We were thrilled when we found this photo of Jane Wyatt with a gun because she’s one of those actresses that usually played good girls. But in 1951’s The Man Who Cheated Himself, which is where this photo comes from, she’s pretty bad. We won’t say more because we plan to discuss the film, but we haven’t spoiled it—she’s bad early on, and her escapade with the smoking gun is the premise for what follows. Wyatt later became a veteran television actress and earned a special place in the hearts of Star Trek fans for playing Spock’s mom in the 1967 episode “Journey to Babel.” In that episode her name was—we love this—Amanda. You’d expect something, maybe, spacier. But nope. She was plain old Amanda. But she was never a plain old Jane.
1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago
Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.