August 2

1867  Just one day after a nearly identical event occurred outside of Ft. C. F. Smith, the northernmost fort on the Bozeman Trail,  9th Infantry repulsed a Sioux and Cheyenne attack in  the mountains near Ft. Phil Kearney in the Wagon Box Fight, a battle again demonstrating the superiority of the new breach loading rifles over the muzzle loading rifle.  The soldiers were grossly outnumbered during the fight.

1876  James Bulter "Wild Bill" Hickock killed in Deadwood by John McCall in Deadwood's Saloon No. 10.  He was uncharacteristically sitting with his back to the wall and was holding a hand of cards made up of Aces and 8s, known ever after as a "Deadman's Hand".  McCall was shortly tried and found innocent, surprisingly enough. Thereafter he fled to Wyoming, where he was unwelcome by Wyoming authorities who regarded the Deadwood trial as invalid as the Deadwood settlement was illegal, being an unauthorized town on unceded Indian Territory.  McCall was subsequently tried in Yankton, Dakota Territory, and sentenced to death.

Hickock left behind a widow, Agnes Lake, in Cheyenne.  He'd written her:  "Agnes Darling, if such should be we never meet again, while firing my last shot, I will gently breathe the name of my wife — Agnes — and with wishes even for my enemies I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other shore."

1882  The  Brush-Swan Electric Light Company of Cheyenne incorporated.

1887         Rowell Hodge receives a patent for barbed wire, an invention that would make fencing the range practical.

1887  The Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne created.  

1903         Martha Jane Cannary, "Calamity Jane", died at age 51.  Her death on this date is particularly odd, as she claimed to have been married to Wild Bill Hickock, but to have divorced him so that he could marry Agnes Lake, although there seems to be no independent evidence for that.

1918  August 2, 1918. The odd war news.

In a lot of ways, the news of August 2, 1918, was the same in character as for other days, but with a slightly odd (and also, we'll note, period racist) tinge.

The article on the bottom right brings this paper here.  That must have been an awkward family reunion.

Sad news from Laramie on this day.  A professor of my former department at the University of Wyoming, the geology department, had died of disease while serving in France.  As he was a professor of "economic geology" at a later school, we can take it that he was a professor of economic minerals.  The war was taking quite a toll in all age ranges.

Evidence of that toll and the scale of the war is in this paper.  Every military age male, according to this Cheyenne paper, was now in service.

And the Onondaga had declared war.

On this paper, the terms used here are clearly racists in regard to African American soldiers.  It's odd, to say the least, to see headlines of this type in a newspaper in common circulation, giving us an idea of how deeply ingrained racists ideas were at the time.

1923  Thursday, August 2, 1923. The Death of Warren G. Harding.

Warren G. Harding died suddenly at 7:30 p.m. in a San Francisco hotel. As readers here know, he had been ill for several days prior.  His probable cause of death was a heart attack.

Harding had been traveling the US, including Alaska, in his Voyage of Understanding.  He was well liked during his period in office, and he was deeply mourned in the U.S., and around the globe, following his death at age 57.

Following his death, his reputation has declined.  He had not really wanted to be President in the first place, and it turned out that while he was personally not involved in them, his administration was scandal ridden.  Harding was not free from scandal himself, however, as he'd had at least two affairs during his marriage, the first of which was to a woman who may have been a German spy. The second would lead to the birth of an illegitimate daughter, his only child, a fact which was hidden during his lifetime and contested by his widow thereafter.

Elizabeth Ann Blaesing, daughter of Warren G. Harding,

Harding was seemingly unprepared for death and indeed, while he looked much older, at 57 he wasn't all that old.  His medical care while ill has been criticized as hastening his death, but at the time little could be done for strokes (which was what his death was attributed to at the time) and heart attacks were frequently fatal.  Given the history of his illness, there's reason to suspect that he may in fact have suffered a heart attack several days prior, or at least was suffering from heart problems several days prior.

Florence Harding, his widow, was fiercely protective of his legacy and reputation.  In photographs, she rarely appears to be happy while they were in the White House.  Very unusually for the age, she did not wear a wedding ring.  Harding was her second marriage, and she was slightly older than he was.  She'd die the following November at age 64.  Blaesing, who lived a quiet life and avoided commenting on her parentage, died at age 86 in 1995.

Most Americans would not learn of the Presidents' death until the following day, when newspapers hit their doorsteps.

As an aside, Harding's death remains relevant to the present age, and actually shows us how things have improved and not.  Medically, physicians may well have detected Harding's heart condition before it proved fatal, if they had our current abilities in that arena.  This is not necessarily so, however, which points out that our two top contenders for the Oval Office today are literally on death's doorstep.

Also of interest, in the era it was obviously easier to keep personal secrets, as Harding had done for many years.  Keeping an illegitimate child of a President unknown is almost unimaginable today.  But also of interest is that it would have been a devastating scandal had the news broken.  As recently as President Clinton's term in office, an affair was scandalous, but now there's real reason to wonder if it would be.  Indeed, a certain section of former President Trump's support comes from Evangelical Christians (although not all support him), which undoubtedly would not have occurred had Trump lived in the 1920s.

1985  A category 3 tornado occurred outside of Sheridan.

2001  The Casper Army Air Base was enrolled on the National Register of Historic Places.  The Air Base is now the Natrona County International Airport, but many original structures remain, and a museum is on the location.