Page 100 – LIFE

Angora: The Goat That Keeps On Giving

January 19, 2022April 8, 2014 by

There’s something quietly audacious about sending one of the world’s finest photographers—in the midst of a world war—to document the lives of goats. But that’s just what LIFE magazine did in the summer of 1942, when Alfred Eisenstaedt shipped out to south central Texas to visit “Goat King” Adolph Stieler and his 600 Angoras.

As LIFE told its readers in its August 31, 1942 issue, Angora goats “look like aristocrats, and they should, for Angoras are the blue-blooded elite of the goat world.”

Their long, curly, silky fleece, known commercially as mohair, is used in making fine upholstery, yarn and fabrics. Angora goats are dainty, shy and not at all smelly. Their fleece is so rich in healthy oil (lanolin) that goatmen who handle them a lot have pink, soft hands like a baby’s.

Goats are among the oldest and best friends that man has. There are 137 mentions of goats in the Bible. Goats were among the first animals brought to America by Captain John Smith and Lord Delaware. A frisky Arabian goat, according to legend, discovered the stimulating effects of the coffee bean. Great thinkers of history like Zoroaster, Buddha and Confucius all said kind words about goats. Modern men who get to know them, including author Carl Sandberg, conductor Arthur Rodzinski and Mahatma Gandhi, usually think they are wonderful. . . .

So. Take a gander at Eisenstaedt’s photographs, and decide for yourself if Angora goats really are all they’re cracked up to be. Also, please do take the time to read the captions that accompany the pictures; it’s not every day, after all, that one comes across an observation as insightful and weirdly moving as, “Shorn goats crowd together for warmth and mutual sympathy. They are not pretty now and they know it.”

Even blue-blooded elites, it seems, have feelings. Who knew?

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

The Angora goats were not yet a year old.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Goats ate cigarette butts and owners encouraged them, because tobacco kills intestinal parasites.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A flock of 600 Angoras headed for home pastures at the ranch of ‘Goat King’ Adolph Stieler near Comfort, Texas.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angora goats, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A shearing crew went to work on four of Stieler’s Angoras.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An unhappy Angora kid was pushed into the dip after he had been sheared. Dip is a brownish, foul-smelling chemical mixture which safeguarded the shorn animals against ticks.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shorn goats crowded together for warmth and mutual sympathy.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The original LIFE caption deadpanned, “Goats love to browse standing up. The leaves they can’t reach look greenest.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

General MacArthur had been the prize fleece buck at most recent goat show and sale at Rocksprings, Texas. He sold at auction for $530. Note the hair on his face and belly, signs of good Angora

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angora goat auction and sale, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man examined goods in a mohair warehouse, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mohair warehouse, Texas, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This mohair warehouse at Kerryville, Texas, belonged to the goat-raising Schreiner family, who also owned hotels, banks, and stores. Scott Schreiner (left) was shown here with a local mohair buyer.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mohair products included curtains, mittens, toy dogs, rugs, blankets. Before World War II much mohair was used in auto upholstery. Huge stocks of were used to replace restricted wool.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Coolest Photo You’ll Ever See of Hank Aaron’s 715th Home Run

February 5, 2022April 7, 2014 by

Hank Aaron hammering his 715th round-tripper to surpass Babe Ruth and claim the career home run record on the night of April 8, 1974, stands as one of the most thrilling sports achievements of the 20th century. Aaron, after all, not only broke baseball’s most hallowed milestone, but he did it under unimaginable pressure—receiving vicious, racist hate mail and even death threats for months leading up to the start of the 1974 season.

Some folks, it seemed, just couldn’t stand the idea of a Black man occupying such a titanic place in the baseball firmament: Home Run King.

Here, LIFE.com pays tribute with a trippy—and weirdly riveting—multiple-exposure picture of the moment, from the perfect swing off Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, to Aaron rounding the bases, to his reception at the Braves’ dugout and the on-field tribute that followed. In one artfully conceived and masterfully executed tableau, LIFE photographers Henry Groskinsky and Ralph Morse managed to capture every element of the dramatic scene, as it unfolded in both time and space. Look up and around this image and feel the power of the moment.

Hank Aaron 715

Henry Groskinsky & Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection

When LIFE Illustrated Psalms with Photos, 1964.

August 11, 2021April 4, 2014 by

For the special double-issue that came out on Dec. 25, 1964, LIFE devoted nearly 150 pages to The Bible and attempted to delineate the its enduring appeal for untold millions, while also grappling with its uncanny power.

“Our age has been haunted by theories of history,” LIFE noted in an introduction to the issue, “and by political theories that appeal to the verdict of history (the thousand-year Reich, the historical dialectic of Communism.)”

History seems to be the only irrational subject that modern rationalists revere. Man, who has deified everything else, now deifies his own history and wants a theory about it in which he can believe. The Bible contains a theory of history, the oldest and most durable of them all. But the faith of the Bible is not in history, it is in history’s God.

The last feature in that issue, titled simply, “In Praise of the Lord,” included color photos made in the Holy Land by Paul Schutzer, along with excerpts from the psalms — a book in the Bible in which, LIFE noted, “praise to the Creator . . . reaches a height of poetic utterance.”

Here, we offer some of Schutzer’s photos, both published and unpublished, as well as excerpts from the psalms ancient hymns to the silence that ran alongside the pictures: examples of how, 50 years ago, one media outlet chose to address the eternally thorny issue of faith.

“Lord, make me to know mine end, / And the measure of my days, / what is is; that I may know how frail I am. / Behold, thou hast made my days as a handbreath . . . ” — Psalm 39

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“When I remember thee upon my bed, / And meditate on thee in the night watches, / because thou hast been my help, / Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice . . .” — Psalm 63

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, / From whence cometh my help . . .” —Psalm 121

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Unpublished image from a story illustrating the Book of Psalms.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“The heavens declare the glory of God; / And the firmament showeth his handwork . . .” — Psalm 19

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Unpublished image from a story illustrating the Book of Psalms.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Psalms, illustrated by Photographs: “The Lord is in his holy temple, / The Lord’s throne is in heaven . . .” —Psalm 11

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“The Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. / He maketh them also to skip like a calf . . .” — Psalm 29

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“The earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works . . .” — Psalm 104

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Unpublished image from a story illustrating the Book of Psalms.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Panic From A Distance: Remembering the Market’s “Flash Crash” of 1962

August 11, 2021April 2, 2014 by

Occasional dramatic dips and rises are, in a sense, what markets are all about. Recalling previous market catastrophes—no matter how short- or long-lived they might have been—is one small way to keep a bit of sanity when the next one occurs.

It is little remembered today, but the “flash crash” in late May of 1962 surely felt like the end of the world for anyone who was vested in the market when it began that sudden and precipitous slide. And yet . . . the world didn’t end. The market recovered.

LIFE reported on the 1962 “flash crash” thus:

The signs, like the rumblings of an Alpine ice pack at the time of thaw, had been heard. The glacial heights of the stock boom suddenly began to melt in a thaw of sell-off. More and more stocks went up for sale, with fewer and fewer takers at the asking price. Then suddenly, around lunchtime on Monday, May 28, the sell-off swelled to an avalanche. In one frenzied day in brokerage houses and stock exchanges across the U.S., stock values glamor and blue-chip alike took their sharpest drop since 1929.

Memory of the great crash, and the depression that followed, has haunted America’s subconscious. Now, after all these years, was that nightmare to happen again?

In short: no. It wasn’t. The fear of that scenario was, understandably, very real; but the sort of panic that juiced the 1929 crash adding a horrific edge to what was already a calamitous melt-down did not materialize in 1962. In fact, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 6 percent on that one vertiginous Monday and the market was anemic for a year afterwards, the markets as a whole, at home and abroad, did bounce back.

So . . . whatever happens with the inconceivably complex and harrowing economic issues that might (or might not) wreak havoc in the coming months or years, a few things are certain: somebody’s going to make money; somebody or rather, many, many somebodies are going to lose money; and a few years down the road, we’ll once again be floating blissfully along atop another bubble, half-waiting for it to burst and half-believing that it never, ever will.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Cover image from the June 8, 1962 issue of LIFE, which ran with the headline: “What went wrong in the wild stock market and what it means for the U.S.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The New York Stock Exchange during the 1962 “flash crash.”

Yale Joel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tense scene at a brokerage office during the 1962 stock market “flash crash.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Floor of New York Stock Exchange boils with frenzy of an overheated pot at closing time Tuesday, trying to catch up with transactions which hit nearly 15 million shares for day, highest total since 1929.”

Yale Joel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tense scene at a brokerage office during the 1962 stock market “flash crash.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The NYSE during the 1962 “flash crash.”

Yale Joel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The NYSE during the 1962 “flash crash.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The NYSE during the 1962 “flash crash.”

Yale Joel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The NYSE during the 1962 “flash crash.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The NYSE during the 1962 “flash crash.”

Yale Joel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Page spreads from June 8, 1962, issue of LIFE.

Life Magazine

‘I’m Gonna Live by the Gun and Roam’: Portrait of an American Spree Killer

January 17, 2020April 1, 2014 by

William “Cockeyed” Cook, though little remembered today, was a sensation in his time. He killed six people, including an entire family of five, during a terrifying three-week spree across several American states in early January 1951.

Cook’s early life in his native Missouri was brutal. His mother died when he was 5 years old; his father abandoned him and his seven siblings in an old mine. He became a ward of the state before his 10th birthday; had a nasty temper (exacerbated by the teasing and bullying he endured due to a deformed eye); and eventually ended up in Missouri State Penitentiary.

When he was released from prison in 1950, the 21-year-old told his father, with whom he briefly reunited after more than a decade of estrangement, that his ambition was now to “live by the gun and roam.” He headed west from Missouri, drifting to California and then eastward again, down into Texas. There, in late December 1950, his crime and killing spree began. He kidnapped an auto mechanic who picked him up hitchhiking and forced the man into the trunk of the car. The man escaped shortly afterward. The family of an Illinois farmer named Carl Mosser, en route to New Mexico, wouldn’t be so lucky.

In Oklahoma, the Mosser— Carl, 33; Thelma, 29; Ronald, 7; Gary, 5; and Pamela Sue, 3—picked up Cook, who was once again hitchhiking. Cook pulled out the .32 caliber snub-nosed pistol he had bought in El Paso, and told Carl to drive. Over the next three days, Cook and the Mossers wove their way back toward Cook’s hometown of Joplin, Mo. On the third day, Cook shot them all—including the family dog—and dumped the bodies down a well not far from Joplin.

Again he headed west. Outside Blythe, Calif., where he had once worked, he took a deputy sheriff hostage. The sheriff’s life was spared, Cook later reportedly said, because the deputy’s wife, who had once briefly worked with Cook, “treated him like a human being and had been nicer than anyone had ever been to him in his life.”

Cook killed once more during his spree, shooting to death a salesman from Seattle named Robert Dewey and dumping his body in a ditch. Cook then kidnapped two hunters and forced them to drive him across the border into Mexico. There, in a town called Santa Rosalie, the local police chief, Luis Parra, improbably recognized Cook, plucked the .32 from his belt, and arrested him. A short time later, he was handed over to the FBI.

Cook was sentenced to 300 years in prison after being tried and convicted of the Mosser killings in Oklahoma, but was then tried, convicted and sentenced to death in California for the murder of Robert Dewey. On Dec. 12, 1952, at San Quentin, Cook was executed in the famous prison’s gas chamber. He was 23 years old.

Less than a year after he was put to death, a movie based on Cook’s spree and helmed by the actress-turned-powerhouse director Ida Lupino, The Hitch-Hiker, was released by Lupino’s independent production company, The Filmmakers. The movie is notable not only because it’s a better-than-average noir film, but because it’s one of the first films ever made in Hollywood that was quite clearly based on a killer whose crimes were still fresh in the minds of filmgoers.

Circulars on Cook were posted through the Southwest and Mexico. Robert Dewey’s murder spread panic. Citizens avoided lonely roads, and ‘recognized’ Cook from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, where for two days police averaged a phone tip every four minutes.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A crowd in Tijuana, Mexico, watched as spree killer William Cook was sent back to the United States after capture, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In Tijuana, Mexico, spree killer William Cook was sent back to the United States after capture, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A pleased throng watched Cook’s ‘extradition’ at Tijuana. Since the U.S. had no extradition treaty with Mexico, he simply was pushed over the border as an undesirable alien—and into U.S. hands.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tijuana police chief, F. Kraus Morales, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spree killer William Cook, before he was sent back to the United States from Mexico after his capture, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At bay in Mexico, Cook blinked his good eye against photographers’ flashes.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spree killer William Cook was sent back to the United States from Mexico after his capture, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spree killer William Cook was sent back to the United States after his capture, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spree killer William Cook, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cook held campers Forrest Damron (right) and James Burke as prisoners for eight days.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cook’s arsenal was captured with him when Morales, after inspecting towns from the air, landed at Santa Rosalia, saw him in his car, and arrested him.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spree killer William Cook’s small arsenal of weapons, January 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spree killer William “Cockeyed” Cook, 1951.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

When Flying Was Fun: LIFE Goes to Stewardess School, 1958

August 31, 2022March 29, 2014 by

When LIFE ran a cover story in August 1958 on women that the magazine dubbed “Glamor Girls of the Air,” a career as an “air hostess” was still a relatively new pursuit. The way that LIFE described that pursuit, meanwhile, verged on the (almost laughably) patronizing:

The rather odd education that the girls [featured in this article] are getting is preparing them for one of the most coveted careers open to young American women today. They all want to be airline stewardesses. . . . The job they want does not pay extraordinarily well, only $255 to $355 a month. The life is irregular and opportunities for promotion are small. But the chance to fly, to see the world, and meet all sorts of interesting people mostly the kind of men who can afford to travel by plane gives the job real glamor. And the dawning age of jet transport, in which the stewardesses and their planes will go a lot farther and faster, gives it new excitement.

U.S. airlines employ 8,200 stewardesses. The positions are so eagerly sought that only three to five of every hundred girls who apply to major airlines are taken. To qualify, a girl should be between 21 and 26 years old, unmarried, reasonably pretty and slender, especially around the hips, which will be at eye level for the passengers. She should have been to high school, be poised and tactful, have a good disposition and a pleasant speaking voice.

You get the picture. But above and beyond the mid-century blather about slender hips and rich husbands-to-be, the article in LIFE offered a surprisingly nuanced picture of a stewardess-in-training’s day-to-day existence. From emergency drills and comportment exercises to the sisterly camaraderie forged during a month and a half spent working and playing together in this case, at a stewardess school near Dallas, Texas it’s clear that learning to be a “hostess with the mostest,” as LIFE put it, was no walk in the park.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Stewardess school, Texas, 1958.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An emergency exit from the plane was practiced by Louise Becker, who leapt down the canvas slide at Fort Worth’s airport. The slide was dusted with chalk to make it slippery. Louise made a perfect seat-first landing.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock