Texas Prison Museum
The Texas Prison Museum is located in Huntsville, Texas. The non-profit museum features the history of the prison system in Texas (Huntsville is the home of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and several prisons including the Ellis Unit which previously housed death row, and Huntsville Unit which houses the execution chamber). There are many different artifacts in the museum, including an electric chair named "Old Sparky Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey was the nickname of the electric ..." that was formerly used from 1924 to 1964 as the primary means of execution. Other interesting exhibits the museum has for show include a life-size replica of a prison cell and a display of the Texas prison rodeo. The museum also has a large display of artwork, woodwork, and more created by prisoners. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Huntsville, Texas
Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas. The population was 45,941 as of the 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate 45 and home to Texas State Prison, Sam Houston State University, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville State Park, anHEARTS Veterans Museum of Texas The city served as the residence of Sam Houston, who is recognized in Huntsville by thSam Houston Memorial Museumand a statue on Interstate 45. History The city had its beginning around 1836, when Pleasant and Ephraim Gray opened a trading post on the site. Ephraim Gray became first postmaster in 1837, naming it after his hometown, Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville became the home of Sam Houston, who served as President of the Republic of Texas, Governor of the State of Texas, Governor of Tennessee, U.S. Senator, and Tennessee congressman. Houston led the Texas Army in the Battle o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Museum
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from the conservation and documentation of their collection, serving researchers and specialists, to catering to the general public. The goal of serving researchers is not only scientific, but intended to serve the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, and children's museums. According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countrie ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by both List of U.S. states and territories by area, area (after Alaska) and List of U.S. states and territories by population, population (after California). Texas shares borders with the states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest; and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Houston is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas and the List of United States cities by population, fourth-largest in the U.S., while San Antonio is the second most pop ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Texas Department Of Criminal Justice
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, and private correctional facilities, funding and certain oversight of community supervision, and supervision of offenders released from prison on parole or mandatory supervision. The TDCJ operates the largest prison system in the United States.Huntsville Prison Blues . . '' [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ellis Unit
O. B. Ellis Unit (E1, previously Ellis I Unit) is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison located in unincorporated Walker County, Texas, north of Huntsville. The unit, with about of space, now houses up to 2,400 male prisoners."Ellis Unit" . . Retrieved January 8, 2014. Ellis is situated in a wooded area shared with the , which is located away from Ellis.Ward, Mike [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Huntsville Unit
Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville or Huntsville Unit (HV), nicknamed "Walls Unit", is a Texas state prison located in Huntsville, Texas, United States. The approximately facility, near downtown Huntsville, is operated by the Correctional Institutions Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The facility, the oldest Texas state prison, opened in 1849. The unit houses the execution chamber of the State of Texas. It is the most active execution chamber in the United States, with 578 (as of November 16, 2022) executions since 1982, when the death penalty was reinstated in Texas (see Lists of people executed in Texas). History The prison's first inmates arrived on October 2, 1849.Hollister, Stacy.Texas Tidbits" ''Texas Monthly''. July 2002. Retrieved on July 3, 2010. The unit was named after the County of Huntsville. Robert Perkinson, the author of '' Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire'', wrote that the unit was, within Texas, "the first public work ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electric Chair
An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York dentist named Alfred P. Southwick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a supposed humane alternative to hanging, and first used in 1890. The electric chair has been used in the United States and, for several decades, in the Philippines. While death was originally theorized to result from damage to the brain, it was shown in 1899 that it primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and eventual cardiac arrest. Although the electric chair has long been a symbol of the death penalty in the United States, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution. While some states still maintain electrocution as a legal method of ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Old Sparky
Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey was the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state. Connecticut Connecticut legislated lethal injection as its sole method of execution in 1995. The last person executed by electrocution was Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky in May 1960. Connecticut's "Old Sparky" has not been tested since it was moved from Wethersfield to the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers in 1962, and prison officials claim the prison's electrical system cannot handle it. Florida The electric chair was the sole means of execution in Florida from 1924 until 2000, when the Florida State Legislature, under pressure from the U.S. Supreme Court, signed lethal inj ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Death Penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The sentence ordering that an offender is to be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is ''condemned'' and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Crimes that are punishable by death are known as ''capital crimes'', ''capital offences'', or ''capital felonies'', and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against the person, such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape (often including child sexual abuse), terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against hum ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Texas State Highway 75
State Highway 75 (SH 75) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Texas. It follows the former routing of U.S. Route 75 (US 75), which was supplanted by Interstate 45 south of Dallas, except in Dallas, where the former US 75 is now SH 310, and through Ferris, Palmer, Ennis, and Corsicana, where the old highway is signed as a business route of I-45. The route was designated in 1987. Route description The southern terminus of the route is in Conroe, where it merges into Interstate 45 at the southern side of Loop 336. The northern terminus is approximately three miles north of Streetman, in the southern section of Navarro County, where it becomes the east side frontage road for I-45. Previous routes SH 75 was previously designated on August 21, 1923 to replace SH 13A from Goodnight east to the Oklahoma border. On May 19, 1924, the section from Goodnight to Jericho was cancelled. SH 75 was instead extended west to Washburn. By 1927 it was ru ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interstate 45
Interstate 45 (I-45) is a major Interstate Highway located entirely within the US state of Texas. While most Interstate routes which have numbers ending in "5" are cross-country north–south routes, I-45 is comparatively short, with the entire route located in Texas. Additionally, it has the shortest length of all the interstates that end in a "5." It connects the cities of Dallas and Houston, continuing southeast from Houston to Galveston over the Galveston Causeway to the Gulf of Mexico. I-45 replaced U.S. Highway 75 (US 75) over its entire length, although portions of US 75 remained parallel to I-45 until its elimination south of Downtown Dallas in 1987. At the south end of I-45, State Highway 87 (SH 87, formerly part of US 75) continues into downtown Galveston. The north end is at I-30 in Downtown Dallas, where US 75 used the Good-Latimer Expressway. A short continuation, known by traffic reporters as the I-45 overhead, signed as p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |