1885, Annie Oakley, now under her husband’s management, joined “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show. Billed as
“Miss Annie Oakley, the Peerless Lady Wing-Shot,” she was one of the show’s star attractions for sixteen years. Oakley never failed to delight her audi- ences, and her feats of marksmanship were truly incredible. At 30 paces she could split a playing card held edge-on, and she hit dimes tossed into the air. She shot cigarettes from her husband’s lips, and, when he threw a playing card into the air, she would shoot it full of holes before it touched the ground. She was a great success on the Wild West Show’s European trips.
In 1887, she was presented to Queen
Victoria, and later in Berlin she per- formed her cigarette trick with, at his insistence, Crown Prince Wilhelm (later Kaiser Wilhelm II) holding the ciga- rette. A train wreck in 1901 left her partially paralyzed for a time, but she recovered and returned to the stage to amaze audiences for many more years.
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