Highlights
for August 2
1876: "Wild Bill" Hickok is murdered
Aces and Eights; The Dead Man's Hand.
I've heard any combo of aces and eights qualifies, some say only 3 aces
and 2 eights; others 2 aces and 3 eights, and still others two pairs aces and
eights, but the real dead man's hand is two black aces, and two black
eights. But why the dead man's hand?
On August 2, 1876, "Wild Bill" Hickok, one of the greatest
gunfighters of the American West, is murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota, at a
poker table of the No. 10 Saloon. At 4:15 in the afternoon, a young
gunslinger named Jack McCall walked into the saloon, approached Hickok from
behind, and shot him in the back of the head.
Born in Illinois in 1837, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok
first gained notoriety as a gunfighter in 1861 when he coolly shot three men
who were trying to kill him. A highly sensationalized account of the gunfight
appeared six years later in the popular periodical Harper's New Monthly
Magazine, sparking Hickok's rise to national fame. Other articles and
books followed, and though his prowess was often exaggerated, Hickok did earn
his reputation with a string of impressive gunfights.
After accidentally killing his deputy during an 1871 shootout in
Abilene, Texas, Hickok never fought another gun battle. For the next several
years he lived off his famous reputation, appearing as himself in Buffalo Bill
Cody's Wild West show. Occasionally, he worked as guide for wealthy hunters.
His renowned eyesight began to fail, and for a time he was reduced to
wandering the West trying to make a living as a gambler. Several times he was
arrested for vagrancy.
In the spring of 1876, Hickok arrived in the Black Hills mining town of
Deadwood, South Dakota. There he became a regular at the poker tables of the
No. 10 Saloon, eking out a meager existence as a card player. On this day in
1876, Hickok was playing cards with his back to the saloon door when McCall
walked into the saloon, approached Hickok from behind, and shot him in the
back of the head. Hickok died immediately. McCall tried to shoot others in the
crowd, but amazingly, all of the remaining cartridges in his pistol were duds.
McCall was later tried, convicted, and hanged.
Hickok was only 39 years old when he died. The most famous gunfighter in
the history of the West died with his Smith & Wesson revolver in his
holster, never having seen his murderer. According to legend, Hickok held a
pair of black aces and black eights when he died, a combination that has since
been known as the Dead
Man's Hand.
More Highlights from the Old
West
1923 Harding dies before scandals break
In a hotel in San Francisco, President Warren G. Harding dies of a stroke at the age of 58. Harding was returning from a presidential tour of Alaska and the West Coast, a journey some believed he had embarked on to escape the rumors circulating in Washington of corruption in his administration.
Harding, a relatively unremarkable U.S. senator of Ohio, won the Republican presidential nomination in 1920 after the party deadlocked over several more prominent candidates. Harding ran pledging a "return to normalcy" after World War I and in November was elected the 29th U.S. president in a landslide election victory. Conscious of his own limitations, Harding promised to appoint a cabinet representing the "best minds" in America, but unfortunately he chose several intelligent men who possessed little sense of public responsibility.
In the summer of 1923, as Washington began discussing rumors of corruption in the departments of the Interior and Justice and in the Veterans Bureau, Harding departed on a speaking tour of Alaska and the West. On August 2, he died of an embolism, perhaps brought on by worry over the political scandals about to explode on the national stage. Early the next morning, Vice President Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president by his father, a notary public, in his family home in Plymouth, Vermont.
For the rest of his first term, one of President Coolidge's principal duties was responding to public outrage over the Teapot Dome oil-leasing scandals, the revelations of fraudulent transactions in the Veterans Bureau and Justice Department, and the reports of his predecessor's multiple extramarital affairs.
More on Harding
1934:
President of the Weimar
Republic Hindenburg dies; Hitler
Becomes Führer:
On this day in 1934, Paul von Hindenburg, president of the Weimar Republic of
Germany, dies, opening the door for the tyranny of Adolf Hitler, whom he had
appointed chancellor in 1933.
Hindenburg's life was one immersed in the Prussian military tradition. His
father was a Prussian officer, and Hindenburg fought in the Seven Weeks' War
(with Austria) at age 19, and later in the Franco-Prussian War. He was
eventually promoted to the rank of general before retiring from the military in
1911.
But it was during World War I that Hindenburg came to national prominence. He
was asked to serve as the superior to Major General Erich Ludendorff, a
prominent army strategist. Ludendorff succeeded in driving Russian invaders from
East Prussia-but it was Hindenburg who was given the credit. As the war
progressed, Hindenburg's stature grew to epic proportions, even influencing
Emperor Wilhelm II to make him commander of all land forces, despite
Hindenburg's rather dubious strategic skills. In fact, severe miscalculations on
Hindenburg's part resulted in Germany's defeat, which Hindenburg then blamed on
Ludendorff. (And which Ludendorff and the generals then blamed on the
politicians.)
A monarchist fond of authoritarian regimes, Hindenburg nevertheless took the
reigns of the postwar republican government as president in 1925. Fearful of
social unrest (from both the far right and far left), in light of the Depression
and the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which demanded heavy
reparations from Germany as the terms of its surrender, Hindenburg authorized
his chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, to dissolve the Reichstag (parliament) if
necessary and call for new elections-which he did. Those new elections ushered
in the Nazi Party as the second largest party in the Reichstag.
Re-elected as president in 1932, Hindenburg had already lost the support of many
of the more conservative elements in the government, who were flocking to
Hitler's party, which they saw as the key to renewed German prestige and the
bulwark against Bolshevism. After a succession of chancellors proved ineffectual
in reversing Germany's economic slide, and gaining the Nazi support necessary to
keep a coalition together, Hindenburg reluctantly named Hitler chancellor of
Germany. Hindenburg was never an ardent Hitler supporter, but he did little to
impede him as Hitler began employing terror tactics in his drive to consolidate
power for the Nazis.
When Hindenburg died, he was still a respected figure nationwide and was buried,
with his wife, at Tannenberg, the sight of the great victory against the
Russians during World War I. As World War II was came to a close, their bodies
were removed so that the advancing Russians would not get at them. They were
ultimately reburied by Americans at Marburg.
With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf
Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Führer,
or "Leader." The German army took an oath of allegiance to its new
commander-in-chief, and the last remnants of Germany's democratic government
were dismantled to make way for Hitler's Third Reich. The Führer assured his
people that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years, but Nazi Germany
collapsed just 11 years later.
Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria, in 1889. As a young man he
aspired to be a painter, but he received little public recognition and lived in
poverty in Vienna. Of German descent, he came to detest Austria as a
"patchwork nation" of various ethnic groups, and in 1913 he moved to
the German city of Munich in the state of Bavaria. After a year of drifting, he
found direction as a German soldier in World War I, and was decorated for his
bravery on the battlefield. He was in a military hospital in 1918, recovering
from a mustard gas attack that left him temporarily blind, when Germany
surrendered.
He was appalled by Germany's defeat, which he blamed on "enemies
within"--chiefly German communists and Jews--and was enraged by the
punitive peace settlement forced on Germany by the victorious Allies. He
remained in the German army after the war, and as an intelligence agent was
ordered to report on subversive activities in Munich's political parties. It was
in this capacity that he joined the tiny German Workers' Party, made up of
embittered army veterans, as the group's seventh member. Hitler was put in
charge of the party's propaganda, and in 1920 he assumed leadership of the
organization, changing its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' party), which was
abbreviated to Nazi.
The party's socialist orientation was little more a ploy to attract
working-class support; in fact, Hitler was fiercely right-wing. But the economic
views of the party were overshadowed by the Nazis' fervent nationalism, which
blamed Jews, communists, the Treaty of Versailles, and Germany's ineffectual
democratic government for the country's devastated economy. In the early 1920s,
the ranks of Hitler's Bavarian-based Nazi party swelled with resentful Germans.
A paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung (SA), was formed to
protect the Nazis and intimidate their political opponents, and the party
adopted the ancient symbol of the swastika as its emblem.
In November 1923, after the German government resumed the payment of war
reparations to Britain and France, the Nazis launched the "Beer Hall
Putsch"--an attempt at seizing the German government by force. Hitler hoped
that his nationalist revolution in Bavaria would spread to the dissatisfied
German army, which in turn would bring down the government in Berlin. However,
the uprising was immediately suppressed, and Hitler was arrested and sentenced
to five years in prison for treason.
Imprisoned in Landsberg fortress, he spent his time there dictating his
autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), a bitter and rambling narrative
in which he sharpened his anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist beliefs and laid out his
plans for Nazi conquest. In the work, published in a series of volumes, he
developed his concept of the Führer as an absolute dictator who would bring
unity to German people and lead the "Aryan race" to world supremacy.
Political pressure from the Nazis forced the Bavarian government to commute
Hitler's sentence, and he was released after nine months. However, Hitler
emerged to find his party disintegrated. An upturn in the economy further
reduced popular support of the party, and for several years Hitler was forbidden
to make speeches in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany.
The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 brought a new opportunity for the
Nazis to solidify their power. Hitler and his followers set about reorganizing
the party as a fanatical mass movement, and won financial backing from business
leaders, for whom the Nazis promised an end to labor agitation. In the 1930
election, the Nazis won six million votes, making the party the second largest
in Germany. Two years later, Hitler challenged Paul von Hindenburg for the
presidency, but the 84-year-old president defeated Hitler with the support of an
anti-Nazi coalition.
Although the Nazis suffered a decline in votes during the November 1932
election, Hindenburg agreed to make Hitler chancellor in January 1933, hoping
that Hitler could be brought to heel as a member of his cabinet. However,
Hindenburg underestimated Hitler's political audacity, and one of the new
chancellor's first acts was to exploit the burning of the Reichstag (parliament)
building as a pretext for calling general elections. The police under Nazi
Hermann Goering suppressed much of the party's opposition before the election,
and the Nazis won a bare majority. Shortly after, Hitler took on dictatorial
power through the Enabling Acts.
Chancellor Hitler immediately set about arresting and executing political
opponents, and even purged the Nazis' own SA paramilitary organization in a
successful effort to win support from the German army. With the death of
President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, Hitler united the chancellorship and
presidency under the new title of Führer. As the economy improved, popular
support for Hitler's regime became strong, and a cult of Führer worship was
propagated by Hitler's capable propagandists.
German remilitarization and state-sanctioned anti-Semitism drew criticism
from abroad, but the foreign powers failed to stem the rise of Nazi Germany. In
1938, Hitler implemented his plans for world domination with the annexation of
Austria, and in 1939 Germany seized all of Czechoslovakia. Hitler's invasion of
Poland on September 1, 1939, finally led to war with Germany and France. In the
opening years of World War II, Hitler's war machine won a series of stunning
victories, conquering the great part of continental Europe. However, the tide
turned in 1942 during Germany's disastrous invasion of the USSR.
By early 1945, the British and Americans were closing in on Germany from the
west, the Soviets from the east, and Hitler was holed up in a bunker under the
chancellery in Berlin awaiting defeat. On April 30, with the Soviets less than a
mile from his headquarters, Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun, his
mistress whom he married the night before.
Hitler left Germany devastated and at the mercy of the Allies, who divided
the country and made it a major battlefield of Cold War conflict. His regime
exterminated nearly six millions Jews and an estimated 250,000 Gypsies in the
Holocaust, and an indeterminable number of Slavs, political dissidents, disabled
persons, homosexuals, and others deemed unacceptable by the Nazi regime were
systematically eliminated. The war Hitler unleashed upon Europe took even more
lives--close to 20 million people killed in the USSR alone. Adolf Hitler is
reviled as one of history's greatest villains.
1990 Iraq invades Kuwait
At about 2 a.m. local time, Iraqi forces invade Kuwait, Iraq's tiny, oil-rich neighbor. Kuwait's defense forces were rapidly overwhelmed, and those that were not destroyed retreated to Saudi Arabia. The emir of Kuwait, his family, and other government leaders fled to Saudi Arabia, and within hours Kuwait City had been captured and the Iraqis had established a provincial government. By annexing Kuwait, Iraq gained control of 20 percent of the world's oil reserves and, for the first time, a substantial coastline on the Persian Gulf. The same day, the United Nations Security Council unanimously denounced the invasion and demanded Iraq's immediate withdrawal from Kuwait. On August 6, the Security Council imposed a worldwide ban on trade with Iraq.
On August 9, Operation Desert Shield, the American defense of Saudi Arabia, began as U.S. forces raced to the Persian Gulf. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, meanwhile, built up his occupying army in Kuwait to about 300,000 troops. On November 29, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if it failed to withdraw by January 15, 1991. Hussein refused to withdraw his forces from Kuwait, which he had established as a province of Iraq, and some 700,000 allied troops, primarily American, gathered in the Middle East to enforce the deadline.
At 4:30 p.m. EST on January 16, 1991, Operation Desert Storm, the massive U.S.-led offensive against Iraq, began as the first fighter aircraft were launched from Saudi Arabia and off U.S. and British aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. All evening, aircraft from the U.S.-led military coalition pounded targets in and around Baghdad as the world watched the events transpire on television footage transmitted live via satellite from Iraq. Operation Desert Storm was conducted by an international coalition under the supreme command of U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf and featured forces from 32 nations, including Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.
During the next six weeks, the allied force engaged in an intensive air war against Iraq's military and civil infrastructure and encountered little effective resistance from the Iraqi air force or air defenses. Iraqi ground forces were helpless during this stage of the war, and Hussein's only significant retaliatory measure was the launching of SCUD missile attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saddam hoped that the missile attacks would provoke Israel to enter the conflict, thus dissolving Arab support of the war. At the request of the United States, however, Israel remained out of the war.
On February 24, a massive coalition ground offensive began, and Iraq's outdated and poorly supplied armed forces were rapidly overwhelmed. By the end of the day, the Iraqi army had effectively folded, 10,000 of its troops were held as prisoners, and a U.S. air base had been established deep inside Iraq. After less than four days, Kuwait was liberated, and the majority of Iraq's armed forces had either surrendered, retreated to Iraq, or been destroyed.
On February 28, U.S. President George Bush declared a cease-fire, and on April 3 the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 687, specifying conditions for a formal end to the conflict. According to the resolution, Bush's cease-fire would become official, some sanctions would be lifted, but the ban on Iraqi oil sales would continue until Iraq destroyed its weapons of mass destruction under U.N. supervision. On April 6, Iraq accepted the resolution, and on April 11 the Security Council declared it in effect. During the next decade, Saddam Hussein frequently violated the terms of the peace agreement, prompting further allied air strikes and continuing U.N. sanctions.
In the Persian Gulf War, 148 American soldiers were killed and 457 wounded. The other allied nations suffered about 100 deaths combined during Operation Desert Storm. There are no official figures for the number of Iraqi casualties, but it is believed that at least 25,000 soldiers were killed and more than 75,000 were wounded, making it one of the most one-sided military conflicts in history. It is estimated that 100,000 Iraqi civilians died from wounds or from lack of adequate water, food, and medical supplies directly attributable to the Persian Gulf War. In the ensuing years, more than one million Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the continuing U.N. sanctions.
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