On this day, September 16, 1902 an unknown man, about 37 years old walked into the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Skagway with a bomb demanding cash. Unfortunately for him, he fumbled the bomb, it went off and blew him and much of the bank up. His bones and skull led an interesting afterlife, first stored in the backroom and then the skull was put on display in Toronto at a bank there, perhaps as a warning to would be bank robbers. The fate of the skull seems to be somewhat obscure, although the bones were burned in a woodstove by the bank personnel some years later. One man, Mr. de Gex had removed a thumb and kept it in a jar of alcohol and would produce it for view for 50 cents to buy himself a quarter shot of whiskey.
Stories and Folklore from Skagway, Alaska