Q 01/05

A disputed image bought in a memorabilia shop in 2010 may show Billy the Kid playing which genteel lawn game?

A) Horseshoes

B) Lawn bowls

C) Croquet

D) Badminton

Answer · why

C) Croquet

Croquet is the game being played in the picture. If genuine, it would be the only image of the outlaw with his gang, but historians remain split on wh...

Q 02/05

The long-held belief that Billy the Kid was left-handed came from which misleading source?

A) A tintype photograph

B) A dime novel cover

C) A hand-drawn wanted poster

D) A coroner's report

Answer · why

A) A tintype photograph

A tintype photograph made the outlaw look left-handed: the process produces mirror images, so the Colt that seems to hang on his left hip was really w...

Q 03/05

The only authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid sold at a 2011 auction for roughly how much?

A) $23,000

B) $230,000

C) $2.3 million

D) $230 million

Answer · why

C) $2.3 million

$2.3 million was the winning bid from businessman William Koch. The 2-by-3-inch plate survived only because a friend of the outlaw kept it after his d...

Q 04/05

Which Lincoln County sheriff shot Billy the Kid dead in a darkened room in July 1881?

A) Wyatt Earp

B) Pat Garrett

C) Bat Masterson

D) Seth Bullock

Answer · why

B) Pat Garrett

Pat Garrett fired twice in the dark and hit the 21-year-old outlaw just above the heart. He later had a book ghostwritten to answer claims that he had...

Q 05/05

Billy the Kid, the most famous outlaw of the New Mexico frontier, is believed to have been born where?

A) St. Louis

B) San Antonio

C) Kansas City

D) New York

Answer · why

D) New York

New York is the birthplace most historians accept, in 1859. His widowed mother then took her two sons west through Indiana and Kansas before settling ...