I hear the train a-comin"

On this day in 1968 Johnny Cash performed two concerts at Folsom Prison in California, one at 9:40 AM, the other at 12:40 PM. The album recorded from the two sets was released in May of that year and helped resuscitate the singer's flagging career. He was 35.

Cash wrote "Folsom Prison Blues" in 1955. It's about a man stuck in Folsom Prison for not listening to his mother. (She'd urged him not to play with guns, but he subsequently shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.) Johnny Cash appears three times in A Book of Ages. The most poignant anecdote is about the time he met June Carter. It was love at first sight, but as so often happens in country music, Miss Cash was already married.

Arthur Rimbaud: Poet, Arms Dealer

On October 22, 1885, the former poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote to his mother from Ethiopia, telling her he was giving up coffee trading in favor of gun-running. Rimbaud appears three times in A Book of Ages.

Charlton Heston Unarmed

In August 28, 1963, Charlton Heston took part in Martin Luther King Jr.’s March On Washington. In the photographs it appears the 38 year-old actor was unarmed.