Defeats sharpshooter Frank Butler in shooting match

Around May 1, 1875, a teenage Annie Oakley—still known by her birth name Phoebe Ann Mosey—entered a shooting match near Cincinnati, Ohio, against traveling marksman Frank E. Butler, a well-known professional exhibition shooter. Butler had made a wager with a local hotel owner that he could beat any local challenger, not expecting his opponent to be a teenage girl of small stature.

To the astonishment of onlookers, Oakley hit all 25 of her targets while Butler missed his final shot, handing him a rare defeat. The match became local legend and marked the first widely told story of Oakley's extraordinary skill reaching beyond her rural hunting grounds.

Beyond its sporting significance, the match initiated a lifelong personal and professional partnership: Butler was impressed rather than humiliated, and the two began courting, eventually marrying the following year. Butler would go on to become her manager, helping engineer her transformation from rural markswoman into an international stage phenomenon. This single afternoon contest is often cited as the true beginning of the Annie Oakley legend, illustrating how quickly perceptions could be overturned when a woman demonstrated skill considered exceptional even among professional male shooters of the era.