Above: a stunner of an image of U.S. actress Lana Turner made when she was filming The Bad and the Beautiful. It’s from 1952, but the movie went into wide release in January 1953, so you’ll sometimes see that date on the photo too. Turner might be on the list of twenty-five or so vintage stars with whom we’d most like to have had a drink. Set aside whether she’d have considered having a drink with us—highly doubtful, but that’s why it’s a hypothetical. In any case, we’d start with two actual glasses.
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.