Alcatraz Island is a small island 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong currents around the island and cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, and the prison became one of the most notorious in American history. The prison closed in 1963, and the island is now a major tourist attraction.
The Atlantic canary, known worldwide simply as the wild canary and also called the island canary, common canary, or canary, is a small passerine bird belonging to the genus Serinus in the true finch family, Fringillidae. It is native to the Canary Islands, the Azores, and Madeira. It has two subspecies: the wild or common canary and domestic canary. Wild birds are mostly yellow-green, with brownish streaking on the back. The species is common in captivity and a number of colour varieties have been bred.
Robert Franklin Stroud, known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz", was a convicted murderer, American federal prisoner and author who has been cited as one of the most notorious criminals in the United States. During his time at Leavenworth Penitentiary, he reared and sold birds and became a respected ornithologist. From 1942 to 1959, he was incarcerated at Alcatraz, where regulations did not allow him to keep birds. Stroud was never released from the federal prison system; he was imprisoned from 1909 to his death in 1963.
The red-billed chough, Cornish chough or simply chough, is a bird in the crow family, one of only two species in the genus Pyrrhocorax. Its eight subspecies breed on mountains and coastal cliffs from the western coasts of Ireland and Britain east through southern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia, India and China.
There are two species of passerine birds commonly called chough that constitute the genus Pyrrhocorax of the Corvidae (crow) family of birds. These are the red-billed chough, and the Alpine chough. The white-winged chough of Australia, despite its name, is not a true chough but rather a member of the family Corcoracidae and only distantly related.
Black Canary is the name of two superheroines appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. As one of the earliest female superheroes in the DC Comics universe, the character has made numerous appearances in prominent team-up titles, including the Justice Society of America and Justice League of America. The Black Canary persona has been adopted by two individuals, portrayed as a legacy heroes with a mother-daughter relationship between the two. Following DC's New 52 initiative, Black Canary was briefly amalgamated as a single character before the mother-and-daughter dynamic was restored to continuity, the history formerly established retroactively added as part of the second Black Canary's history.
The western gull is a large white-headed gull that lives on the west coast of North America and the Pacific Ocean. The western gull ranges from British Columbia, Canada, to Baja California, Mexico.
Thomas Eugene Gaddis was an American writer most noted for his biography, Birdman of Alcatraz (1955), about convicted murderer Robert Stroud. It was adapted as a 1962 film of the same name, starring Burt Lancaster.
Joseph "Dutch" Bowers was the first man to attempt an escape from Alcatraz prison. He was born in Rohrbach, Austria. Bowers was arrested for robbery of mail with a firearm.
Birdman of Alcatraz is a 1962 American biographical drama film directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Burt Lancaster. It is a largely fictionalized version of the life of Robert Stroud, who was sentenced to solitary confinement after having killed a prison guard. A federal prison inmate, he became known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz" because of his studies of birds, which had taken place when he was incarcerated at Leavenworth Prison where he was allowed to keep birds in jail. Although known as "The Birdman of Alcatraz", Stroud was never allowed to keep any birds after his transfer to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in 1942.
Henri Theodore Young was an American convicted bank robber and murderer who, while serving one of a series of prison terms, attempted to escape from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary with four other inmates in 1939. During the escape attempt, two inmates, Dale Stamphill and Arthur "Doc" Barker, were shot, the latter fatally. All survivors were quickly recaptured. Two of the men, Young and Rufus McCain, were sentenced to solitary confinement and served the terms at Alcatraz for a period of three years. Eleven days after re-entering the Alcatraz general prison population in 1942, Young murdered McCain.
Looking Outward: A History of the U.S. Prison System from Colonial Times to the Formation of the Bureau of Prisons by the "Birdman of Alcatraz", Robert Stroud, is a history of the United States Prison System from colonial times until the formation of the United States Bureau of Prisons in the 1930s.
Alcatraz Island has appeared many times in popular culture. Its appeal in film derives from its picturesque setting, natural beauty, isolation, and its history as a U.S. penitentiary – from which, officially, no prisoner ever successfully escaped.
The following events occurred in January 1909:
United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island, also known simply as Alcatraz or The Rock, was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States. The site of a fort since the 1850s, the main prison building was built in 1910–12 as a U.S. Army military prison.
Paul Joseph Madigan was the third warden of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, which was situated on Alcatraz Island, California, US. He was born in Maple Lake, Minnesota in 1897. Madigan served as the warden of Alcatraz from 1955 to 1961. He had earlier served as the last Associate Warden during the term of James A. Johnston, the first Warden of Alcatraz.
Arthur McConnell Dollison was an American prison administrator. A graduate of Cambridge High School and Ohio Wesleyan University, he was the son of Frank Dollison, an editor of newspaper The Daily Jeffersonian. Dollison graduated from the university in 1933, and because of the Great Depression only found part-time work until 1938, when he became a guard at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
Stroud is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story is a 1980 American television film about Clarence Carnes, the youngest ever inmate of Alcatraz Prison. It screened over two nights, from Monday, July 10 to Tuesday, July 11 on NBC. It was written and co-produced by Ernest Tidyman.
Harry Fischbeck (1879–1968) was a German-born cinematographer who emigrated to the United States where he worked in the American film industry. He was employed by a variety of different studios during his career including Universal, United Artists and Warner Brothers, but primarily for Paramount Pictures. One of his first credits was for the historical The Lincoln Cycle films directed by John M. Stahl.
