Pecos Bill is a fictional cowboy in stories set during American westward expansion into the Southwest of Texas, New Mexico, Southern California, Arizona. These narratives were invented as short stories in a book by Edward S. O'Reilly in the early 20th century and are considered to be an example of fakelore. Pecos Bill was a late addition to the "big man" idea of characters, such as Paul Bunyan or John Henry; the first known stories were published in 1917 by Edward O'Reilly for The Century Magazine and collected and reprinted in 1923 in the book Saga of Pecos Bill. O'Reilly claimed they were part of an oral tradition of tales told by cowboys during the westward expansion and settlement of the southwest including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, but American folklorist Richard M. Dorson found that O'Reilly invented the stories as "folklore", that writers either borrowed tales from O'Reilly or added further adventures of their own invention to the cycle. Edward "Tex" O'Reilly co-authored a cartoon strip with cartoonist Jack A. Warren known as Alonzo Vincent Warren, between 1929 and 1938.

When O'Reilly died in 1946, Warren began. This was a story about "Pecos Bill", who had received a "lump on the naggan" that caused him amnesia; the cartoons were published in The Sun and were syndicated. He has a wife, named Slue-Foot Sue. Pecos Bill made the leap to film in the 1948 Walt Disney animated feature Melody Time, he was portrayed by Steve Guttenberg in a 1985 episode of Tall Tales & Legends and by Patrick Swayze in Disney's 1995 film Tall Tale. "Pecos Bill" was the nickname of Civil War general William Shafter, although this was before O'Reilly created the legend. Shafter was considered a hero in Texas and had some legendary poetry written about how tough he was. According to legend, Pecos Bill is responsible for creating many different landmarks. One landmark he is said to have created is the Gulf of Mexico. There was a drought in Texas, so horrible, that Pecos rushed to California and lassoed up a storm cloud and brought it to Texas, it rained so much. Another story is of him creating the Rio Grande River.

He and his horse got stranded in needed water. So Pecos dug the Rio Grande River. One other landmark that he is responsible for is the Painted Desert, he started shooting at a tribe of Native Americans, as they ran away, the paint they had on them from a ritual came off and painted the desert. According to the legend, Pecos Bill was born in Texas in the 1830s. Pecos Bill's family decided to move out because his town was becoming "too crowded". Pecos Bill was traveling in a covered wagon as an infant when he fell out unnoticed by the rest of his family near the Pecos River, he was raised by a pack of coyotes. Years he was found by his real brother, who managed to convince him he was not a coyote, he grew up to become a cowboy. Pecos used a rattlesnake named Shake as another snake as a little whip, his horse, Widow-Maker, was so named because no other man could live. Dynamite was said to be his favorite food, it is said Pecos sometimes rode a cougar instead of a horse. On one of his adventures, Pecos Bill managed to lasso a twister.

It was said that he once wrestled the Bear Lake monster for several days until Bill defeated it. Pecos Bill had a lover named Slue-Foot Sue, he was fishing with the pack. Shake, Widow-Maker, Slue-Foot Sue are as idealized as Pecos Bill. After a courtship in which, among other things, Pecos Bill shoots all the stars from the sky except for one which becomes the Lone Star, Pecos proposes to Sue, she insists on riding Widow-Maker before, after the wedding. Widow-Maker, jealous of no longer having Bill's undivided attention, bounces Sue off. Bill attempts, but fails, to lasso her, because Widow-Maker did not want her on his back again, she hits her head on the moon. After she has been bouncing for days, Pecos Bill realizes that she would starve to death, so he lassos her with Shake the rattlesnake and brings her back down. Widow-Maker, apologizes. In Bowman's version of the story, Sue recovers from the bouncing, but is so traumatized by the experience she never speaks to Pecos Bill again. In other versions, Sue could not stop bouncing, Bill could not stop her from bouncing either, so Bill had to shoot her to put her out of her misery.

Though it is said that Bill was married many times, he never loved the others as much as Sue, the other relationships did not work out. In the Melody Time version, Sue gets stranded on the moon upon impact due to Widow-Maker's interference in preventing Bill from lassoing her, causing a disheartened Bill to leave civilization and rejoin the coyotes, who now howl at the moon in honor of Bill's sorrow. In the more popular versions, including many children's books and Sue are reunited and live ever after. In Laura Frankos' short story "Slue-Foot Sue and the Witch in the Woods", Sue's bustle-ride deposits her in Russia, where she must fight a duel with Baba Yaga. In the "Pecos Bill" episode of Tall Tales & Legends, Sue is played by Rebecca De Mornay. Sue does not figure in the 1995 Pecos Bill movie Tall Tale. Pecos Bill appeared in a 1985 episode of Tall Tale

Aoife MacMurrough known by historians as Eva of Leinster, was an Irish noble, princess of Leinster and countess of Pembroke. She was the daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster and his second wife, Mór Ní Tuathail or Mor O'Toole, a niece of Archbishop of Dublin St Lawrence O'Toole; as the daughter of a Gaelic king, the young Aoife would have been raised in much higher dignity than most other girls in Ireland who were of poorer stock than her. Since her mother was the second wife of Diarmait, her station was automatically lower than that of her husband's first wife, Sadb Ní Faeláin, her issue of two sons and one daughter, it has been asserted by some historians that the children of the second wife were illegitimate as per the European laws which specified that marriage was a contract between one man and one woman and until the death of either party - this was not the case in Ireland, where the Brehon law allowed two wives, trial marriages and divorce was quite normal. Aoife's brother Domhnall succeeded their father to the kingship of Leinster after his election by the family "derbfine".

On 25 August 1170, following the Norman invasion of Ireland that her father had requested, she was married to Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow, the leader of the Norman invasion force, in Christchurch cathedral in Waterford. Her father, Dermot MacMurrough, seeking a military alliance with Strongbow in his feud with the King of Breffni, Tiernan O'Rourke, had promised Aoife to Pembroke. However, according to Brehon law, both the man and the woman had to consent to the marriage, so it is fair to conclude that Aoife accepted her father's arrangements. Under Anglo-Norman law, this gave Strongbow succession rights to the Kingdom of Leinster. Under Irish Brehon law, the marriage gave her a life interest only, after which any land would revert to male cousins. Aoife is sometimes known as Red Eva, she had two sons and a daughter with her husband Richard de Clare and through their daughter, Isabel de Clare, within a few generations their descendants included much of the nobility of Europe including all the monarchs of Scotland since Robert I and all those of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom since Henry IV.

While the exact date of the death of Aoife of Leinster is unknown, there is in existence one tale of her demise. As a young woman, she lived many years following the death of Strongbow in 1176, devoted herself to raising their children and defending their territory. Aoife O Croinin, Daibhi Early Medieval Ireland 400-1200 London: Longman Press. Paragon House. Page 160. ISBN 1-55778-420-5 Weis, Frederick Lewis Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700, Lines: 66-26, 175-7, 261-30

Manuel Gregorio Argerich or Manuel Argerich was an Argentine philosopher, lawyer, politician and medical doctor. Manuel Gregorio Argerich was born in Buenos Aires in 1835, his brother, Juan Antonio, was born in 1840 and was, like Manuel, a key figure during the cholera and yellow fever epidemics. He helped organize the commission to organize a plan to manage the epidemic with José Roque Pérez, he was a professor of director of an orphan's home. They were descendants of Dr. Cosme Argerich. Argerich had children. José Manuel Estrada, a friend and writer said of his home life: "He requested his family to act as a clear and transparent sky, under which to calm his violent temper, his love for his children was intense, incorporating the imagination of youth and the discretion of providence."He was a member of the Buenos Aires Freemasons lodge. As medical doctor, he was conscripted as a medical officer into the army] under the command of Argentine caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas governor of Buenos Aires.

He cared for the wounded and injured soldiers during the Battle of Caseros in which Rosas' authoritarian regime was defeated. Following the battle, which led to flight of Rosas to Great Britain, Argerich was documented to have stayed in the field voluntarily after Rosas' defeat, treating not only wounded soldiers and fellow officers under Rosas' command, but Urquiza's soldiers stricken by smallpox, with complete indifference as to which uniform his patients wore. A year after Urquiza was assassinated, Argerich treated the victims of Buenos Aires' epidemics of Cholera in 1867 and Yellow Fever in 1871. Argerich was identified as one of the "ministering angels", not part of the mass exodus from the city, but stayed behind at his peril to tend to the sick who remained in Buenos Aires, he is depicted treating a patient alongside Dr. Roque Perez in Juan Manuel Blanes' iconic 1871 portrait, Yellow Fever of the great Buenos Aires epidemic of 1871. Although he was committed to his responsibilities as a physician, he was conflicted, he said to José Manuel Estrada 3 days before he died: "My Children!

My Wife! Have I the right to defy death and risk abandoning them forever?" He is remembered as a pioneer of the Spanish theatrical genre known as the Zarzuela. Argerich wrote the lyrics for Los Consejos de Don Javier, or The Advice of Don Javier, was put to music in 1892 by Felice Lebano, it was first played at the Buenos Aires' Apollo Theater on September 1, 1892. In anticipation of the premier, La Nación issued a review on July 14, 1892 stating that the music by Lebano, in particular, made the work innovative, Zarzuela music, it was one of the first popular works of Zarzuela theater in Argentina. During the great yellow fever epidemic of 1871, tirelessly continued his care of the sick until succumbing to the disease on May 25, 1871, the 61st anniversary of the Argentine Revolution, he was one of the 13,614 victims of the Buenos Aires Yellow Fever epidemic. Three days at his funeral, his contemporary Jose Manuel Estrada, Argentine writer, eulogized him, a portion of, translated from Spanish: In the sweet love of his home life, in the severe labour of scientific inquiry, he searched for a moderation of his overflowing passions - which he always felt were delayed and out of harmony with the pace by which they had defined his nature in the heat of his youth.

Susceptible to all the turbulent agitations of the people, it was impossible for him to be indifferent to their bad fortune and desolation. This man of charity revealed himself with complete furor. Manuel Argerich contributed to a renaissance by serving the poor - sign with which the Divine Master makes known to the people the coming of his Redemption. Argerich is buried in Buenos Aires at the La Chacarita Cemetery, his gravesite was declared a National Monument in 1970 and is a highlight of prominent graves in a tour of that cemetery