Annie Oakley shot the ashes off a cigarette held in the mouth of Crown Prince Wilhelm, later Kaiser Wilhelm II.
During her celebrated 1887 tour of England with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Annie Oakley performed one of her most famous and daring trick shots: shooting the ashes off a lit cigarette held in the mouth of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, who would later become Kaiser Wilhelm II. The feat, dated to around August 1, 1887, required extraordinary precision and nerve, as any deviation could have caused serious injury to a foreign royal.
The stunt quickly became one of the most retold anecdotes of Oakley's career, emblematic of both her supreme confidence and technical skill. It also carried an unintended historical irony: decades later, following the outbreak of World War I, Oakley reportedly joked that she wished she had missed, given Wilhelm's role as the German Kaiser during the war against the United States and its allies.
Beyond its entertainment value, the event exemplifies the extraordinary trust and spectacle that characterized Wild West show performances, where death-defying precision shooting was staged before royalty and dignitaries as proof of American frontier skill. It reinforced Oakley's reputation as fearless and exceptionally controlled under pressure, further fueling her international celebrity and helping cement her legendary status in popular culture, referenced in books, films, and stage productions for over a century afterward.