Mabel Stark: The World's First Female Tiger Trainer

For 57 years, a woman audiences knew as Mabel Stark walked into steel cages packed with tigers, wrestled her favourite among them to the ground in front of paying crowds, and survived at least 18 separate maulings along the way. She's usually remembered as the first woman to make a career out of training tigers, in an era when most circuses wouldn't let a woman near the cats at all. Her real name wasn't even Mabel Stark. A Rough Start in Kentucky She was born Mary Ann Haynie around 1888 or...