U.S. Census Bureau Daily Feature for July 21: Robbing Trains

WASHINGTON, July 20 -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature for July 21 from the U.S. Census Bureau:

THURSDAY, JULY 21: ROBBING TRAINS

Profile America for Thursday, July 21. The first of what would be a rash of train robberies in the Eastern U.S., occurred on this day in 1873, pulled off by a gang headed by Jesse James and his brother Frank. Their target was a train of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. Their tampering with the track caused the train to derail, killing the engineer. The gang found only $2,000 in the express car’s safe, so they methodically robbed the frightened passengers of another $1,000. After a number of train and bank robberies, Jesse James was killed in 1882, and the last train robbery in the nation occurred around 1900. But today, there are still some 421,000 robberies in the U.S., most of them on the nation’s streets or highways. Find these and more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau on the Web at http://www.census.gov.

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Profile America is produced by the Public Information Office of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments ready to air on a monthly CD or on Internet at http://www.census.gov (look under the "Newsroom" button). For further information, contact Rick Reed at 301-763-2812, fax at 301-457-3670, or e-mail at rreed@census.gov.

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