Pat Sajak ( Patrick Leonard Sajdak) is 76 years old today.
Sajak is a television personality and game show host. He is best known as the host of the American televisiongame showWheel of Fortune, a position he has held since 1981.
It was the Earp brothers against the Clanton-McLaury gang
in a legendary shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. It was a 30-second gunfight that is generally
regarded as the most famous shootout in the history
of the American Wild West.
Wild Bill Hickok threatens the friends of Davis Tutt after defeating Tutt in a duel.
In what may be the first true western showdown on this day in 1865, Wild Bill Hickok shoots Dave Tutt dead in the market square of Springfield, Missouri.
Hollywood movies and dime novels notwithstanding, the classic western showdown–also called a walkdown–happened only rarely in the American West. Rather than coolly confronting each other on a dusty street in a deadly game of quick draw, most men began shooting at each other in drunken brawls or spontaneous arguments. Ambushes and cowardly attacks were far more common than noble showdowns.
The first story of the shootout was detailed in an article in Harper’s Magazine in 1867, making Hickok a household name and folk hero.