*Ø* Blogmanac | May 27 | Wild Bill Hickock and the dead man's hand

James "Wild Bill" Hickock, or 'Hickok', American frontiersman and marshall, was born on May 27, 1837. On August 2, 1876, while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, Jack McCall shot the marshall dead; McCall was later tried and hanged on March 1, 1877.


The hand that Hickock held at the time he was shot was a pair of eights and a pair of aces. This hand later became known famously as the "dead man's hand." What the fifth card Wild Bill was holding is a matter of conjecture – in the 1936 movie The Plainsman with Gary Cooper as Hickock, it was the King of Spades.

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The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind – that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done …
Rachel Carson, American author of Silent Spring, born on May 27, 1907

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
Rachel Carson