peek at the darker side of history. At least you now know where the name came from, right?

Coffee out on the patio this morning again