On this day, in the town square of Springfield, Missouri, Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt had a shootout. It is one of the few recorded instances in the Old West of a quick-draw pistol showdown in a public place, in the manner later made iconic by countless novels and Western films. Once friends, the two gamblers had reportedly fallen out over women and the animosity came to a head during a game of poker at a place then known as the Lion House Hotel where Tutt had a large following. Tutt provoked Hickok all that day and the following morning and it was these provocations that eventually led to the showdown at 6 o’clock in the evening. When the two men faced each other in the town square and, almost simultaneously, fired their pistols, Tutt’s shot missed but Hickok’s hit Tutt in the chest, killing him almost immediately.
