New York journal and advertiser, June 22, 1899
This June 22 1899 issue of The New York Journal has a front page article about Charles Minthorn Murphy's attempt to cover a mile in a minute, drafting behind a train, including the "instantaneous photograph taken for The Journal" shown above. Riding on boards laid down over several miles of railroad ties between the tracks, this is one of the more extreme daredevil endeavors imaginable with a basic single-speed track bicycle. Whether Murphy was simply crazy or extremely brave or both is hard to say.
Wikipedia has a detailed description of his attempt to cover a mile in 60 seconds or less in this way. He didn't quite make it on June 21 1899 when he made the attempt documented in the above article and photograph. According to the article, he had plans to try again and expected to do a mile in 50 seconds, but there is no record that in fact he did try again - this one attempt was apparently close enough.
Murphy in later years a the first policeman to chase criminals in an airplane
According to Wikipedia, Murphy later was a motorcycle police officer; unfortunately he had several accidents and the last one led to his retirement. Nevertheless he lived 80 years despite his early propensity for rather risky activities.
Interestingly Wikipedia uses the public domain photo of Murphy in his police airplane shown above; apparently there is no good quality public domain version of a photograph of Murphy as shown in the newspaper available.
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