CHICKEN BUCKETS

Tuesday, August 2, 2011
DEAD MAN’S HAND DAY

Wild Bill (James Butler) Hickok was gunned down by Jack McCall, a desperado from Texas, in Saloon #10 at Deadwood, in the Dakota Territory on this day in 1876. Hickok was playing poker (with his back to the door) at the time of the shooting. McCall shot Wild Bill in the back, and was hanged for the shooting, never revealing his motive.Hickok, a Union army spy, a scout for General Custer, a marshal for Abilene, Kansas, and a crack shot with a pistol, was handsome, longhaired, and a flamboyant gambler. Doc Pierce, who prepared Wild Bill for burial was quoted as saying, “Wild Bill was the prettiest corpse I have ever seen.” The poker hand Hickok was holding when he died consisted of a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights. This combination became known as the dead man’s hand.

1776
The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place.

1897
Anglo-Afghan wars: The Siege of Malakand ends when a relief column is able to reach the British garrison in the Malakand region of colonial India's North West Frontier Province.

1903
Fall of the Ottoman Empire: an unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, takes place.

1934
Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.

1939
Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon.

1945
World War II: the Potsdam Conference, at which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, is concluded.

1964
Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin incident North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fire on the U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy.

1989
Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restoring democracy for the first time since 1972.

1990
Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War