On this date in 1964, Dallas nightclub owner Jacob Rubenstein — notorious to history as Jack Ruby — was condemned to the electric chair for the dramatic live-televised murder of accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, captured by snapping shutters in one of the 20th century’s indelible images.
Ruby would never sit on that mercy seat.
For one thing, his punishment arrived as the American death penalty lulled into hibernation. Had he lived his sentence eventually would have been vacated by the 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling. But instead of seeing that juridical landmark, the enigmatic Ruby died in prison inside of three years, awaiting retrial after an appeal.
On this day..
- 1874: Sid Wallace - 2020
- 1953: Abel Danos, le mammouth - 2019
- 1824: John Smith - 2017
- 1808: Thomas Simmons - 2016
- 1610: Henry Paine, shipwrecked mutineer - 2015
- 1908: Massillon Coicou and the Firminists - 2014
- 1726: William "Vulcan" Gates, Black Act casualty - 2013
- 1719: Mary Hamilton, lady in waiting - 2012
- 2009: Four Iranians - 2011
- 1757: Admiral John Byng - 2010
- 1551: Alice Arden, husband killer - 2009
- 1957: Evagoras Pallikarides, teenage guerrilla poet - 2008