Photographer and locomotion pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, who miraculously made still photographs dance and gallop, was born on April 9th 182 years ago. He’s celebrated by a Google Doodle.

From Thom Andersen’s 1975 documentary, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer:

In 1874, Muybridge shot and killed his wife’s lover, Harry Larkyns, in a crime of passion. He was acquitted and his wife succumbed to a stroke soon thereafter. The baby born of the extramarital affair was raised in an orphanage. From Stanford Magazine: “THE OPERATIC EPISODE began on October 17, 1874, when Muybridge discovered his wife’s adultery. In 1872, he had married a 21-year-old divorcée named Flora Stone. When she bore a son in the spring of 1874, Muybridge believed that the child, Floredo Helios Muybridge, was his own–until he came across letters exchanged between Flora and a drama critic named Harry Larkyns. The most damning evidence was a photo of Floredo enclosed with one of the letters: Flora had captioned it ‘Little Harry.’

Convinced he’d been cuckolded, Muybridge collapsed, wept and wailed, according to a nurse who was present. That night, he tracked Larkyns to a house near Calistoga and shot him through the heart.

At his murder trial in 1875, the jury rejected an insanity plea but accepted the defense of justifiable homicide, finding Muybridge not guilty of murder. After the acquittal, Muybridge sailed for Central America and spent the next year in ‘working exile.’“