1881: Thirty Seconds of Gunfire: the Shootout at the O.K. Corral
The feud between the Earp brothers and the Clanton-McLaury outfit had been building for months over cattle rustling, stagecoach robberies and bad blood on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It ended in a vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral on this day in 1881, when Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp, backed by the gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday, walked down to disarm a group of armed men they accused of flouting the town’s gun ban.
What followed lasted less than thirty seconds. Around thirty shots were fired at close range, leaving Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton dead in the dirt. Virgil and Morgan Earp were both wounded but survived, and the shootout became the most mythologised gun battle of the American West, replayed in films and folklore ever since.
