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The Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago on August, 26, 1968 and conflict immediately erupted both on the Convention floor and out on the streets of Chicago. Inside the International Amphitheater a line was quickly drawn between hawks and doves concerning the handling of the Vietnam War and the party platform. Outside orchestrated demonstrations against the war quickly turned violent when Chicago Police and the Illinois National Guard were called in to quell the demonstrations. Stuck in the middle was then Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, known for his iron fist grip on the city, who hoped to showcase Chicago with the Convention. Unfortunately what many of us remember of this event was the rioting in the streets and not the debate on the Convention floor. Just one more traumatic event in a year filled with turmoil.

Thirty-six years after Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency, the one word Watergate is still synonymous with the scandal that forced him to that decision as well as being the yardstick used to measure the seriousness of any new and future political scandal. (Is it worse than Watergate?) The persistent fascination is that two years of a White House cover-up over a “third rate” burglary led to the downfall of the leader of the free world – who happened to be a man that many Americans loathed. The investigation also gave the American public – and the world – a glimpse inside the Nixon White House and into the psyche of Richard Nixon; his pettiness, his thin skin and need for secrecy - as well as the inadequacies of the men who surrounded, worked for and advised him. At times the Watergate saga was much like watching a slow motion train wreck.

Jimi Hendrix’s debut album with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, Are You Experienced, was released in the US on August 23, 1967. The album was recorded in England – Jimi had gone there to launch his career – and includes Purple Haze, Foxey Lady and Hey Joe and the electric guitar never sounded the same again.

Blues legend John Lee Hooker was born on August 22^nd, 1917 near Clarksdale, Mississippi. The son of a sharecropper, Hooker was a self-taught musician and with his guitar made his way north to Chicago just like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and a multitude of other blues musicians to record at Chess Records. He gained national fame after his appearance/performance on Maxwell Street in The Blue Brothers film and went on to perform with Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana Stevie Ray Vaughn and Van Morrison among others. Hooker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. He passed away in 2001.

On August 2^nd, 1876, James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood,  located in the Dakota Territory. Prior to his final stop in Deadwood, he’d been a Union soldier during the Civil War, specifically as a scout and a marksman. After the war he became a stagecoach driver and then a lawman in Nebraska and Kansas. After turning in his badge Hickcok had toured the East with Buffalo Bill and after giving an interview with Harper’s magazine was now famous as a gunslinger – Wild Bill claiming that he had killed at least 100 men. If the number seems preposterous, it should be noted no one argued with Hickok’s claim.

(From our Crime section archives)

On the very warm Chicago evening of July 22, 1934 John Dillinger exited the Biograph Theater after watching “Manhattan Melodrama”, (a gangster movie), starring Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy. With Dillinger was his new girlfriend, Polly Hamilton, and her “landlady” Anna Sage—“The Lady in Red”—who was really dressed in orange that evening.