August 2 in History: Declaration, Census, Bad Day for Wild Bill, Black Sox and Gulf of Tonkin

From the Chicago Tribune.

**  1776   Members of the Continental Congress began signing the Declaration of Independence.  (And most people think it was signed on July 4, 1776.)

**  1790   The enumeration of the first U.S. census began.  When it was over, the final total was 3,929,214.

**  1876   "Wild Bill" Hickok was fatally shot from behind while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.  He was holding two aces and two eights, a combination that became known as the "Deadman's Hand."

**  1921   After two hours of deliberation, the jury in the "Black Sox" trial of eight White Sox players returned a verdict of not guilty in the plot to fix the 1919 World Series.  (However, Baseball Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned them from baseball for life.)

A real sad day for us Sox fans as we might have had that successful reign that the Yankees had after that.

1964   The Pentagon reported the first of two attacks on U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin.  This was a major step for the U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War.

--  SadSoxCoot