Today In History - Aces & Eights (all black)...

...were the last hand ever dealt to James Butler Hickok (a hand later to become known as "Dead Man's Hand'). On August 2, 1876, he was shot in the back of the head, while holding that hand in a game at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, Dakota Territories. Jack McCall had come into the saloon from behind Hickok (who was quite unusually sitting with his back to the door) walked up to him, drew a pistol and said "Take that" while firing into the back of Hickok's head.

While he died at the hands of a coward and paid assassin (it was later brought out in McCall's second murder trial that he had been paid by other gamblers to kill Hickok) it was Hickok's shootout, on July 21, 1865, with Davis Tutt that made him famous. It is also one of the few such gunfights, and was the very first recorded gunfight, in the old west where two assailants faced off against one another and drew from the holster as is typically seen in movies. It most assuredly was not the usual method of gunfighting in that day; the shot fired by McCall that killed Hickok was ore the norm.

During his short life, he died at 39, he was a hunter, frontiersman, shootist, army scout, army wagon master, possible northern spy against the south, womanizer, gambler and lawman. Of all the legends of the Old West, Wild Bill was one of my favorites, if not the favorite, when I was a youngster. He was truly a man among some of my favorite men such a Buffalo Bill Cody, George A. Custer, Daniel Boone, and Calamity Jane (Yep, I know she was a she but have you ever seen her in pictures? Hickok reportedly had little to no use for her, maybe because she looked like a man and bragged and lied like one too. As a prank, his friends buried her next to him and this is well recorded. It was also reported to be one of Calamity Jane's last wishes. I guess both could be true.)

For more about Wild Bill Hickok, visit the sites at these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Bill_Hickok

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/hickok.htm

http://www.digitaldeadwood.com/historylink/people/hickok.html

http://www.historynet.com/wild-bill-hickok-pistoleer-peace-officer-and-folk-hero.htm

All the best,
Glenn B