Annie Oakley performed before Queen Victoria and international royalty at the Golden Jubilee celebrations in London.
On June 20, 1887, Annie Oakley performed as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show at celebrations marking Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in London, commemorating fifty years of the Queen's reign. The Wild West show had been invited to England as part of the American Exhibition, and its performances before Victoria and an assembly of European royalty became a sensation.
Oakley's precision shooting reportedly so impressed Queen Victoria that the monarch is said to have called her a "clever little girl," and Oakley later described being presented before the Queen as one of the great honors of her career. The event placed Oakley before an audience of unprecedented international prestige, including numerous heads of state and nobility gathered for the Jubilee festivities.
The Jubilee performance was pivotal in establishing Oakley's fame beyond American borders. It demonstrated that her skill could captivate not just frontier-nostalgic American audiences but the most elite echelons of European society, and it opened doors to further royal and celebrity encounters during the tour, including her famous performance for German royalty weeks later. This moment remains one of the most iconic in illustrating how a working-class Ohio markswoman rose to mingle with, and impress, the crowned heads of Europe.