The ace of spades was also featured in many movies about the Vietnam War. The symbol is also depicted on various unit crests, special operations privately-made patches, collar insignia, and on flags and painted vignettes on military aircraft and gun trucks. The ace of spades, the so-called “death card” is featured in many movies about the Vietnam War.

However, the card is just one more in the deck… though it still sits pretty in one of the most powerful places in the cards. The use of the card in tattoos, and even in music such as Motor Head’s famous “Ace of Spades,” has only made the notorious associations even harder to ignore. GIs would even sometimes wear the Ace of Spades in their helmets as a sign that death was coming with them as a fear tactic.Įver since Vietnam, the use of the Ace of Spades as a symbol of power and death has been a permanent link in the minds of many Americans. Thus ideas like “being aced” were linked to death and dying. This second point is a uniquely American tradition because, during the Vietnam War, American GIs began a tradition of placing the ace on a dead body, or leaving it in a village. This is both in the sense of tarot card reading (since the origin of tarot cards is muddled with the time frame of the adoption of regular playing cards), and in the sense that the Ace represented a mark. However, the Ace of Spades is also associated with death. Others have claimed that the Ace represents the people, the peasantry, and during the French Revolution it became a popular notion to show the revolt by placing the Ace as the high card over the royalty. Some have used the example that the Ace represents God, and thus the high card. The Ace, though originally the lowest card in value, was switched to the highest value in many decks.

The original fame of the Ace of Spades came because in games like Poker, where you can assign a value to a suit so that you know which hand beats which if there are duplicates, the Spades were considered the highest suit. However, the infamy presented by this card is a relatively recent phenomenon, as the history of playing cards goes.

However, perhaps the most famous playing card in the entire deck is the Ace of Spades. 54 cards, with 4 suits and 2 optional Jokers is the standard makeup, and it includes all the usual playing card celebrities like the Suicide King and the One-Eyed Jacks (or the knaves if you prefer). Anyone who’s ever sat down at a Blackjack table or passed a friendly and endless game of War has seen a deck of cards.

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