10 Stories About Evel Knievel You Won't Believe
1. He Got His Name In Jail
Born Robert Craig Knievel, it wasn’t until 1956 that he acquired the name Evel. The story, as he told it, was that it came during a brief spell in jail on charges of either reckless driving or theft of hubcaps depending on which source you believe.
He was jailed with another local man, William Knofel, whom the officers had nicknamed ‘Awful Knofel’. During a roll call, one of the officers remarked on the presence of both Awful Knofel and Evil Knievel in one cell and the name stuck.
Knievel would later alter the spelling from ‘Evil’ to ‘Evel’ as a marketing move to escape any potential connections with the Hell’s Angels biker gang that became popular in the 1960s.