02-08-2025
Today in History: Verdict in 'Black Sox' trial
In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.
In 1876, frontiersman 'Wild Bill' Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.
In 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted seven former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious 'Black Sox' scandal (though they would later be banned from Major League Baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis).
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In 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.
In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler's complete takeover.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin, and Britain's new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.
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In 1974, former White House counsel John W. Dean III was sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean ended up serving four months.)
In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out by the US in Operation Desert Storm.)
