Timeline 1871-1874
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1871 Jan 1, The US Signal Office began publishing weather maps as the War Department Maps.
(www.lib.noaa.gov/collections/imgdocmaps/daily_weather_maps.html)
1871 Jan 1, Sir Henry Durand (b.1812), British lord of the frontier between India and Afghanistan, died after an elephant he was riding reared and brained him on a stone archway in Tonk (later Tank, Pakistan).
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Marion_Durand)
1871 Jan 3, Henry W. Bradley patented oleomargarine in Binghamton, NY.
(AH, 2/06, p.14)
1871 Jan 8, Prussian troops began to bombard Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1871 Jan 17, The 1st cable car patented by Andrew S. Hallidie. It began service in 1873.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1871 Jan 18, The German Empire (Deutsches Kaiserreich) was proclaimed in Versailles. William I of Prussia was proclaimed "German Emperor" (which was not the same thing as "Emperor of Germany"). The unification of Germany was the greatest geopolitical transformation of the period. Germany went on to adopt the mark as its common currency.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(AP, 1/18/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany)(WSJ, 5/6/08, p.A21)
1871 Jan 26, A US income tax, established during the Civil War, was repealed.
(MC, 1/26/02)(WSJ, 9/25/02, p.D8)
1871 Jan 28, France, under a provisional republican government, continued the war against Germany, but was forced to surrender in the Franco-Prussian War. Surrounded by Prussian troops and suffering from famine, the French army in Paris surrendered. During the siege, balloons were used to keep contact with the outside world.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(AP, 1/28/98)(HN, 1/28/99)
1871 Jan, The bombardment of Paris began.
(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1871 Feb 7, Karl Wilhelm Eugen Stenhammer, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1871 Feb 7, Henry Steinway (b.1797), German-American piano maker, died. In 2006 James Barron authored “Piano," a history of the development of the modern piano.
(WSJ, 7/15/06, p.P8)(http://tinyurl.com/qn6dy)
1871 Feb 9, Howard T. Ricketts, pathologist, was born.
(HN, 2/9/01)
1871 Feb 12, In France the new National Assembly opened at Bordeaux. Two-thirds of members were conservatives and wished the war to end.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1871 Feb 26, France and Prussia signed a preliminary peace treaty at Versailles.
(HN, 2/26/99)
1871 Feb 28, The 2nd Enforcement Act set federal control of congressional elections.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1871 Mar 1, James Denman, the San Francisco superintendent of schools, closed the Chinese school in Chinatown citing its daily attendance of just 20 students.
(SFC, 4/15/17, p.C2)
1871 Mar 1, Germans paraded down the Champs-Elysses, Paris, France during the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 3/1/99)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1871 Mar 1, J. Milton Turner was named US minister to Liberia.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1871 Mar 3, Congress passed the Indian Appropriation Act, which revoked the sovereignty of Indian nations and made Native Americans wards of the American government. The act eliminated the necessity of treaty negotiating and established the policy that tribal affairs could be managed by the U.S. government without tribal consent.
(HNQ, 5/15/98)
1871 Mar 3, Congress established the civil service system.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1871 Mar 5, In Brazil Maria do Carmo Jeronimo was born as a slave in the town of Carmo de Minas in Minas Gerais state under the rule of Emperor Pedro II. Jeronimo died in 2000, but the lack of a birth certificate prevented her being recognized as the world's oldest woman.
(SFC, 6/16/00, p.A34)
1871 Mar 21, Journalist Henry M. Stanley began his famous expedition to Africa to locate the missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone.
(HNPD, 11/10/98)(AP, 3/21/02)
1871 Mar 21, Otto von Bismarck became the 1st Chancellor of the German Empire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck)
1871 Mar 22, William Holden of NC became the 1st US governor removed by impeachment.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1873 Mar 24, Mary Ann Cotton (b.1832), English serial killer, was tried and hanged. She was said to have killed three of her four husbands, a lover, her mother and 11 of her 13 children.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Cotton)(Econ, 1/7/17, p.34)
1871 Mar 26, Serafín Alvarez Quintéro, Spanish dramatist, playwright (El Flechazo), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 Mar 26, Paris Commune was founded. The Parisians revolted against their government and tried to secede by electing their own government. The Commune of Paris refused to obey Adolphe Thiers, the elected president of the country. Thiers asked the Germans to release thousands of French prisoners and organized a powerful force to overcome the Commune.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 May 26, In France five priests, including Enrico Planchart and Ladislao Radigue, were killed as the Paris Commune revolutionary government that took control of Paris.
(AP, 11/25/21)
1871 Mar 27, Heinrich Mann, Germany, novelist, essayist (Blue Angel); brother of Thomas Mann, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1871 Mar 28, Willem Mengelberg, conductor (NY Philharmonic 1922-30), was born in Utrecht, Neth.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1871 Mar 29, Queen Victoria opened Albert Hall in London.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1871 Mar, Pres. Grant sent federal troops to South Carolina to suppress violence instigated by the Ku Klux Klan.
(AH, 6/03, p.28)
1871 Apr 11, James Burns (1808-1871), Scottish publisher and author, died. He had founded The Englishman’s Library in the 1840s, a series that went up to 31 volumes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burns_%28publisher%29)(Econ, 12/20/14, p.86)
1871 Apr 15, 'Wild Bill' Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.
(HN, 4/15/99)
1871 Apr 16, John Millington Synge (d.1909), dramatist and poet, was born in Ireland.
(HN, 4/16/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Millington_Synge)
1871 Apr 16, German Empire ended all anti-Jewish civil restrictions.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1871 Apr 20, The US 3rd Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowed the President to suspend writ of habeas corpus.
(http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/events/04_20)(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1871 Apr 21, Leo Blech, composer, conductor, was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1871 Apr 30, Anglo and Mexican vigilantes killed 118 Apaches at Camp Grant, Arizona, and kidnapped 28 children.
(www.desertusa.com/mag98/april/stories/campgrant1.html)
1871 May 9, In southern California debt-ridden Rancho Cucamonga was foreclosed on by Isaias Hellman.
(www.sbsun.com/ci_7323066)
1871 May 12, Segregated street cars were integrated in Louisville, Ky.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 May 12, Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (89), French opera composer, died.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 May 17, Gen. Sherman, Indian fighter, escaped in ambulance from the Comanches.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1871 May 21-May 28, French government troops attacked the Commune of Paris. As many as 10,000 communards were killed. Of 36,000 people arrested some 10,000 were executed, imprisoned or deported. In 2014 John Merriman authored “Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune)(Econ, 11/29/14, p.74)
1871 May 23, In France extremists burned the Tuileries Palace.
(SFC, 10/8/07, p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuileries_Palace)
1871 May 28, The last French communards of the Paris commune were shot against the Mur des Federes in Pere Lachaise cemetery by troops from Versailles. The Parisians had revolted against their government and tried to secede by electing their own government. The Commune of Paris refused to obey Adolphe Thiers, the elected president of the country. Thiers asked the Germans to release thousands of French prisoners and organized a powerful force to overcome the Commune.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(HN, 5/28/98)
1871 Jun 1, Korea’s Yongdu Fortress fired at a US fleet as it sailed up the Ganghwa Straits, which leads to the Han river. Some 650 Marines launched the first US invasion of Korea following a failed attempt by diplomats to open the Hermit Kingdom to trade. In the end, the Americans won the battle militarily, but lost diplomatically.
(www.shinmiyangyo.org/nsynopsis.html)(AH, 10/07, p.57)
1871 Jun 3, Jesse James and his gang robbed Obocock Bank in Corydon, Iowa, of $15,000.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1871 Jun 10, A landing force of 110 U.S. Marines came ashore on Korea's Kangwha Island, a fortress island guarding the approaches to Seoul. The Korean Punitive Expedition was launched from an American fleet, which anchored in the Han River after the isolationist Korean government rejected U.S. diplomatic demands for an explanation of the fate of an American ship and her crew believed killed by the Koreans. In two days of fighting, the Marines and sailors captured the defensive forts on the Island, leaving 243 Koreans dead. Nevertheless, the expedition failed to open Korea to foreign trade.
(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1871 Jun 17, James Weldon Johnson, African American poet and novelist who wrote "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," was born.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1871 Jun 27, The yen became the new form of currency in Japan.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1871 Jun, The California Historical Society was founded with 25 members. Many of its records were destroyed in the 1906 SF earthquake and fire.
(SFEC,10/26/97, DB p.55)
1871 Jul 3, William Henry Davies, Welsh poet, was born.
(HN, 7/3/01)
1871 Jul 3, Jesse James robbed a bank in Corydon, Iowa, of $45,000.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1871 Jul 10, Marcel Proust (d.1922), French novelist was born. His masterpiece was "Remembrance of Things Past." In 1998 it was turned into a comic book series. In 1999 Edmund White published the biography "Marcel Proust" for the Penguin Lives series. "We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full."
(SFC, 9/16/98, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/7/99, Par p.14)(AP, 8/2/99)(HN, 7/10/01)
1871 Jul 20, British Columbia joined Confederation as a Canadian province. Canada’s government promised BC a railroad link to the eastern provinces as it joined the nation.
(AP, 7/20/97)(ON, 11/07, p.9)
1871 Jul 25, A carrousel was patented by Wilhelm Schneider in Davenport, Iowa.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1871 Jul 26, Ferdinand Hayden (1830-1887) and his government sponsored team arrived at the Yellowstone Lake and the geyser fields.
(ON, 11/02, p.3)
1871 Jul 29, [Gregory Efimovich] Rasputin, mad Russian monk, seer, was born.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1871 Aug 3, Vernon Louis Parrington, critic, educator, author (Pulitzer 1928), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1871 Aug 19, Orville Wright (d.1948), aviation pioneer, was born in Dayton, Oh. His birthday is celebrated as National Aviation Day.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers)(WUD, 1994, p.1647)
1871 Aug 26, The Boston Revere Railroad Depot collision left 32 people dead on a single track railroad with no telegraph communications.
(THC, 12/2/97)
1871 Aug 27, Theodore Dreiser (d.1945), American novelist (Sister Carrie), was born. "Our civilization is still in a middle stage, no longer wholly guided by instinct, not yet wholly guided by reason."
(AP, 1/4/00)(HN, 8/27/00)
1871 Aug 30, Ernest Rutherford (d.1937), physicist who discovered and named alpha, beta and gamma radiation and was the first to achieve a man-made nuclear reaction, was born in New Zealand.
(HN, 8/30/98)
1871 Aug, Joseph became chief of Nez Perce Indians in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon.
(ON, 3/04, p.1)
1871 Aug, Heinrich Schliemann obtained a permit to excavate the ruins of Troy.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.45)
1871 Sep 7, Cowper Phipps Coles, English inventor (Steel warships), drowned.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1871 Sep 11, The 1st passenger train passed through the Mount Cenis Tunnel between France and Italy. Work on the 8-mile tunnel had begun in 1861 under the direction of French engineer Germain Sommeiller (d.7/11/1871).
(ON, 2/03, p.9)
1871 Sep 19, President Abraham Lincoln's body was transferred to a partially completed permanent tomb at Springfield, Il.
(www.state.il.us/HPA/hs/Tomb.htm)
1871 Sep, John Wesley Powell began a 2nd expedition to survey the Grand Canyon, this time with a congressional grant of $10,000.
(ON, 5/02, p.5)
1871 Oct 2, Cordell Hull, Secretary of State for President Franklin Roosevelt who promoted cooperation with the Soviet Union against Adolf Hitler, was born.
(HN, 10/2/98)
1871 Oct 2, Mormon leader Brigham Young, 70, was arrested for polygamy. He was later convicted, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction.
(HN, 10/2/98)
1871 Oct 8, Around 9 p.m. on Sunday a fire broke out in or near Patrick and Catherine O'Leary's barn in the crowded southwestern section of Chicago. Fanned by high winds, the fire burned out of control in the tinder-dry city for more than 24 hours, until rain on Tuesday morning finally extinguished the flames. Three and a half square miles were leveled wiping out one-third of the city. The business district, the courthouse and the central water pumping station, burned to the ground. Thousands of Chicagoans fled the flames over the Randolph Street Bridge. Approximately 250 people were killed in the fire; 98,500 people were left homeless; 17,450 buildings were destroyed. The original Emancipation Proclamation was destroyed. Yet in spite of the devastation, the city was so quickly rebuilt that by 1875, few traces of the fire remained. Many people still believe that Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern which started the fire. The Chicago City Council once passed a resolution exonerating the cow and apologizing to the O'Leary family. Pegleg O'Sullivan kicked over a lantern after breaking into the O'Leary dairy barn to steal milk for a whiskey punch party.
(HNPD, 10/8/98)(HN, 10/8/98)(MC, 10/8/01)(SFC, 1/11/03, p.D6)
1871 Oct 8, The 1938 film "In Old Chicago," with Tyrone Power and Alice Faye, was a musical that built up to the Chicago fire.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(Hem., 7/95, p.83)(AP, 10/8/97)(TVM, 1975, p.276)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.C8)
1871 Oct 8-14, In Peshtigo, Wisc., some 1,500 people were killed in the nation’s worst forest fire, which burned across six counties and into Michigan. Fires also broke out in the Michigan communities of Holland, Manistee and Port Huron.
(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(WSJ, 8/4/04, p.B1)(SSFC, 9/4/05, p.A7)(AP, 10/8/08)
1871 Oct 11, The Great Chicago Fire was finally extinguished after 3 days. Over 300 were killed. [see Oct 8]
(MC, 10/11/01)
1871 Oct 12, President Grant ordered the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan to disperse and disarm in five days.
(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1871 Oct 14, Alexander von Zemlinsky (d.1942), composer (Schneeman), was born in Vienna, Austria. His work included "Frulingsbegrabnis" (a cantata from 1897), "Die Seejunbfrau" (1902-1903), "Eine Florentinische Tragodie" (an opera from 1914-1915), "Symphonic Songs" (1929), and "Der Zwerg" (The Dwarf, an opera from 1921) and 7 other operas.
(WSJ, 6/11/98, p.A20)(MC, 10/14/01)
1871 Oct 17, President Grant suspended writ of habeas corpus in South Carolina in response to violence by the KKK. It applied to all arrests made by US marshals and federal troops in nine of the state’s western counties. By the end of November some 600 arrests were made.
(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1871 Oct 18, Charles Babbage (b.1792), English mathematician and inventor of a calculating machine, died. In 2001 Doron Swade authored “The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer."
(www.thocp.net/biographies/babbage_charles.html)(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)
1871 Oct 24, Anti-Chinese rioting took place in Los Angeles. A mob in Los Angeles hanged 16 Chinese men and one woman after a policeman was shot, but not killed.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.M5)(Econ, 10/3/15, p.88)
1871 Oct 27, Boss Tweed (William Macy Tweed), Democratic leader of Tammany Hall, was indicted on charges of fraud and grand larceny after NY Times exposed his corruption. The conviction were overturned but civil charges sent him to prison.
(MC, 10/27/01)(Arch, 7/02, p.24)
1871 Oct 30, Paul Valery (d.1945), French poet and essayist, was born in Sete. "Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder."
(HN, 10/30/00)(AP, 6/10/00)(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.T10)
1871 Nov 1, Steven Crane, poet and novelist, was born. He is best remembered as the author of "The Red Badge of Courage" (1895), a realistic portrayal of one soldier's Civil War battle experience. Crane's novels and short stories, which were influenced by the French Naturalistic writers, showed individuals at the mercy of natural and social forces. In the early 1890s Crane became a freelance writer in the Bowery area of New York City and, resulting from his firsthand observation of poverty in the slums, he wrote "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" (1893), a book considered shocking at the time. Crane covered the Greco-Turkish War in 1897 and the Spanish-American War in 1898 as a news correspondent. His later short-story collections, such as "The Open Boat" and "Other Tales of Adventure" (1898), are recognized as masterpieces of the form. Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis in 1900 at the age of 28.
(WSJ, 8/6/98, p.A13)(HNPD, 11/1/98)(HN, 11/1/98)
1871 Nov 10, Journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Central Africa at Ujiji near Unyanyembe on Lake Tanganyika. Stanley delivered his famous greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Livingstone replied: "Yes, and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you." The two explored Lake Tanganyika, but did not find the source of the Nile. When Stanley left on March 14, 1872, he begged the doctor to return to England with him, but Livingstone refused. He died in May 1873. Stanley returned to Africa a year later, the first of many subsequent African explorations.
(HFA, '96, p.42)(AP, 11/10/97)(HN, 11/10/98)(HNQ, 6/2/98)(HNPD, 11/10/98)
1871 Nov 17, In New York Army and Navy Journal editor William Conant Church and Captain George Wood Wingate founded the National Rifle Association, believing that northerners needed better firearms training.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association)(Econ., 1/23/21, p.23)
1871 Nov 21, Moses F. Gale patented a cigar lighter in NYC.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1871 Nov 21, The 1st human cannonball, Emilio Onra, was fired from a cannon.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1871 Nov 24, The National Rifle Association was incorporated in NYC, and its first president named: Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.
(AP, 11/24/97)(MC, 11/24/01)
1871 Nov 27, Ku Klux Klan trials began in Federal District Court in Columbia, SC.
(AH, 6/03, p.32)
1871 Dec 19, Albert L. Jones patented corrugated paper in NYC.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1871 Dec 24, Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Aida" had its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt. He completed it too late to celebrate the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(AP, 12/24/97)(PCh, 1992, p.522)
1871 Dec 27, World's 1st cat show took place at the Crystal Palace, London.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1871 Emily Carr (d.1945), Canadian artist and author, was born in Victoria. "You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming."
(AP, 7/11/98)(SSFC, 9/23/01, p.T2)
1871 Mary Edmonia Lewis, African-American sculptress, created her marble work "Hiawatha's Marriage."
(WSJ, 8/8/00, p.A20)
1871 Degas painted "Racehorses at Longchamp."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
1871 Edouard Manet made his lithograph "Civil War."
(LSA, fall/96, p.21)
1871 Thomas Moran of England was the artist on a US government expedition to Yellowstone and painted "Nearing Camp, Evening on the Upper Colorado River." The painting sold for $2.2 million in 1999 to the municipal art gallery in Bolton, Lancashire.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B2)
1871 In France James McNeill Whistler completed his best known work: "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother," aka “Whistler's Mother." His mother, Anna McNeill Whistler (d.1881), had moved into his apartment displacing his Irish model and sweetheart, Jo Heffernan. When his mother died Whistler borrowed £50 to get her portrait back from a pawn shop.
(WSJ, 5/31/95, p. A-14)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.C6)
1871 French artist Jules Tavernier arrived in New York and was commissioned by Harper's Weekly to travel across the US to make artistic renderings of the country. At the end of his expedition he settled in San Francisco and spent two years visiting the Elem Pomo Indian village at Clear Lake where he created "Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse" (1878).
(SFC, 8/28/21, p.D4)
1871 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published his "Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man,_and_Selection_in_Relation_to_Sex)
1871 English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1989), aka Lewis Carroll, authored “Through the Looking Glass," as sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll)
1871 St. George Mivart published "The Genesis of Species," a critique of Darwinism.
(NH, 5/96, p.54)
1871 John Tyndall, Irish scientist, authored “Fragments of Science." He was in effect the first science popularizer.
(WSJ, 4/14/07, p.P10)
1871 Euphemia Allen, 16, composed "Chopsticks," a one finger piano tune.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)
1871 In Utah the Mormon temple in St. George was completed. This was the 3rd Mormon temple to be built in the US and the first one in Utah.
(WSJ, 5/12/07, p.R10)
1871 The Salt Lake Tribune was founded by dissident Mormons.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
1871 The California Historical Society was founded. It is now located in SF at 678 Mission near Third. 415-357-1848. Open Tuesday-Saturday 11-5.
(SFC, 8/30/96, p.D5)
1871 The San Francisco Art Association was founded. This was the first art school in the West.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.8)(SFC, 5/30/03, p.E7)(SFC, 2/2/17, p.E6)
1871 The Red Star Line, an ocean passenger line, was founded as a joint venture between the International Navigation Company of Philadelphia, which also ran the American Line, and the Société Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Américaine of Antwerp, Belgium.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_Line)(SSFC, 4/21/13, p.H4)
1871 The Knights of Labor organization was started as a secret order at a meeting of tailors called by Uriah Stephens in Philadelphia. The Knights of Labor was organized on a national basis in 1878. It was an industrial union open to all gainfully employed skilled or unskilled workers and headed by a General Assembly. By 1886 there were 5,892 local assemblies and more than 700,000 members. Among other reforms, the Knights supported an 8-hour day, graduated income tax, boycotts, arbitration, and consumer and producer cooperatives. The organization began to decline after 1886. [other sources give 1869 as the founding year.]
(HNQ, 9/5/99)
1871 P.T. Barnum (Phineas Taylor Barnum,1810-1891), US showman, founded "The Greatest Show On Earth" in Delavan, Wis. He presented General Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind (1820-1870), "The Swedish Nightingale," to the public. He also introduced 3 rings to the circus.
(WUD, 1994, p.121)(WSJ, 1/7/97, p.A19)(WUD, 1994, p.832)(AP, 6/10/07)
1871 Steel plants and coal mines began to open up in Birmingham, Alabama.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.A6)
1871 The College of California was acquired by the state and became the Univ. of California.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4)
1871 In San Francisco William Hammond Hall was appointed the 1st Superintendent of Golden Gate Park after conducting his first survey there early this year. “Destroy a public building and it can be rebuilt in a year; destroy a city woodland park and all the people living at the time will have passed away before its restoration can be effected." Hall created the park’s original design over sand dunes known as the “Outside Lands."
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.A8)(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A7)(SFC, 9/19/20, p.B4)
1871 Fr. Joseph Neri, SJ, demonstrated the 1st electric light in SF from a window of St. Ignatius on San Francisco’s Market St. He used a large electro-magnetic device, the Alliance Machine, that had been used in the 2nd Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War for lighting defensive work.
(SFCM, 2/6/05, p.3)(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1871 The Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility was built and opened on the western edge of Cañon City.
(SFC, 6/13/13, p.A8)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.22)
1871 Robert Knight, Rhode Island textile mill owner, secured patent number 418 for the brand Fruit of the Loom.
(SSFC, 11/29/09, p.N6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_Loom)
1871 Catharine Beecher traveled around the US and found "a terrible decay of female health all over the land."
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.31)
1871 Baseball's National Association was formed and marks the beginning of the US major leagues.
(WSJ, 1/30/04, p.A1)
1871 The US federal government created the Life-Saving Service (LSS). It later became the US Coast Guard.
(ON, 1/02, p.1)
1871 The US Congress appropriated $50,000 to the new Department of Justice (DOJ) to form a suborganization devoted to "the detection and prosecution of those guilty of violating federal law." The amount was insufficient for the DOJ to fashion an integral investigating unit, so the DOJ contracted out the services to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency)
1871 In NYC the Black Laborer's Union and the Fenian O'Donovan Rossa paraded up Baxter St. to fight for the 8-hour day.
(SFC, 7/29/98, p.A19)
1871 US state insurance regulators created the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) to address the need to coordinate regulation of multistate insurers. Headquarters was later established in Kansas City, Mo.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.62)(www.naic.org/index_about.htm)
1871 In San Francisco Philip Arnold (40) and John Slack, prospectors from Kentucky, introduced a find of alleged diamonds and other precious stones to local businessmen.
(SFC, 4/26/14, p.D1)
1871 Haeger Potteries of Dundee, Ill., dates to this time.
(SFC, 1/4/06, p.G2)
1871 Mississippi purchased the property of Oakland College and renamed it Alcorn University in honor of James L. Alcorn, governor of the state. The college had closed its doors at the beginning of the Civil War so that its students could answer the call to arms.
(www.alcorn.edu/about/history.htm)
1871 A glass plant was built in a Missouri town that was named Crystal City. By 1895 the factory was acquired by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, later PPG Industries, which added a glass factory billed as the largest in the world. In 1990 it was closed and bulldozed, leaving lingering environmental contamination at the 250-acre site.
(WSJ, 9/16/08, p.A22)
1871 Phil D. Beckwith founded the Round Oak Stove Co. in Dowagiac, Mich.
(SFC, 1/4/06, p.G2)
1871 J. Pierpont Morgan joined with a friend to form the banking firm Drexel, Morgan.
(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)
1871 Western Union started handling money transfers.
(SFC, 2/2/06, p.A13)
1871 Luther Burbank developed the Russet Burbank potato, later identified with Idaho.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1871 Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev developed the periodic classification system of the elements, presenting a periodic table listing the elements in 1871. [see 1869] Born in Siberia, the last of 17 children, Mendeleyev eventually found success in academia. While writing a basic textbook on chemistry in the 1860s, he attempted to find a way to classify the elements. His periodic system gained acceptance over time. His periodic table left gaps for elements as yet undiscovered, but he correctly predicted the properties of three of those elements. The table and his concepts of periodic law gained more acceptance with the approach of the 20th century, forming the basis for modern chemistry.
(HNQ, 1/4/01)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A17)
1871 America added 6,000 miles of railway track this year in an endeavor that occupied a tenth of its industrial labor force.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.64)
1871 The number of cattle shipped to Chicago grew to 600,000. Abilene may have been the first cow town, but disease and rowdy cowboys shifted the cow capital first to Wichita, then to Dodge City, Kansas. The profits to be made were immense, with a $5 steer in Texas bringing up to $45 in Kansas. In fact, the profitability of the cattle kingdom was one of the factors contributing to its demise in 1886. Greedy ranchers dangerously overstocked the grasslands with cattle by the mid-1880s.
(HNPD, 1/4/99)
1871 In Alaska a whaling fleet of 32 ships was abandoned off Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea. Seven other vessels escaped with all the crew members saved. In 1998 an attempt was made to locate the shipwreck site.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.A3)
1871 The Great Chicago Fire killed hundreds and left some 100,000 people homeless. Debris from the fire was dumped into a lagoon between downtown and the shore of lake Michigan and the landfill became Grant Park.
(WSJ, 8/21/96, p.A6)
1871 Brit Johnson, a black Texas ranch foreman, was killed by Kiowa raiders. His home life had been shattered in 1864 when an Indian raiding party killed his son and captured his wife along with 2 of their other children. He reportedly ransomed back his family in 1865 and continued searching for other stolen children before he was killed. Author Alan Le May (1899-1964) later used his story as a model in his novel “The Searchers" (1954).
(AH, 6/07, p.64)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Searchers_%28film%29)
1871 Tad Lincoln (18), son of Abraham Lincoln, died. Pneumonia was suspected.
(SSFC, 3/20/05, Par p.2)
1871 In Australia Sister Mary MacKillop (1842-1909) was briefly dismissed from the Roman Catholic Church after her order of nuns exposed a pedophile priest. She and 47 other nuns were thrown onto the streets of Adelaide, relying on the charity of friends to survive. In 2010 MacKillop was canonized as Australia's first saint.
(AP, 10/15/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacKillop)
1871 Belize was declared a Crown Colony.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A12)
1871 Brazil’s parliament passed the law of free womb, which stated that children born to slave mothers would not themselves be slaves.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.52)
1871 David O’Keefe (d.1901), an Irish sea captain, was shipwrecked on Yap Island. He hitched a ride to Hong Kong, found a new ship and returned to Yap. He made a fortune using a Chinese junk and metal cutting tools to bring stone money from Palau to Yap.
(SSFC, 11/26/00, p.T6)(AM, 3/04, p.22)
1871 The government of Costa Rica hired Minor C. Keith (23), an engineer from Brooklyn, to build a rail line. Keith grew bananas on the right of way to help finance the project. His enterprise grew to become the United Fruit Company, later Chiquita.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A1)
1871 In Denmark the Jutland-based Jyllands-Posten newspaper was founded.
(AP, 2/8/06)
1871 The Rothschild banking empire bankrolled France's reparations to Germany.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1871 Charles Joseph Minard, French civil engineer, died. In 1861 he used techniques, which he had invented to display flows of people, to create a graphic display of Napoleon’s 1812-1813 march to and from Russia.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.74)
1871 Germany adopted the gold standard.
(Econ, 7/5/14, p.57)
1871 Germany codified its antisodomy laws under “Paragraph 175" of the penal code.
(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.P2)
1871 B. Bloch & Co. was founded in Eichwald, Germany, for the manufacture of earthenware, porcelain dinnerware, household items and decorative pieces. The name was changed after World War I to Eichwalder Porcelain and Stove Factory Bloch & Co.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.G7)
1871 In India the Leopold Café opened in Bombay (later Mumbai). It became an institution very popular with foreign tourists trading India stories over beer.
(AP, 11/27/08)
1871 In India the Raj introduced the Criminal Tribes Act, under which members of some 150 tribes were forced to register with the police, forbidden to move around freely and in many cases herded into barbed-wire camps.
(Econ, 4/24/10, p.42)
1871 In Russia Alexander Ostrovsky wrote "The Forest." It was a comedy play of bad manners and greed that featured the character Raissa Pavlovna, a cousin to Turgenev's Natalia Petrovna.
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.E1)
1871 Pepita, a celebrated Spanish dancer, died. She had captivated British diplomat Lionel Sackville, later the second Lord Sackville in 1852 and bore him seven children, five of whom survived. In 2014 Robert Sackvile-West authored “The Disinherited: A Story of Family, Love and Betrayal."
(Econ, 4/26/14, p.82)
1871-1872 George Eliot (1819-1880), English writer born as Mary Ann Evans, published her novel "Middlemarch" in 8 parts.
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P8)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gelliot.htm)
1871-1909 James Burrill Angell (1829-1916) served as the president of the Univ. of Mich.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002271/James-Burrill-Angell)(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.23)
1871-1909 John Millington Synge, Irish playwright. He wrote such plays as The Shadow of the Glen, The Well of the Saints, Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World, The Tinker's Wedding, and the unfinished Deirdre of the Sorrows. He died on March 24. A biography of his life was written by David M. Kiely in 1995 titled: John Millington Synge: A Biography.
(WSJ, 12/6/95, p.A-18)
1871-1914 Robert Hugh Benson, English author and clergyman: "You can love a person deeply and sincerely whom you do not like. You can like a person passionately whom you do not love."
(AP, 9/16/98)
1871-1946 Florine Stettheimer, American painter, was born in Rochester, N.Y. She was a friend of Marcel Duchamp, her circle included Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove and Elie Nadelman. She was also close to Alfred Stieglitz, Henry McBride and Georgia O'Keeffe. "She keeps the comedy of her era alive for our own."
(WSJ, 7/18/95, p.A-12)
1871-1947 Louise Homer, American opera singer. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
1871-1951 Olive Fremstad, American opera singer. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
1872 Jan 6, Alexander N. Scriabin, composer (Prometheus), was born in Moscow.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1872 Jan 12, Russian Grand Duke Alexis began a gala buffalo hunting expedition with Gen. Phil Sheridan and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1872 Jan 31, Zane Grey, American West novelist (Riders of the Purple Sage), was born.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1872 Jan, US Attorney Gen’l. Amos T. Akerman (1821-1880), ardent prosecutor of KKK activities, resigned at the request of Pres. Grant.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_T._Akerman)(AH, 6/03, p.33)
1872 Feb 5, Lafayette Benedict Mendel, biochemist, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1872 Feb 6, Sir Thomas Phillips (b.1792), English book collector, died. He had declared that he wanted a copy of every book in the world.
(www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ph.htm)(Econ, 12/24/05, p.110)
1872 Feb 7, Alcorn A & M College opened.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1872 Feb 20, Metropolitan Museum of Art, incorporated in 1870, opened in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art)
1872 Feb 20, A hydraulic electric elevator was patented by Cyrus Baldwin.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1872 Feb 20, Luther Crowell patented a machine for manufacturing paper bags.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1872 Feb 20, Silas Noble and JP Cooley patented a toothpick manufacturing machine.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1872 Mar 1, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a measure creating Yellowstone National Park (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming). The act of Congress creating Yellowstone National Park was based on a report from an expedition led by Ferdinand Hayden. The 2.2 million-acre preserve was the first step in a national park system. Nathaniel Pitt Langford (39) was appointed the 1st Superintendent.
(SFC, 5/19/96, Z1, p.2)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(ON, 11/02, p.4)(PCh, 1992, p.526)(AP, 3/1/08)
1872 Mar 1, Doc Holliday received his Doctor of Dental Surgery.
(MesWP)
1872 Mar 5, George Westinghouse Jr. patented triple air brake for trains.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1872 Mar 7, Piet Mondrian (d.1944), Dutch abstract painter, was born. He was born in Amersfoort, near Amsterdam. His two principal styles date from before and after 1907. His Red Tree in 1908 reflects the stance of a Van Gogh. In 1911 he went to Paris and quickly changed his style in response to Cubism. He emigrated to New York in 1940. His Broadway Boogie Woogie was done in 1942-1943. He was labeled as a degenerate by the Nazis and was sent to New York to continue working. He went through a number of styles i.e. fauvist, neoimpressionist Dutch landscapes, to total abstractions in a manner of his own that he called neoplasticism. He was a pioneer of abstract painting.
(WSJ, 6/6/95, p.A-14)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-18)(SFC, 10/4/97, p.E1)(HN, 3/7/98)
1872 Mar 10, Giuseppe Mazzini (66), Italian revolutionary (Giovane, Italy), died.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1872 Mar 13, Oswald Garrison Villard, American journalist, was born.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1872 Mar 19, Sergei Diaghilev, ballet director, was born in Gruzino Novgorod, Russia. [see Mar 31]
(MC, 3/19/02)
1872 Mar 22, Illinois became 1st state to require sexual equality in employment.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1872 Mar 25, Vito Pardo, Italian sculptor (Columbus monument in Argentina), was born.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1872 Mar 26, Thomas J. Martin patented a fire extinguisher.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1872 Mar 26, A 7.8 earthquake shook the Owens Valley, California.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1872 Mar 31, Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, dance master (Imperial Ballet), was born in Russia. [see Mar 19]
(MC, 3/31/02)
1872 Mar, Joshua Norton, aka Emperor Norton, ordered SF and Oakland citizens to build a suspension bridge across the bay. His similar Aug 19, 1869, proclamation was later considered a forgery.
(SFC, 12/15/04, p.A1)(www.notfrisco.com/nortoniana/)
1872 Apr 1, The first edition of The Standard was published.
(OTD)
1872 Apr 2, George B. Brayton patented a gasoline powered engine.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1872 Apr 2, Samuel F.B. Morse (80), developer of the electric telegraph, died in New York. In 2003 Kenneth Silverman authored "Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse."
(AP, 4/2/99)(MC, 4/2/02)(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 11/23/03, p.M2)
1872 Apr 9, Samuel R. Percy patented dried milk.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1872 Apr 12, Jesse James gang robbed bank in Columbia, Kentucky, of $1,500 with 1 person killed.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1872 Apr 15, A cyclone hit the coast of Tanzania. All the ships in the harbor of Zanzibar, with the exception of a steamer that escaped to sea, were sunk or wrecked on the shore with great loss of life.
(https://tinyurl.com/3d7ujz54)(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A16)
1872 Apr 24, Mt. Vesuvius erupted.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1872 May 1, Hugo Alfvjen, composer (Midsommarvaka), was born in Stockholm, Sweden.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1872 May 10, The US General Mining Act law was passed. It let anyone 18 years or older claim public land for hardrock mining for as little as $2.50 per acre with no royalties to the federal government for gold, silver and other precious metals. The law was used by a Danish mining firm in 1995 for 110 acres of public land in Idaho that may contain a billion dollars worth of minerals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mining_Act_of_1872)(WSJ, 9/7/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A6)(SFC, 5/22/02, p.A7)(SFC, 12/25/15, p.A10)
1872 May 10, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for U.S. president. Thomas Nast depicted her as "Mrs. Satan." Woodhull adhered to a diet prescribed by Sylvester Graham, known for his ginger-colored crackers. Sylvester preached against demon rum and died at age 57 after administering himself a medicinal treatment with considerable liquor. Frederick Douglas, African-American statesman, was nominated as vice president on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, Par p.14-16)(SFC, 10/17/98, p.E5)(HN, 5/10/98)(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)
1872 May 12, J.C. Watson discovered asteroid #121, Hermione.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1872 May 18, Bertrand Russell (d.1970), English mathematician, philosopher and social reformer, was born.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)
1872 May 22, The Amnesty Act restored civil rights to Southerners.
(HN, 5/22/98)
1872 May, In San Francisco Andrew Smith Hallidie started excavation on Clay St. for a cable car system.
(ON, 10/03, p.9)
1872 May, Don Carlos (24), Spanish pretender, entered Navarre. King Amadeo I routed his forces at Oroquista and forced him to take refuge in the Pyranees.
(PCh, 1992, p.523)
1872 Jun 4, Kentucky conmen Philip Arnold (40) and John Slack took a party of San Francisco investors, including Asbury Harpending, to a site in Wyoming where diamonds and other precious stones were salted about. The con job took in hundreds of thousands of dollars before geologist Clarence King (30) identified the Wyoming site as a scam.
(SFC, 4/26/14, p.D2)
1872 Jun 4, Harvey Flint (d.1882) patented his Quaker Bitters, a general cure-all with 21.4% alcohol. He had recently left a family furniture business in Providence, Rhode Island, and began making Quaker Bitters under the name Flint & Co.
(SFC, 8/8/07, p.G2)(www.bottlebooks.com/temperance/temperance.htm)
1872 Jun 5, The Republican National Convention, the first major political party convention to include blacks, commenced.
(HN, 6/5/98)
1872 Jun 6, Alexandra Fjodorovna Romanova, the last Russian Tsarina (1894-1918), was born. She was later killed with her husband by revolutionaries.
(HN, 6/6/99)(MC, 6/6/02)
1872 Jun 17, Canadian George Hoover hauled in a wagon load of whiskey and set up a tent shop called Hoover’s Bar five miles west of Fort Dodge, Kansas. It was the founding business of Dodge City. The town up to this time had been dry.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.E4)(HN, 6/17/98)
1872 Jun 27, Paul Laurence Dunbar, African-American poet and writer, was born in Dayton, Ohio. His poems include "Oak and Ivory" and "Majors and Minors."
(HN, 6/27/99)(SC, 6/27/02)
1872 Jul 2, Jacob W. Davis of Reno, Nevada, sent Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco a sample of his work pants and a business proposal for Strauss to apply for a patent in exchange for a half share in the patent. Davis soon sold his half share to Strauss and moved to San Francisco to supervise the manufacture of the work pants.
(ON, 4/05, p.11)
1872 Jul 4, John Calvin Coolidge (d.1933) 30th President of the United States (1923-29), was born in Plymouth, Vermont. Calvin Coolidge, also known as 'Silent Cal,' was a Republican; Vice President from 1921-23 and succeeded to the Presidency on the death of Warren Harding in 1923; elected President in 1924 and served a full term. He was especially known for his economy of language. A lady dinner companion during his presidency told him she had a bet she could get him to say more than two words; he replied: "You lose." "Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good."
(AP, 7/4/97)(HN, 7/4/98)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)(AP, 12/26/99)
1872 Jul 16, Roald Amundsen (d.1928), Norwegian explorer, discoverer of the South Pole, was born.
(Ind, 4/27/02, 5A)(MC, 7/16/02)
1872 Jul 18, Britain introduced the Ballot Act for voting by secret ballot. [see Aug. 15]
(AP, 7/18/97)(HN, 7/18/98)
1872 Jul 18, Benito Juarez (66), general (battle of Acapulco) and Pres. of Mexico (1858-1872), died of a heart attack in the National Palace.
(MC, 7/18/02)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1872 Jul 20, Mahlon Loomis patented a wireless radio.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1872 Aug 1, The first long-distance gas pipeline in the U.S. was completed. Designed for natural gas, the two-inch pipe ran five miles from Newton Wells to Titusville, Pennsylvania.
(HN, 8/1/00)
1872 Aug 3, Haakon VII, King of Norway, was born in Charlottenlund, Denmark.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1872 Oct 10, William Henry Seward (b.1801), former Gov. of New York (1839-1842) and American Sec. of State from 1861-1869, died in Auburn, NY. He had arranged the purchase of Alaska for the United States. In 2012 Walter Stahr authored “Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man."
(Economist, 9/29/12, p.90)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Seward)
1872 Aug 14, Chief Joseph met in council with some 40 settlers in the Wallowa Valley and ordered them to leave the Nez Perce Indian land.
(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1872 Aug 15, The first secret ballot voting in England was conducted to re-elect Hugh Childers as MP for Pontefract in a ministerial by-election following his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. [see July 18]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Act_1872)
1872 Aug 19, Eugene-Prosper Prevost (63), composer, died.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1872 Aug 21, Aubrey Beardsley (d.1898), English artist (Salome), was born in Brighton.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1872 Aug 23, The 1st Japanese commercial ship visited SF carrying tea.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1872 Aug 24, Max Beerbohm (d.1956), critic, caricaturist, writer, wit (Saturday Review), was born in England. His work included "Nobody ever died of laughter."
(AP, 4/9/97)(MC, 8/24/02)
1872 Aug, The Black Duck, a 51-foot, single-mast ship, sank in Lake Ontario during a gale off the coast of New York. In 2016 divers found the wreck in 350 feet of water off Oswego.
(SFC, 11/26/16, p.A3)
1872 Sep 14, Britain paid US $15 million for damages during Civil War. The British government paid £3 million in damages to the United States in compensation for building the Confederate commerce-raider Alabama. The confederate navy‘s Alabama was built at the Birkenhead shipyards. Despite its official neutrality during the American Civil War, Britain allowed the warship to leave port, and it subsequently played havoc with Federal shipping. The U.S. claimed compensation, and a Court of Arbitration at Geneva agreed, setting the amount at £3 million.
(HNQ, 9/2/00)(ON, 9/01, p.12)
1872 Sep 17, Phillip W. Pratt patented his sprinkler system for extinguishing fires.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1872 Sep 21, John Henry Conyers of SC became the 1st black student at Annapolis.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1872 Oct 3, Bloomingdale's department store opened in NYC.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1872 Oct 9, Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913), a young traveling salesman of dry goods, started his mail-order business. The catalog of Aaron Montgomery Ward was the first to be called a "Wish Book." The 1871 Chicago fire had destroyed his initial inventory.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Montgomery_Ward)(SFC, 7/8/97, p.A1)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 12/29/00, p.A12)
1872 Oct 11, Harlan Fiske Stone, Supreme Court (1925-41) Chief Justice (41-46), was born in New Hampshire.
(MC, 10/11/01)
1872 Oct 12, Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer (Hugh the Drover), was born in Down Amp, England.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1872 Oct 12, Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise (d.1874) signed a peace treaty with Special Indian Commissioner, General Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909), in the Arizona Territory.
(HN, 10/12/98)(ON, 4/07, p.8)
1872 Oct 17, The Aculeo, a British square-rigged sailing ship, struck rocks near Montara. All 21 crew survived. The ship broke up in a week with her cargo of sheet iron, steel wire and coal from Liverpool.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T3)(Ind, 3/31/01, 5A)
1872 Oct 19, World's largest gold nugget (215 kg) was found in New South Wales, Australia.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1872 Oct 21, The U.S. Naval Academy admitted John H. Conyers, the first African American to be accepted.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1872 Oct 23, Theophile Gautier (61), French poet, writer, historian, and critic, died.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1872 Oct 29, J.S. Risdon patented a metal windmill.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1872 Nov 5, Ulysses S. Grant was re-elected US president.
(http://tinyurl.com/hdvqv)
1872 Nov 5, Horace Greeley (1811-1872), the New York editor who helped found the Republican Party, was badly defeated when he ran with Benjamin Gratz Brown as a Democrat against Ulysses S. Grant. He died two weeks later. Greeley's political aspirations were realized when he was named by the Liberal Republican Party to run for, but he lost the election, even though he polled almost as many popular votes as the hero of Vicksburg. His running mate, Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown, was a drunk. Greeley was in favor of graham crackers and opposed to women's corsets. He had also proposed to change the name of the country to Columbia.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.E8)(HNPD, 2/3/99)(WSJ, 6/5/96, p.A12)
1872 Nov 5, Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was arrested for trying to vote. On June 18, 1873, she was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election. She never paid the fine.
(AP, 11/5/97)(HN, 11/5/98)
1872 Nov 7, US cargo ship Mary Celeste set sail from NY on a journey which ended when it was found mysteriously abandoned the following month.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1872 Nov 9, Fire destroyed nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
(AP, 11/9/08)
1872 Nov 15, In California the 115 foot Pigeon Point Light Station near Pescadero started operation. It was built due to a series of shipwrecks in the area. Service ended in the 1980s and in 2004 it was transferred to the Peninsula Open Space Trust and the Calif. Dept. of Parks. On May 25, 2005 ownership was transferred from the US Coast Guard to the California State Parks. A 5-year, $5 million restoration campaign was begun.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T3)(SFEC,11/16/97, p.A2)(SFC, 3/23/04, p.B4)(SFC, 5/26/05, p.B1)
1872 Nov 28, The Modoc War of 1872-73 began in Siskiyou County, northern California when fighting broke out between Modoc Chief Captain Jack and a cavalry detail led by Captain James Jackson. At Lava Beds National Monument in northern California 52 [60] Modoc warriors held off over 1,000 US Army troops for five months. The 4 year conflict was described in the 1997 book "Hell with the Fire Out" by Arthur Quinn, a re-creation of the war from eye-witness accounts.
(SFC,10/16/96,zz1p.1)(SFEC, 4/6/97, BR p.5)(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T9)(HN, 11/28/98)
1872 Nov 29, Horace Greeley (b.1811), founder of the New York Tribune, died. The daily paper reflected much of the morality of his New England upbringing and he partnered a high standard of news gathering with printed arguments and urges against drinking, gambling, capital punishment and—increasingly in the 1850s—slavery. The slavery issue and his lifelong desire for high political office led him away from his political party, the Whigs, and to the newly emerging Republican Party. He usually sided with the radical wing of the Republicans, advocating early emancipation of slaves. Still unsuccessful in state and national bids, he eventually joined a group of Republican dissenters who formed the Liberal Republican Party to oppose Grant. While he received almost 44% of the popular vote, he received only 18% of the electoral vote, which were cast for other candidates due to his death. In 2006 Robert C. Williams authored “Horace Greeley.
(HNQ, 11/3/00)(WSJ, 5/25/06, p.D8)
1872 Dec 5, The Marie Celeste, a Canadian-built American-owned merchant brigantine, was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, unmanned and apparently abandoned (the one lifeboat was missing, along with its crew of seven). In 1885 the ship was destroyed when her last owner intentionally wrecked her off the coast of Haiti in an attempt to commit insurance fraud.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste)
1872 Dec 9, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921) became acting governor of Louisiana following impeachment charges against the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth. Pinchback continued as the state's 24th governor to Jan. 13, 1873. He was one of the most prominent African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction Era.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._B._S._Pinchback)
1872 Dec 12, Edwin Forrest (b.1806), American actor, died in Philadelphia.
(WSJ, 6/5/06, p.D8)(http://famousamericans.net/edwinforrest/)
1872 Dec 21, The HMS Challenger, under Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth, England, on a 4-year journey to survey the world’s oceans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_expedition)(Econ, 4/17/10, SR p.13)
1872 Dec 26, The 4th largest snowfall in NYC history reached 18 inches.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1872 Dec 28, A U.S. Army force defeated a group of Apache warriors at Salt River Canyon, Arizona Territory, with 57 Indians killed but only one soldier.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1872 Dec 28, James Van Ness (b.1808), the 7th mayor of San Francisco (1855-1856), died in San Luis Obispo, Ca.
(SSFC, 8/25/13, p.G3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Van_Ness)
1872 Dec, "Texas Jack" Omohundro, a genuine frontier scout, joined the more famous Western scout William "Buffalo Bill" Cody on a Chicago stage as the stars of Ned Buntline's melodrama The Scouts of the Prairie. John Burwell "Texas Jack" Omohundro was a Virginian who served with the Confederate Army and later fought a few Indians in Texas before helping to drive Longhorn cattle to North Platte, Neb. He met Buffalo Bill Cody there in 1870, and Cody persuaded Texas Jack to become a scout at nearby Fort McPherson. The two scouts resigned in the fall of 1872 and headed for the bright lights of the stage. The Scouts of the Prairie was a success, and they took the action-packed act on the road. In 1873, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack began starring in a similar melodrama called The Scouts of the Plains. They were joined for a short time by another frontier legend, Wild Bill Hickok, who had a lesser role because he was said to have "a voice like a girl."
(HNQ, 10/10/01)
1872 Julia Morgan (d.1957), architect, was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F4)
1872 Edgar Degas, French painter, journeyed to New Orleans where his mother was born. He made 22 paintings there. His time in New Orleans is covered in the 1997 book "Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)(SFC, 3/5/99, p.W12)
1872 Prussian-born American artist John Gast (1842-1896) painted “American Progress," a seminal example of American Western art.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gast_(painter))
1872 Winslow Homer painted the calendar favorite: "Snap the Whip."
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-12)
1872 Thomas Moran painted "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," a work that helped Congress decide to designate Yellowstone as the first national park.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1872 Mihaly von Munkacsy painted his oil "The Prisoner." It captured the despair and resignation of a ragged prisoner and his guard.
(WSJ, 3/19/97, p.A16)
1872 Camille Pissarro, French artist, painted "Louveciennes" and “The Fence."
(SFC, 1/20/99, p.E1)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.E5)
1872 Auguste Renoir painted a portrait of Camille Monet. In 1998 it was part of Steve Wynn's collection at the Nevada Bellagio casino.
(SFEM, 11/29/98, p.13)
1872 Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-1882), English painter and founder of the a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood created his work "Veronica Veronese."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti)(SSFC, 7/1/18, p.E2)
1872 Darwin wrote his "Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals." Also a 6th and last edition of "Origin of the Species" was published.
(NH, 8/96, p.56)(NH, 5/96, p.54)
1872 Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), French novelist, authored “Tartarin of Tarascon," the comic story of a big-hearted braggart.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.W7)
1872 Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), Russian author, completed his novel “The Possessed," also known as “Besy" or “The Devils." In it he foresaw political terrorism on the eve of its birth among revolutionary groups.
(WSJ, 1/28/06, p.P12)
1872 William Dean Howells authored his novel: "Their Wedding Journey."
(ON, 4/02, p.6)
1872 Friedrich Nietzsche published his first book: "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music," in which Greek tragedy was interpreted along Wagnerian lines with Appolonian and Dionysian opposites.
( LGC, 1970, p.266)(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A20)
1872 English author Marie Louise de la Ramee published “A Dog of Flanders" under her pseudonym "Ouida." It is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog Patrasche. Film versions were produced in 1914, 1924, 1935, 1959, 1975, 1992, 1995 and 1999.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dog_of_Flanders)(SFC, 6/11/10, p.C7)
1872 Leo Tolstoy wrote "Anna Karenina."
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.58)
1872 Mark Twain’s "Roughing It" was published. It chronicles the night he and 2 friends spent in a blizzard only 15 steps from the Desert Wells Trading Station in Nevada.
(SFEM, 9/15/96, p.24)(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.19)(http://tinyurl.com/2wvbxd)
1872 Jules Verne published his novel "A Journey to the Center of the Earth."
(PacDisc. Spring/'96, p.26)
1872 The French opera "Djamilah," composed by Georges Bizet, was set in Turkish-ruled Egypt. It told the story of a Muslim pasha who buys a young mistress in the Cairo slave market.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)(ON, 5/06, p.11)
1872 The opera "La Fille de Madame Angot" was written by Charles Lecocq. An English version in 1998 by David Scott Marley was titled "Daughter of the Cabinet."
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.D5)
1872 California banned boxing but fights continued to take place on boats and open fields and anywhere that police could be avoided.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.C2)
1872 A brick lighthouse was erected on St. Simons Island off the US coast of Georgia. The island is one of 4 barrier islands called the Golden Isles.
(SSFC, 2/11/07, p.G7)
1872 The New Market Theater in Portland, Oregon, was built at a cost of $100,000. A huge produce market occupied its ground floor.
(Exc, 6/96, p.71)
1872 The International Bible Students Association was founded in Pittsburgh by Charles Taze Russell. During the 1870s, Charles Taze Russell established himself as an independent and controversial Adventist teacher. Russell was succeeded as president in 1917 by Joseph Franklin Rutherford (Judge Rutherford; 1869–1942), who changed the group’s name to Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931 to emphasize its members’ belief that Jehovah, or Yahweh, is the true God and that the Witnesses were his specially chosen followers.
(AH, 4/07, p.30)(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/302393/Jehovahs-Witness)
1872 The German Evangelical Synod of North America was established.
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1872 The Butter and Cheese Exchange opened in NYC. It later became known as the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).
(WSJ, 9/28/05, p.C3)
1872 Peter French (23) rode from Ca. to Oregon with 1,200 head of shorthorn cattle for Dr. Hugh Glenn and settled in what is now called Frenchglen.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, p.T5)
1872 The federal government of the United States became more involved with education by granting public land to the states for the purpose of establishing agricultural and mechanical arts colleges. The initiative resulted in 68 of such land-grant colleges.
(HNQ, 9/4/00)
1872 A US law was passed to prevent bar owners from luring sailors offshore with booze and prostitutes. In 2002 it was used against Greenpeace activists.
(SFC, 12/30/03, p.A1)
1872 US Congress passed legislation forbidding advertisements on American currency and postage. The law regarding postage was amended in Jan, 2006.
(SFC, 6/1/06, p.A1)
1872 The Osage Indians purchased close to 2,300 square miles in the Oklahoma Territory from the Cherokee and created the Osage Reservation.
(SFCM, 3/9/08, p.20)
1872 The high chief of the tribes of the eastern Samoan islands gave America permission to establish a naval base in exchange for military protection.
(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.45)
1872 Little Rock, Arkansas, blasted huge chunks of its namesake rock to make room for a railway bridge. In 2009 the city launched a $650,000 project to excavate the remains of the neglected “Little Rock," estimated to be 300 million years old.
(WSJ, 1/28/09, p.A1)
1872 A group of New Orleans businessmen invented a King of Carnival -- Rex -- to parade in the first daytime parade. They introduced the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold; the Mardi Gras song, and the Mardi Gras flag.
(www.mardigrasneworleans.com/history.html)
1872 In Cambridge, Mass., the Metaphysical Club was founded as a discussion group and included Oliver Wendall Holmes, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and Chauncy Wright. In 2001 Louis Menand authored "The Metaphysical Club: A Story of ideas in America," which traced the American development of pragmatism.
(SSFC, 6/10/01, DB p.70)(SFC, 6/15/01, p.C15)
1872 The Arnold Arboretum was founded when the President and Fellows of Harvard College became trustees of a portion of the estate of James Arnold (1781–1868), a whaling merchant from New Bedford, Massachusetts.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Arboretum)
1872 In New Hampshire workers digging fence post hole, for businessman and naturalist Seneca Ladd (d.1892), discovered a lump of clay that contained a 4x2½-inch egg-shaped stone with a variety of carved features. It came to be known as the “Mystery Stone." Ladd’s daughter donated the stone to the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1927.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.E3)
1872 Jesse Hiatt on his farm in Winterset, Iowa, discovered a wild apple tree that he named the Hawkeye. It was later bought by the Stark brothers nursery in Louisiana, Missouri, and renamed the Delicious Apple.
(T&L, 10/1980, p.42)
1872 The Ransom and Randolph Co. was founded in Ohio for the manufacture of supplies to dentists, doctors and barbers.
(SFC, 8/24/05, p.G6)
1872 Andrew Carnegie built a steel plant and revolutionized the American steel industry. A few years after being hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1852, he began to invest in railroads, receiving huge dividends. When a new steel-making process made cheap steel possible, Carnegie built his own plant.
(HNPD, 8/11/98)
1872 Kaposi's sarcoma was first described by the Austro-Hungarian dermatologist, Moritz Kaposi.
(Ligand Corp. PB, 5/17/00)
1872 Jane Wells of Chicago invented the baby jumper, a hanging canvas saddle for tots to bounce in place.
(SFC, 2/28/98, p.B4)
1872 The San Francisco Bohemian Club was founded by 5 newspapermen, a Shakespearean actor, a vintner and a local merchant. The Bohemian grove, a 2,700 acre redwood grove on the Russian River, became their summer encampment. In 1974 John van der Zee authored “The Greatest Men’s Party on Earth."
(SFC, 1/24/02, p.A18)(WSJ, 7/15/04, p.A1)(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.A18)
1872 Vallejo, Ca., built its first City Hall. A new City Hall, was constructed in 1925. in 2010 structure was combined with the Masonic Temple to create Temple Arts Lofts.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya835znc)(SSFC, 10/15/17, p.N2)
1872 F.M. Riehl became the 1st man to swim across the SF Bay.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W4)
1872 Simon L. Jones, a secretive Welsh importer and exporter, acquired 1,500 acres of the original Coppinger land grant in San Mateo Ct. and named the area Hazel Wood Farm. 942-acres of the area later became San Mateo’s Wunderlich Park.
(Ind, 5/26/01, 5A)
1872 Rev. Ellsworth Jerome Hill of Kankakee crossed the river to Langham Island, 40 miles southwest of Chicago and found a number of rare native plants and a new plant that was not named until 1906 by botanist Edward Lee Greene as Iliamna remota, or the Kankakee mallow. A related plant, found 800 miles to the east in 1927, was named the Peters Mountain mallow.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.57-58)
1872 At a Memphis warehouse, a cask of molasses burst open on a loading dock and a wall of goo eight feet tall slowly surged downhill toward the Mississippi River. It caught a dozen slow-moving pedestrians unawares.
(HFA, '96, p.71)
1872 In Nevada Francis Marion "Borax" Smith (d.1931) found borax in Peel’s Marsh. In 1890 he developed the Pacific Coast Borax Company to transport the borax on a 1-day, 169-mile trip from Death Valley to a railhead at Mohave with the famed 20-mule team. He later consolidated the SF Bay Area trolley lines into the Key System.
(SFC, 11/6/98, p.D5)(SSFC, 10/20/02, p.A19)
1872 The US had 61,000 miles of railroads and about 15,000 acres of prime woodland were cut for rail ties in this year alone.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.51)
1872 Robert S. Duncanson, American painter, died. Duncanson was a black painter who lived in Cincinnati, Canada and Detroit. He had established himself in Cincinnati with portraits of abolitionist leaders and landscapes of the Hudson Valley. His paintings include: Land of the Lotus Eaters (1861), Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River, and View of Cincinnati, Ohio, from Covington, Kentucky (1851).
(WSJ, 11/1/95, p.A-12)
1872 William Henry Seward (b.1801), former US Sec. of State (1861-1869), died. In 1900 Frederic Bancroft authored "The Life of William H. Seward."
(WUD, 1994 p.1307)
1872 C.P. Scott began editing the Guardian in England and continued for almost 60 years. Scott was a friend of Zionist Chaim Weizmann. In 2004 Daphna Baram authored “Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel."
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.71)
1872 London’s Clerkenwell fire station began operations. Its closure on Jan 9, 2014, marked the end of Britain’s oldest operating fire station.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
1872 In England the right of assembly was established and the first lawful public meetings were held at the Reformer's Tree in Hyde Park.
(SFEM, 3/21/99, p.24)
1872 The British Consulate building, a colonial style house with an arcaded veranda was built along the banks of the Huang Pu River in Shanghai, and is now occupied by the Shanghai Foreign Investment Co.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 84)
1872 Zey, king of the Asante (Ghana), wrote to the British monarch asking for the slave trade to be renewed.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.73)
1872 Hawaii’s King Kamehameha V asked the Kaiser of Prussia to send a music teacher for the Royal Hawaiian Band. Henry Berger, a Prussian military band leader, arrived and led the group for 43 years. He was later considered the father of Hawaiian music.
(WSJ, 3/10/05, p.A1)
1872 A census, begun in 1867, was completed in India under the direction of the British.
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.48)(http://tinyurl.com/5wdrbws)
1872 A Japanese government decree struck down ancient conventions that kept women off many of the country’s mountains. In 2004 a 1,300-year tradition against women climbers on Mount Omine continued.
(SSFC, 9/5/04, p.A2)
1872 A police raid in Glasgow, Scotland, found only 2 pubs in 30 serving real Scotch whiskey.
(WSJ, 1/4/02, p.A7)
1872-1874 More than 4 million buffalo were killed by white hunters.
(HNPD, 8/21/98)
1872-1873 Vincenzo Gemito, Italian sculptor, makes terra-cotta busts of Giuseppi Verdi and his wife, Giuseppina Strepponi, during their stay in Naples.
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.90)
1872-1873 The Modoc War was fought in Siskiyou County, Ca. 60 Indian men, outnumbered 20 to 1, held off an army for nearly 6 months. In 1977 Arthur J. Quinn wrote "Hell With the Fire Out," a re-creation of the war from eye-witness accounts.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T9
1872-1933 Addison Mizner, American architect and playwright: "Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate." "God gives us relatives; thank God, we can choose our friends." In 2003 the Sondheim play "Bounce" was based on Addison and Wilson Mizner.
(AP, 12/2/97)(AP, 1/24/98)(WSJ, 7/3/03, p.D8)
1872-1945 Gottardo Piazzoni, Swiss-born artist. He moved to Marin, Ca. and painted landscapes.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.D1)
1872-1949 Georges Gurdjieff, Armenian author and explorer: "Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go."
(AP, 9/12/98)
1872-1950 Leon Blum, French statesman: "Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice."
(AP, 8/22/98)
1872-1951 Dr. Albert Barnes amassed a large collection of impressionist art (Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse) and locked the doors to his collection when art critics of the 1920s called the work "lunatic art." His story is documented on a new CD titled Passion for Art by Continuum (Corbis Publ.) and priced at $40-50. He made his money just after the turn of the century with Argyrol, a medical compound for treating infections.
(New Media, 2/95, p.84)(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.84)
1872-1960 Ellery Sedgwick, American editor: "In America, getting on in the world means getting out of the world we have known before."
(AP, 4/30/98)
1872-1961 Judge Learned Hand, American jurist: "A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few."
(AP, 12/13/97)
1872-1964 Alexander Meiklejohn, American educator: "There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is."
(AP, 2/19/98)
1872-1970 Bertrand Russell, English philosopher and mathematician: "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?"
(AP, 1/7/99)
1873 Jan 7, Adolph Zukor, movie producer, director, executive (Paramount), was born in Hungary.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1873 Jan 7, Charles Peguy (d.1914), French poet and writer, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P%C3%A9guy)
1873 Jan 13, William Pitt Kellogg (1830-1918), American politician and carpetbagger, began serving as the governor of Louisiana and continued to 1877. He was the state's last Republican governor until the inauguration of David C. Treen in 1980.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Kellogg)
1873 Jan 14, "Celluloid" was registered as a trademark.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1873 Jan, Ann Eliza Young (b.1844), one of the many wives of Mormon leader Brigham Young, revolted against the indignities and hypocrisy of polygamy. Her divorce was granted in January, 1875.
(SFC, 8/12/08, p.E5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Eliza_Young)
1873 Feb 1, Matthew Fontaine Maury (b.1806), American astronomer, died in Lexington Va.. He was also a historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer, author, geologist, and educator. Maury proposed that the US invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a “universal system" of meteorology, and he was the leading spirit of that pioneer scientific conference when it met in Brussels in 1853. Within a few years, nations owning three fourths of the shipping of the world were sending their oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where the information was evaluated and the results given worldwide distribution. His books included "The Physical Geography of the Sea" (1855), the first such comprehensive book on oceanography to be published.
(Econ, 2/27/10, SR p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury)
1873 Feb 2, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, German secretary of State (1932-38), was born. After WW II he was tried as war criminal and received jail sentence.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1873 Feb 12, The US Congress abolished bimetallism and authorized $1 & $3 gold coins.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1873 Feb 12, The 1st Spanish Republic was proclaimed. King Amadeo I abdicated following a 2-year reign. Emilio Cistelar y Ripolo (40) became prime minister, but the Carlist civil war continued.
(PCh, 1992, p.527)
1873 Feb 13, Feodor Chaliapin, opera singer, was born.
(HN, 2/13/01)
1873 Feb 27, Enrico Caruso (d.1921), was born. He was the Italian operatic lyric tenor who excelled in operas such as Pagliacci.
(Internet)
1873 Mar 1, E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896), a firearms manufacturer founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, started manufacturing the first commercial typewriter. James Densmore and George Yost contracted Remington to build 1,000 machines designed by Christopher Latham Sholes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Remington_and_Sons)(ON, 12/10, p.8)
1873 Mar 3, William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor (1924-52), was born.
(HN, 3/3/99)(SC, 3/3/02)
1873 Mar 3, US Congress authorized federal departmental postage stamps.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1873 Mar 3, US Congress and government raised their own salary, retroactively.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1873 Mar 4, Pres. Ulysses S. Grant accepted the oath of office, administered by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, for his 2nd term. At the inauguration ceremony 150 canaries, whose chirping was to amuse guests, froze to death in their cages.
(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A7)(www.bartleby.com/124/pres34.html)
1873 Mar 4, New York Daily Graphic, 1st illustrated daily newspaper in US, was published.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1873 Mar 9, Royal Canadian Mounted Police founded. [see May 23]
(MC, 3/9/02)
1873 Mar 10, Jakob Wassermann (d.1934), novelist (My Life as German & Jew), was born in Germany. "In every person, even in such as appear most reckless, there is an inherent desire to attain balance."
(AP, 3/25/97)(MC, 3/10/02)
1873 Mar 19, Max Reger, composer, pianist, prof. (Leipzig Univ), was born in Brand, Bavaria.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1873 Mar 20, Sergei V. Rachmaninov, Russian-US pianist, composer (Aleko), was born. [see Apr 1]
(MC, 3/20/02)
1873 Mar 22, Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1873 Mar 30, Benedict Augustin Morel (63), psychologist (dementia praecox), died.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1873 Apr 1, M. Namik Kemal's play " Vatan yahut Silistre" premiered in Constantinople.
(OTD)
1873 Apr 1, Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (d.1943) was born in Novgorod Province, Russia. [see Mar 20]
(AP, 4/1/98)
1873 Apr 1, The British White Star steamship Atlantic, enroute to NYC from Liverpool with 811 passengers under Capt. James Agnew Williams (33), sank off Nova Scotia killing 565 people, mostly women and children. A court of inquiry suspended Williams for 2 years.
(ON, 4/03, p.7)
1873 Apr 13, In the Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish, Louisiana, some 105 blacks were killed on Easter Sunday. Many bodies, hidden or dumped into the Red River; were recovered and found to have been mutilated. In the end, only nine men were arrested, and they were charged with the murder of only one man. Among those arrested was William J. Cruikshank. In 2007 Lalita Tademy authored her novel “Red River" based on the massacre.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Massacre)(http://tinyurl.com/2dyfuj)
1873 Apr 22, Ellen Glassgow, American novelist, was born.
(HN, 4/22/01)
1873 Apr 25, Howard R. Garis, children's writer, was born.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1873 Apr 25, Walther de la Mare, poet and novelist (Memoir of a Midget, Come Hither), was born.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1873 Apr 28, A. Manzoni (88), writer, died. Giuseppi Verdi dedicated his "Requiem" to his memory.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1873 May 1, David Livingstone (60), British physician, explorer (Africa), died in Chitambo, Zambia. His body passed through Zanzibar for a funeral in London in Apr 18, 1874.
(www.heroesofhistory.com/page55.html)(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.C9)
1873 May 2, Jurgis Baltrušaitis (d.1944), Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator, was born.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurgis_Baltru%C5%A1aitis)
1873 May 3, Nikolay N. Tcherepnin, composer of ballets, songs, was born in St. Petersburg.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1873 May 7, US marines attacked Panama.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1873 May 8, Melvil Dewey (d.1931) presented the 1st draft of his decimal classification system to the Amherst College Library Committee. [see 1876]
(ON, 3/04, p.12)
1873 May 8, John Stuart Mill (b.1806), British philosopher and economist, died in Avignon, France. He completed his autobiography just before death. Here he wrote that happiness is the incidental by-product of pursuing some other worthy goal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill)(Econ, 4/21/12, p.84)
1873 May 9, Howard Carter, discoverer of King Tutankhamen's tomb, was born.
(HN, 5/9/98)
1873 May 10, Belgian priest Joseph de Veuster (d.1889), aka Father Damien, arrived on Molokai, Hawaii, to tend the spiritual needs of the lepers. The Catholic priest spent his life ministering to the lepers and built homes, churches and moved the whole colony to a more sheltered area. Damien was beatified in 1995. The settlement peaked at about 1200. A film about him was shot in 1998 with Peter O’Toole and Kris Kristofferson.
(www.whirledwydeweb.com/kalaupapa/chronology.html)(SFEC, 9/8/96, p.T3)(WSJ, 8/14/98, p.A1)
1873 May 12, The penny postal card, issued by the Post Office Department, was first put on sale in Springfield, Mass., and in other cities a day later.
(www.dailymail.com/static/specialsections/lookingback/lb0201.htm)
1873 May 15, Nikolay N. Tcherepnin, composer of ballets, songs, was born in St Petersburg, Russia.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1873 May 20, Levi Strauss (b.1829), a Bavarian-born merchant in San Francisco, and Jacob Davis of Reno, Nevada, received a US patent their miners' work pants reinforced with copper rivets. They soon began marketing "waist overalls" at $13.50 per doz.
(SFC, 4/29/03, B1)(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A10)(SFC, 8/28/98, p.B4)(ON, 4/05, p.12)(SSFC, 3/24/19, p.D4)
1873 May 23, Canada's North West Mounted Police force was established. The North West Mounted Police was formed by the Canadian government to protect new settlers in the territory between Manitoba and British Columbia. [see Mar 9]
(AP, 5/23/97)(HNQ, 5/5/98)
1873 May 24, Leo Delibes' opera "Le Roi l'a Dit," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1873 May 27, The first Preakness [horserace] was held at Pimlico, Md. It later became part of the Triple Crown. Edward R. Bradley's Kalitan was the 1st winner.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)(WSJ, 11/21/00, p.A24)
1873 Jun 5, Sultan Bargash closed the slave market of Zanzibar. Missionaries bought the site and began building an Anglican cathedral.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C13)(MC, 6/5/02)
1873 Jun 16, Pres. Grant signed an executive order that permitted Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce to live in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon, to perpetuity.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, Par. p.5)(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1873 Jun 18, Suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1815-1906) was fined $100 in Canandaigua, NY, for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election. The fine was never paid [see Nov 5, 1872].
(AP, 6/18/97)(HN, 6/18/98)(ON, 12/09, p.4)
1873 Jun 28, Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and biologist, was born. He won a Nobel Prize in 1912 for the development of blood vessel suture technique.
(HN, 6/28/99)(MC, 6/28/02)
1873 Jun 29, China’s Emperor Tongzhi held the first imperial audience with foreign diplomats in 80 years. Japan’s foreign minister asked for compensation for an attack on sailors from the Ryukyu islands by aborigines on Taiwan. China disavowed responsibility.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.72)
1873 Jul 1, Prince Edward Island became the 7th Canadian province.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1873 Jul 10, French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) wounded Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) with a pistol.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud)
1873 Jul 21, At Adair, Iowa, more than seven years after the Liberty holdup, the James-Younger gang made their first train robbery. See 1866 for the 1st US train robbery.
(OGA, 11/24/98)(HN, 7/18/00)
1873 Aug 3, Inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco. Hallidie made the first cable car trip aboard his Nob Hill Line traveling down Clay St. from Knob Hill to Kearney and then back up.
(www.sfmuseum.org/bio/hallidie.html)(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A16)(AP, 8/2/06)(SFC, 5/30/15, p.C2)
1873 Aug 18, Leo Slezak, Austria tenor, actor (Othello), was born.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1873 Aug 18, Otto Harbach, songwriter (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes), was born.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1873 Aug 26, Lee De Forest (d.1961), inventor of the audion vacuum tube, was born in Council bluffs, Iowa. He is considered the father of radio.
(WUD, 1994 p.379)( http://www.britannica.com)
1873 Aug, The cannibalized remains of 5 men were found on the banks of the Gunnison River, Colorado. Alfred Packer (d.1907), one of a 6-man prospecting party, had emerged from the area 3 months earlier. Packer was arrested but escaped for 9 years. He then spent 18 years in jail and was paroled in 1901. [see Apr 13, 1883]
(AM, 5/01, p.50)
1873 Sep 2, San Francisco’s first cable car hit the tracks starting at Clay and Jones streets on Nob Hill.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Smith_Hallidie)(SFC, 2/1/14, p.C1)
1873 Sep 18, Jay Cooke & Co. announced that it was suspending trading due to bankruptcy. The firm had pioneered the sale of war bonds.
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A22)
1873 Fall, Leaders of the Northern California 1872 Modoc War were executed and survivors were exiled to Oklahoma.
(SFEC, 6/18/00, p.T7)
1873 Sep 20, A financial panic hit the NY Stock Exchange when the high-flying bond dealer, Jay Cooke, granted too many loans to the railroads. Panic spread to Europe as London and Paris markets crashed and the New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time for 10 days. The economy went into a 6 year depression. Philadelphia banker and newspaperman Anthony Drexel teamed up with J.P. Morgan to depose a rival bank run by Jay Cooke. They published allegations to undermine confidence and cause a run that led to a panic.
(WSJ, 2/27/95, p.A-10)(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.C1)(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A22)(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.G2)
1873 Oct 3, Captain Jack and three other Modoc Indians were hanged in Oregon for the murder of General Edward Canby.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1873 Oct 9, Charles Rudolph Walgreen, "the father of the modern drugstore" was born.
(HN, 10/9/00)
1873 Oct 19, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Rutgers universities drafted the first code of football rules.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1873 Oct 20, The P.T. Barnum Hippodrome featuring the "Greatest Show on Earth," opened in NYC.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1873 Oct 27, Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applied for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire. [see Nov 24, 1874] Joseph Glidden and Isaac Ellwood formed a company in De Kalb, Illinois to manufacture barbed wire, an essential product of old West. Patents on barbed wire were granted as early as 1867, but Glidden was the first to devise a commercially viable way of producing it after seeing a sample of barbed wire at a fair in 1873. Glidden and Ellwood’s product greatly increased the use of barbed wire to protect crops and livestock from roaming cattle. Open ranges dramatically dwindled in the face of new fencing over the next two decades.
(HN, 10/27/98)(HNQ, 2/12/01)
1873 Oct 27, Emily Post (d.1960), authority on social behavior and writer, was born into high society in Baltimore. Md.
(WSJ, 10/16/08, p.A13)
1873 Oct 30, P T Barnum's circus, "Greatest Show on Earth," debuted in NYC.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1873 Nov 1, In San Francisco Ned Allen, owner of the Bull Run dance hall on Pacific Ave., adjacent to Chinatown, was stabbed to death. Allen had rejoiced in being called the wickedest man in SF. Bartlett J. Freel, aka Barney Flinn, was soon identified as the killer. In April, 1874, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years in San Quentin.
(SFC, 4/25/15, p.C2)(SFC, 5/2/15, p.C4)
1873 Nov 4, Dentist John Beers of SF patented the gold crown.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1873 Nov 16, William Christopher Handy, W.C. Handy, father of the blues famous for "St. Louis Blues," was born in Alabama.
(HN, 11/16/98)(MC, 11/16/01)
1873 Nov 17, Budapest was formed from 2 rival cities, Buda and Obuda on the west bank of the Danube and Pest on the east bank.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Budapest)
1873 Nov 19, James Reed and two accomplices robbed the Watt Grayson family of $30,000 in the Choctaw Nation.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1873 Dec 1, In San Francisco James Otis (1826-1875) was sworn in as mayor.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Otis_(politician))
1873 Dec 7, Willa Cather (d.1947), American author famous for "O Pioneers" and "My Antonia," was born. "I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."
(HN, 12/7/98)(AP, 10/26/99)
1873 Leon Czolgosz (d.1901), anarchist and assassin of Pres. McKinley (1901), was born to Polish parents in Detroit.
(AH, 10/01, p.25)
1873 Degas painted “Degas Blanchisseuses souffrant des dent" (Laundry women with toothache). It was stolen in 1973 while on loan from the Louvre and recovered at a NYC Sotheby’s auction in 2010.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.83)
1873 Edgar Degas painted "Cotton Merchants in New Orleans."
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)
1873 Claude Monet painted "Sunrise," a depiction of the port of La Havre with ships in the Spring. Monet moved from Paris to Giverny in this year.
(SFC, 11/13/98, p.C8)(SSFC, 5/20/01, p.T8)
1873 Camille Pissarro painted "Street in Pontoise, Winter."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D1)
1873 Renoir painted "Woman in a Garden." It sold for $6.7 million in 2000.
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.W13)
1873 Repin created his painting "The Volga Barge."
(SSFC, 11/3/02, p.M6)
1873 Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), British economist, authored “Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market." The 1st edition was dated Dec 31, 1872.
(Econ, 8/18/07, p.68)(www.econlib.org/Library/Bagehot/bagLom.html)
1873 Mrs. H.W. Beecher published her "Motherly Talks With Young House-Keepers."
(SFC, 2/19/96, zz-1 p.2)
1873 James Fitzjames Stephen, journalist and jurist, authored "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," a devastating attack on the liberalism of John Stuart Mill.
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W17)
1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner authored “The Gilded Age," a novel set in the scandalous Grant administration.
(WSJ, 9/16/06, p.P10)
1873 American writer Charles Stoddard (1843-1909) began a long tour as special correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. The “South Sea Idyls," a collection of his travel tales, were published based on his 1864 travels to the South Sea Islands.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.D5)
1873 Gen'l. Lew Wallace wrote "The Fair God."
(HT, 3/97, p.66)
1873 The original Harford pier was built at Port San Luis Harbor, Ca. It was rebuilt in 1915 following a tidal wave and became known as the Avila Beach Pier.
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.G8)
1873 In SF the city’s International Hotel, built in 1854, moved from Jackson Street to 848 Kearny.
(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.B1)
1873 San Francisco’s first cable car hit the tracks starting at Clay and Jones streets on Nob Hill.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.C1)
1873 The Alaska Packers organized in San Francisco to transport workers for seasonal salmon canning work in Alaska. The Alaska Packers' Association (APA) was a San Francisco based manufacturer of Alaska canned salmon founded in 1891 and sold in 1982.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Packers%27_Association)(SSFC, 3/21/21, p.A2)
1873 The Hamilton-Turner House on Lafayette Square in Savannah, Georgia was built. It now sports a horse from a carousel on its roof, placed there by its current owner Ms. Nancy Hillis, author of the Savannah Map of Good and Evil.
(SFC, 6/25/95, p.T-6)
1873 In NYC a long brick building, 9½ feet by 42 feet, was built on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village on land used as an alley. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay later lived there, as did anthropologist Margaret Mead. It was dubbed NYC’s skinniest house and in 2010 sold for $2.1 million.
(SFC, 1/14/10, p.A4)
1873 Hope, Arkansas, was founded to accommodate the newly emerging Cairo & Fulton Railroad. It was named after Hope Loughborough, the daughter of one of the executives. Later Pres. Bill Clinton spent 4 childhood years at 117 South Hervey St. with his grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A3)
1873 Modern lawn tennis made its debut. It was a variation of a game played for centuries by royals. Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, a British army officer, devised the game for the entertainment of guests at his country estate.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(Econ, 4/24/04, p.81)
1873 Baseball was banned in Cuba under Spanish rule, but was never completely quelled and came back strong after the Spanish-American War.
(SFC, 5/29/99, p.B5)
1873 The "franking privilege" of sending mail free of charge, initiated in 1776 and extended to war veterans, became too widespread and was abolished because it had become too widespread and abused. In 1874 Congress began to gradually reinstate to federal agencies and representatives.
(HNQ, 9/19/00)
1873 The US Comstock Act was passed. It declared the public dissemination of information about contraception illegal. Until this time newspapers and magazines were filled with ads for birth-control devices and services. Anthony Comstock, morals crusader, successfully lobbied for a strict federal law on obscenity and established the New York Society for the suppression of Vice.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.39)(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)
1873 The US Supreme Court in the Slaughter-House cases limited the Privileges or Immunities in the 14th Amendment to a few minor federal prerogatives.
(WSJ, 3/14/09, p.W3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse_Cases)
1873 A lighthouse was built on East Brother island off Richmond between SF Bay and San Pablo Bay. It was automated in 1969 and turned into a bed and breakfast inn in 1979. A power cable to the island failed in 2021 threatening the future of the lighthouse.
(SFC, 7/6/01, p.A21)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C5)(SFC, 5/11/21, p.B1)
1873 The Univ. at Berkeley became part of the Univ. of California and was required by law to admit women. The first roofed halls including south Hall opened at Berkeley and Daniel Coit Gilman from Yale served as the first president of the new state university until 1875, when he accepted an offer at Johns Hopkins.
(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.24)(SFEM, 1/30/00, p.8)
1873 In San Francisco the Toland Medical college was gifted to the Univ. of California system.
(UCSF, Spring, 2003)(SFC, 5/22/16, p.N10)
1873 In SF Mifflin Gibbs, the owner of a boot shop at 636 Clay St., was elected as San Francisco’s 1st black judge.
(SFC, 7/2/07, p.B2)
1873 In Yosemite Valley the Cosmopolitan, a bath house and saloon, began its “Grand Register of Yo-Semite Valley" and continued with entries until 1884. In 2007 Bill Lane, former publisher of Sunset Magazine, purchased the book from the family of the owners of the Cosmopolitan for $130,000 and donated to Yosemite National Park.
(SFC, 12/15/07, p.A1)
1873 The big coho salmon runs of Marin County, Ca., began to decline when the first of seven dams was built in the Lagunitas Creek watershed.
(SFC, 6/24/14, p.A8)
1873 Adolph Coors selected the waters of Clear Creek, Colorado, for his dream of high producing a high quality beer.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, BR p.4)
1873 In Chicago bonds were issued for the Saginaw & Canada Railroad Co. The operation built 40 miles of track and went broke in 1876. The worthless bonds were later found and given to the Public Museum of Grand Rapids in 1992, where they were sold in the gift shop for $22.95. Scam artists acquired a large quantity in bulk and sold them as real bonds to investors for a total scam of some $12 million.
(WSJ, 2/25/99, p.A1,8)
1873 Adam Schaaf opened a piano company in Chicago. Pianos were made at his 6-story building on Wabash Ave until 1926.
(SFC, 2/22/06, p.G6)
1873 In Kansas an excavation found 11 bodies in a garden. A family of four who came to be known as the "Bloody Benders" had lured travelers into their home inviting them for a hot meal and a place to rest. Some later suspected the Benders killed up to 21 people. The Bender family had fled and were never captured.
(AP, 1/25/20)
1873 Boston, Mass., established a mounted police unit, the first such unit in the country. The unit was disbanded in 2009 due to budget cuts.
(SFC, 6/29/09, p.A4)
1873 In Marblehead, Mass., Lydia Pynkham, a Quaker and women's rights advocate, developed and began to produce and sell the Lydia Pynkham Vegetable Compound for problems that ailed women.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.A10)
1873 The ship Ironsides, a 219-foot long steamship, sank in 110 feet of water about four miles from her destination at Grand Haven, Michigan.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.8)
1873 James Edmond Scripps (1835-1906), the son of a prominent British book binder, tapped the growing class of working men and women by launching a newspaper, The Evening News (later, The Detroit News).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Scripps)
1873 The firm of Drexel, Morgan moved to 23 Wall Street. The firm grew by shifting its business from government finance in the 1870s to railroads in the 1880s.
(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)
1873 Asa T. Soule of Rochester, NY, concocted the alcohol laced Hop Bitters patent medicine and made a fortune. The Univ. of Rochester later declined a $100,000 offer to change its name to Hops Bitters Univ.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.B6)
1873 In Wisconsin the Racine Silver Plate Co. was founded.
(SFC,11/26/97, Z1 p.7)
1873 The Peshtigo inferno burned huge stretches of forest along the border of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
(HFA, '96, p.71)
1873 Booksellers Barnes & Noble began business.
(WSJ, 9/3/96, p.A6)
1873 Color photography was devised.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1873 James D. Dana, American geologist, rejected Hall's theory of subsidence by loading of the crust. He offered a new interpretation, namely that the down-warping of the crust was a cause not a result of the thick column of sediment. A long, deep depression in the crust offered a site for the accumulation of sands, silts and other sediments over a long period. This phase of down-warping and sedimentation gave way to one of uplift and compression. The trough was referred to by Dana as a geosyncline and the association of geosynclines with mountain building has now been demonstrated in many parts of the world.
(DD-EVTT, p.32)
1873 The "Big Bonanza," a huge silver deposit, was found by miners working for the Comstock Kings in Virginia City. The 1999 book "The Roar and the Silence" by Ronald James described the silver boom in Virginia City.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, Z1 p.4)
1873 Heinrich Schliemann, German archeologist, discovered a hoard of magnificent treasure within the ruins of Troy.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.42)
1873 Jean Louis Agassiz (b.1807), Swiss naturalist and educator, died. He wrote a succession of papers [1840] outlining continental glaciation not only of Europe but of North America.
(DD-EVTT, p.129)(AHD,1971, p.24)(HN, 5/28/01)
1873 The British Open was played at St. Andrews in Scotland for the first time. Nine Scots and an Englishman competed for the first prize of £11.
(Econ, 7/18/15, p.51)
1873 The four Martin brothers began making stoneware in London and continued to 1923. In 1885 they introduced jugs modeled with human faces on each side.
(SFC, 12/19/06, p.G3)
1873 British army officers brought back from India the game of poona. They played it on the country estate of the Duke of Beaufort. The estate was named Badminton and thus poona became known as badminton.
(WSJ, 7/23/96, p.A6)
1873 Britain sent an agent, Henry Wickham, to Brazil to get rubber seeds. The Seedlings were cultivated in Kew Gardens and transplanted to Malaysia.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R50)
1873 Hancock & Whittingham made earthenware in Stoke, Staffordshire, England, and continued to 1879.
(SFC, 1/23/08, p.G5)
1873 The four Martin brothers began making stoneware in London and continued to 1923. In 1885 they introduced jugs modeled with human faces on each side.
(SFC, 12/19/06, p.G3)
1873 In England the Brunner Mond chemical firm began operating a few miles from Quarry Bank Mill at Styal. In 2006 Brunner Mond was bought by India’s Tata Chemicals.
(Econ, 9/24/11, SR p.19)
1873 The British based Rio Tinto Company was formed by investors to mine ancient copper workings at Rio Tinto near Huelva in southern Spain. By 2003 the company had mining interests in 40 countries and revenues of $11.8 billion.
(www.riotinto.com/whoweare/timeline.asp)(WSJ, 11/17/04, p.A12)
1873 In Canada Louis Riel of Manitoba was elected to the federal Parliament in Ottawa but lawmakers were resentful of his 1869 uprising and moved to deny him his seat. This led to a nervous breakdown and he spent three years in a mental institution in Quebec.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.B2)
1873 In Canada female property owners in British Columbia got the right to vote in municipal elections.
(Econ., 11/28/20, p.16)
1873 A French expeditionary force in Vietnam sacked Hanoi's citadel.
(NG, May, 04, p.87)
1873 Ludwig II of Bavaria began the construction of his palace at Linderhof.
(SFEC, 4/9/00, p.T5)
1873 Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer founded the Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin as German Orthodoxy’s answer to the Judisch-Theologische Seminar in Breslau. Its outlook was that although Jewish law, the halacha, was immutable, it had to be couched in contemporary language. In 1990 Rabbi David Ellenson authored a biography of Rabbi Hildesheimer.
(Econ, 7/28/12, SR p.10,11)
1873 The Verein für Socialpolitik, Germany’s economic association, was founded.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.48)
1873 In Germany Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin began the conceptual work for his improved air machine. He planned a rigid structure with gas held at various intervals in the framework with engines for propulsion and a suspended gondola to house the engines, crew and passengers.
(AHM, 1/97)
1873 India’s introduced into the Statue Book of the Bengal Births and Deaths Registration Act, to be followed later by the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act of 1886.
(http://tinyurl.com/5wdrbws)
1873 Oji Paper was founded in Japan. In 2006 it was Japan’s biggest paper company.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.51)
1873 The Dutch began colonization efforts in Aceh province (Indonesia), which led to a decades-long war.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A30)(SFCM, 11/2/03, p.8)
1873 Holland America cruise line began operations from the Netherlands.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T5)
1873 In Romania a 130-km (80-mile) rail line was built from the city of Brasov to the medieval fortress town of Sighisoara.
(AP, 1/23/19)
1873 Many Basques fled Spain during the 2nd Carlist War.
(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A2)
1873 Some 400 Hindustani laborers arrived in Suriname. The Hindu festival, known as Diwali (the festival of lights), later became officially observed on Nov 3.
(SSFC, 10/27/13, p.N4)(http://tinyurl.com/o34hcdr)
1873 Russia established a fixed boundary between Afghanistan and it's new territories. Russia promised to respect Afghanistan's territorial integrity.
(https://www.afghan-web.com/history/chronology/)
1873 Siam’s (Thailand) King Chulalongkorn abolished prostration.
(Econ 5/20/17, p.33)
1873-1874 Spain’s system of federal government failed.
(Econ, 11/17/12, p.15)
1873-1878 Alexander MacKenzie, Liberal Party, served as the 2nd Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, '96, p.81)
1873-1879 A US economic recession took place over this period.
(WSJ, 11/29/08, p.B2)
1873-1914 Charles Peguy, French poet and writer: "It is impossible to write ancient history because we lack source materials, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many."
(AP, 7/28/98)
1873-1924 The Scandinavian Monetary Union established a common currency for its members.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A1)
1873-1933 Sandor Ferenczi, a Hungarian disciple of Freud. He accompanied Freud and Carl Jung on a visit to the US. His extensive correspondence with Freud was later published.
(SFC, 7/14/96, DB p.6)
1873-1939 Ford Madox Ford, English novelist, poet, critic and editor. Prof. Frank MacShane (d.1999) later authored a biography on Ford.
(WUD, 1994, p.554)(SFC, 11/18/99, p.C8)
1873-1951 Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist: "When I rest, I rust."
(AP, 7/29/97)
1873-1954 Colette, French author, whose works included "Cheri" and "Gigi." "To talk to a child, to fascinate him, is much more difficult than to win an electoral victory. But it is also more rewarding." In 1999 Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier published a 2-part biography: "Creating Colette: Volume One: From Ingenue to Libertine 1873-1913. The 2nd volume was "From Baroness to Woman of Letters 1913-1954." Other biographies included: "The Difficulty of Loving" by Margaret Crossland; "Colette: A Taste for Life" by Yvonne Mitchell; "Colette" by Joanna Richardson; "Colette: A Passion for Life" by Genevieve Dorman.
(AP, 10/18/97)(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.8)
1873-1961 Karl Schwarzschild, German astronomer and mathematician, made important contributions to Einstein's relativity theory. The Schwarzschild radius is the theoretical limit of a mass in size shrunken so as its escape velocity is equal to the velocity of light.
(TNG, Klein, p.77-78)
1874 Jan 1, New York City annexed the Bronx.
(MC, 1/1/02)
1874 Jan 4, Josef Suk, Czech violinist and composer (Asrael), was born.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1874 Jan 5, Joseph Erlanger, doctor (shock therapy Nobel 1944), was born.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1874 Jan 11, Gail Borden (b.1801), inventor of condensed milk, died in Borden, Tx. Epitaph: “I tried and failed, I tried again and again and succeeded."
(ON, 5/04, p.5)( www.famoustexans.com/GailBorden.htm)
1874 Jan 13, Battle between jobless and police in NYC left 100s injured.
(MC, 1/13/02)
1874 Jan 17, Chang and Eng Bunker (62), Chinese-Thai Siamese twins, died.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1874 Jan 22, [David Wark] D.W. Griffith, U.S. film director, was born. He was the most influential figure in early film history, and made "The Birth of A Nation" and "Intolerance."
(HN, 1/22/99)
1874 Jan, 25, The birthday of Somerset Maugham (d.1965), English author and playwright.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AHD, p.807)
1874 Jan 29, John David Rockefeller Jr, philanthropist, was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1874 Jan 31, Jesse James gang robbed a train at Gads Hill, Missouri.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1874 Feb 3, Gertrude Stein (d.1946), poet and novelist, was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. Her older brother, Michael, managed the family business, which included San Francisco's Market Street railway line. Her parents were Daniel and Milly. The family returned to America from Europe in 1878, and settled in Oakland, California, where Gertrude attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school. Her relationship with her brother, Leo (1872-1947), abruptly ended in 1914. Her work included "Three Lives," "G.M.P." and "Tender Buttons." Stein coined the term "Lost Generation" in reference to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the post-World War I years. The 40-year relationship between Gertrude and Leo is told by Brenda Wineapple in "Sister Brother, Gertrude and Leo Stein." "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." "It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business."
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein)(AP, 12/27/97)(AP, 9/3/98)
1874 Feb 9, Amy Lowell (d.1925), poet, critic, was born. "Youth condemns; maturity condones."
(AP, 11/25/00)(HN, 2/9/01)
1874 Feb 9, Jules Michelet (75), French historian (History of France), died. He was the first historian to use and define the word Renaissance ("Re-birth" in French), as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented a drastic break from the Middle Ages.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Michelet)
1874 Feb 12, Auguste Perret, French architect, was born. He pioneered in designs of reinforced concrete buildings.
(HN, 2/12/01)
1874 Feb 12, King David Kalakaua (1836-1891) of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), became the 1st king to visit US. King Lunalilo had died without an heir and the legislature elected lawyer David Kalakaua as king.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81kaua)(ON, 11/02, p.5)
1874 Feb 17, Thomas J. Watson Sr. (d.1956), U.S. industrialist, was born in upstate New York. In 1914 he began running the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., a predecessor to IBM. He converted the financially ailing manufacturing business into the international giant IBM.
(WUD, 1994, p.1614)(HN, 2/17/99)(WSJ, 5/15/03, p.A1)
1874 Feb 17, Adolphe Quetelet (b.1796), Belgian astronomer and mathematician, died. He founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet)
1874 Feb 20, Mary Garden, opera star, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1874 Feb 20, Benjamin Disraeli replaced William Gladstone as English premier. Disraeli's 2nd ministry continued to 1880.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli)
1874 Feb 21, The Tribune of Oakland, Ca., was founded by George Staniford and Benet A. Dewes. The Oakland Daily Tribune was first printed at 468 Ninth St. as a 4-page, 3-column newspaper, 6 by 10 inches. Staniford and Dewes gave out copies free of charge. The paper had news stories and 43 advertisements.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, BR p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Tribune)
1874 Feb 24, Honus Wagner, baseball shortstop, was born. He later became known as "The Flying Dutchman."
(HN, 2/24/01)
1874 Mar 2, Baseball batter's box was officially adopted.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1874 Mar 5, Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898), elected by the Mississippi Legislature, formally entered the US Senate. Bruce was the first full-term African American Senator (1874-1881). In 2006 Lawrence Otis Graham authored “The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty."
(SSFC, 7/2/06, p.M1)(www.csusm.edu/Black_Excellence/documents/pg-b-bruce.html)
1874 Mar 7, The opera “I Lituani," by Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886) premiered at Milan’s La Scala with great success. The libretto was based on Adam Mickiewicz's long epic poem Konrad Wallenrod. The opera was about the incursions of the Teutonic Knights against the pagan Lithuanians.
(www.lituanus.org/1991_2/91_2_09.htm)
1874 Mar 8, Millard Fillmore (b.1800), the 13th president of the United States (1850-1853), died of a stroke in Buffalo, N.Y.
(SFC, 2/21/97, p.A25)(AP, 1/7/98)(AP, 3/8/98)
1874 Mar 11, Charles Sumner (63), a white civil rights leader, died.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1874 Mar 15, Harold L. Ickes, New Deal politician, was born.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1874 Mar 17, Kincsem, a horse that never lost a race, was born.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1874 Mar 18, Hawaii signed a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
(HN, 3/18/99)
1874 Mar 22, Young Men's Hebrew Association was organized in NYC.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1874 Mar 24, Harry Houdini (d.1926), magician, escape artist, was born as Erik Weisz (Ehrich Weiss) in Budapest. Young Ehrich Weiss emigrated with his parents to New York and then to Wisconsin (1878). Sometime around 1891 he and a partner in a magic act billed themselves as the Brothers Houdini, in homage to French magician Eugène Robert-Houdin. As Harry Houdini, Weiss became world-famous for his mind-boggling escapes. At age 43 he had a volcanic love affair with the widow of Jack London, Charmian. In 1996 Kenneth Silverman wrote the biography: "Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss."
(WSJ, 10/29/96, p.A21)(HN, 3/24/98)(SFC, 7/7/98, p.B3)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A10)(HNQ, 5/16/99)
1874 Mar 26, Robert Frost, poet (d.1963), was born in San Francisco. Robert Lee Frost, American poet. In a biography of Frost by Jeffrey Myers: "Robert Frost: A Biography," the author claims that Frost moved his birthday up a year to make himself legitimate. A 3-volume biography by Lawrence Thompson was completed in 1976. Myers reveals that Frost's lover, Kay Morrison, was also involved with Lawrence Thompson, but that that would not be disclosed in the Thompson biography. "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out." [see Mar 26, 1875]
(WUD, 1994, p.571)(HN, 3/25/98)(AP, 3/26/97)(AP, 11/9/98)
1874 Apr 3, Eduardo Sanchez de Fuentes, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1874 Apr 5, Johann Strauss, Jr.'s Opera "Die Fledermaus" was produced in Vienna.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1874 Apr 15, George Harrison Shull, American botanist, developer of hybrid corn, was born.
(HN, 4/15/01)
1874 Apr 15, Johannes Stark, Nobel Prize-winning German physicist, was born.
(HN, 4/15/01)
1874 Apr 15, Members of the “Societe anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs" opened their first show, The First Exhibition of Independent Artists" on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.
(ON, 9/06, p.7)
1874 Apr 16, Dr. David Livingstone's corpse arrived in Southampton.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1874 Apr 18, David Livingstone was buried in Westminster Abbey.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1874 Apr 24, John Russell Pope, US architect (Jefferson Memorial), was born.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1874 Apr 24-26, The 2-story mansion leased by Thomas Clarke on the southwest corner of 16th and Castro in Oakland, Ca., was reported to be haunted. Dr. Joseph LeConte Sr., co-founder of the Univ. of California and the Sierra Club, was called in to evaluate the situation. A 360 page report was compiled but not released. In 1877 Clarke published a 23-page pamphlet called "The Oakland Ghost," in which he argued that the house was haunted.
(SFC,10/31/97, p.A4)
1874 Apr 25, Guglielmo Marconi (d.1937), inventor of the radio, was born. He was an Italian electrical engineer and the developer of wireless telegraphy. He won a Nobel Prize in 1909.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(AHD, p.798)(HN, 4/25/98)(SS, 4/25/02)
1874 May 4, Frank Conrad, electrical engineer and broadcasting pioneer, was born.
(HN, 5/4/01)
1874 May 12, The US Assay office in Helena, Montana, was authorized.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1874 May 13, Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical "On the Greek-Ruthenian rite."
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1874 May 29, G.K. Chesterton (d.1936), English poet-essayist, was born. "Every man is dangerous who only cares for one thing."
(AP, 8/4/99)(HN, 5/29/01)
1874 May 29, The present constitution of Switzerland took effect.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1874 May, John Wesley Hardin gunned down Charlie Webb in Comanche, TX.
(MesWP)
1874 Jun 8, Cochise (b.~1810), Chiricahua Apache war chief (his name meant “his nose") and leader of the Chokonen band, died on a reservation in the Dragoon Mountains in southeastern Arizona.
(http://tinyurl.com/aqhkr)
1874 Jun 21, The Schooner America, designed by George Steers, was sold at auction for $5000 to former Union Gen. Benjamin Butler, who transferred it from Annapolis to Portsmouth, NH, where he sailed it till he died. By 1942 the hull of the schooner became unsalvageable and it was burned. The rudder was saved and put on display at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.
(AH, 2/03, p.29,31)
1874 Jun 22, Dr. Andrew T. Sill of Macon, Missouri, founded osteopathy.
(MC, 6/22/02)
1874 Jun 22, Howard Staunton, world chess champion and designer of chess pieces, died.
(YarraNet, 6/22/00)
1874 Jun 25, Rose Cecil O’Neill (d.1944), illustrator, writer and creator of the Kewpie doll, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
(AH, 2/05, p.24)(www.britannica.com/ebi/article?tocId=9331987)
1874 Jun 28, The Freedmen's Bank, created to assist former slaves in the United States, closed. African American depositors lost some $3 million.
(HN, 6/28/99)
1874 Jun, In the Summer Willie Kennard, black Civil War veteran, was appointed the new Marshall at Yankee Hill, Colorado, after arresting Barney Casewit, rapist and murderer, and killing his 2 companions. Casewit was hung the next day after being tried and convicted under councilman Bert Corgan.
(WW, 12/96)
1874 Jul 1, The 1st US zoo opened in Philadelphia.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1874 Jul 2, Colonel Custer departed from Fort Abraham Lincoln with some 1,000 soldiers and 70 Indian scouts on a 1200 mile expedition to chart the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming western South Dakota, land which belonged to the Sioux. The expedition returned on August 30.
(AH, 6/03, p.37)
1874 July 3, In southern California Isaias Hellman forms the Cucamonga Homestead Association to sell land north of Base Line Road and west of Hermosa in Alta Loma.
(www.sbsun.com/ci_7323066)
1874 Jul 4, Social Democratic Workmen's Party of North America was formed.
(Maggio, 98)
1874 Jul 12, Start of Sherlock Holmes Adventure, "Gloria Scott."
(MC, 7/12/02)
1874 Jul 24, James Woodward and a colleague by the name of Mathew Evans, described in the patent as a "Gentleman" but in reality a hotel keeper, filed a patent for the Woodward and Evan's Light.
(http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Ontario/first_electric_light_bulb.htm)
1874 Jul 26, Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony, was born in Vishny-Volotchok, Russia.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1874 Jul 28, Ernst Cassirer, German philosopher, educator (Essay on Man), was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1874 Aug 2, Gold was discovered in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming and western South Dakota during an expedition led by Colonel Custer. The land belonged to the Sioux but was invaded by prospectors. Sioux leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull retaliated.
(HT, 3/97, p.43)(AH, 6/03, p.37)
1874 Aug 10, Herbert Clark Hoover (d.1964), the 31st president of the United States (1929-1933), was born in West Branch, Iowa.
(AP, 8/10/97)(SFEC, 1/12/97, Z3 p.4)(HN, 8/10/98)(AH, 12/02, p.20)
1874 Aug 10, Antanas Smetona (d.1944), the 1st president of Lithuania, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas_Smetona)
1874 Aug 11, Harry S. Parmelee patented a sprinkler head.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1874 Aug 27, Karl Bosch, German chemist (BASF, Nobel 1931), was born.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1874 Sep 1, In Australia Sydney General Post Office opened.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1874 Sep 2, Reese Durham, local manager of the Butterfield Stage Station in Yankee Hill, Colorado, decided to try to run the new black Marshall, Willie Kennard, out of town. He failed and died.
(WW, 12/96)
1874 Sep 12, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (b.1787), French historian, orator, and statesman, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Guizot)
1874 Sep 13, Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg (d.1951), 12-tone composer, was born in Vienna, Austria. He wrote the book "Style and Idea" and composed such works as the 21 songs of "Pierrot Lunaire" based on a poem by Albert Giraud translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben, "Moses und Aron," "A Survivor from Warsaw" and "Erwartung."
(LGC-HCS, 1970, p. 562-575)(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/22/96, p.A12)(MC, 9/13/01)
1874 Sep 14, In Louisiana the Battle of Liberty Place was an attempted insurrection by the Crescent City White League against the legal Reconstruction state government in New Orleans.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place)
1874 Sep 18, The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society was formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West. [see 1875]
(HN, 9/18/98)
1874 Sep 20, Gustav Holst, composer of "The Planets," was born.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1874 Sep 28, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie (d.1889) raided a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.
(HN, 9/28/98)(SFCM, 3/11/01, p.53)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta, known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrenders in Darlington, Texas. He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1874 Oct 9, In Switzerland the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was established by the Treaty of Bern. Prior to this each country had to prepare a separate postal treaty with other nations if it wished to carry international mail to or from them.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union)
1874 Oct 15, A US child labor law took 12 year olds out of work force.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1874 Oct 20, Charles Ives (d.1954), composer, was born in Danbury, Ct. His work included symphonies, songs, and "Three Places in New England." He was pioneer of dissonance as flavoring.
(WSJ, 8/15/96, p.A10)(HN, 10/20/00)(MC, 10/20/01)
1874 Oct 26, Peter Cornelius, German composer, died at 49.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1874 Oct, Alexander Graham Bell stated his basic idea for the telephone. The 1997 book "Alexander Graham Bell, The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone," was written by Edwin Grosvenor and Morgan Wesson. Antonio Meucci, an Italian-American candlemaker, was also later credited for inventing the telephone, 5 years before Bell.
(SFEM, 1/11/98, p.12)(WSJ, 6/25/99, p.A1)
1874 Nov 7, The elephant first appeared as a political icon in a Thomas Nast cartoon in Harper's Weekly. The Republican Party was symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly magazine.
(Hem, 8/96, p.84)(AP, 11/7/97)
1874 Nov 18, Clarence Day, American writer, was born in NYC. His work included "Life with Father."
(HN, 11/18/00)(MC, 11/18/01)
1874 Nov 19, Karl Adrian Wohlfart, composer, was born.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1874 Nov 19, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall (NYC) was convicted of defrauding city of $6M and sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1874 Nov 24, Farmer Joseph Glidden's patent for barbed wire was granted. Glidden designed a simple wire barb that attached to a double-strand wire, as well as a machine to mass-produce the wire. The invention was a welcome alternative to other types of fencing for farming on the arid Great Plains--wood fences and stone walls were difficult to construct because of the lack of sufficient rocks and trees, and the existing wire fences were easily broken when cattle leaned against them. The use of barbed-wire fences changed ranching and farming life. Farmers could keep roaming cattle and sheep off their land, but open-range cowboys and Native American farmers were restricted to the land and resources not claimed and marked by the new fences. As more settlers moved onto the plains, the amount of public, shared land decreased and open-range farming became obsolete.
(HNPD, 11/23/98)(HN, 11/24/98)
1874 Nov 27, Charles A. Beard, distinguished American historian who wrote "History of the United States," was born.
(HN, 11/27/98)
1874 Nov 27, Chaim Weizmann was born (d.1852). He was an Israeli chemist and Zionist leader and the first President of Israel from 1948-1952.
(HFA, '96, p.42)(WUD, 1994, p.1619)
1874 Nov 29, Antonio Egas Moniz, lobotomist (Nobel 1949), was born in Portugal.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1874 Nov 30, Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman, was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. After attending the Royal Military College, he served as a reporter and writer, and then in different positions in Parliament as his political power grew. His most influential role was as British prime minister during World War II from 1940 to 1945. Churchill had been part of the Cabinet during World War I, but his judgment was questioned and his political career ebbed. Up against the threat of Adolf Hitler, however, Churchill committed himself to defeating the Nazis and succeeded. Working together with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin, he managed to turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. Churchill served again as prime minister from 1951 to 1955. He died at his home in London in 1965.
(AP, 11/30/97)(HNPD, 11/30/98)(HN, 11/30/98)
1874 Nov 30, Lucy Maud Montgomery, author, was born. Her work included "Anne of Green Gables."
(HN, 11/30/00)
1874 Dec 8, The Jesse James gang took a train at Muncie, Kansas.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1874 Laura Montoya (d.1949) was born in Colombia. She founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Mary and was beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
c1874 Caillebotte painted "Oarsmen."
(SFC, 10/30/96, p.E2)
1874 William Hahn painted "Sacramento Railway Station."
(SFEC, 6/7/98, Z1 p.2)
1874 Edward Burne-Jones painted "The Beguiling of Merlin."
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W10)
1874 Kramskoi created his painting "The Peasant Ignatii Pirogov."
(SSFC, 11/3/02, p.M6)
1874 Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Albert Sisley and Edouard Manet gathered at Argenteuil on the banks of the Seine to relax and paint.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W16)
1874 Alfred Sisley painted "Snow Effect at Argenteuil."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1874 Dion Boucicault, Irish playwright, authored "The Shaughraun." It was a serious picture of oppressed Ireland and a satirical take on human folly.
(WSJ, 11/18/98, p.A20)
1874 Thomas Brewer, Spencer Baird and Robert Ridgeway wrote "A History of North American Birds."
(AH, 6/02, p.40)
1874 John William Draper, a physician, authored "History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science." He focused on the conflict between "the expansive force of human intellect" and "the compressing arising from traditional faith."
(WSJ, 10/8/99, p.W15)
1874 Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist, authored “The Temptation of St. Anthony."
(SFC, 7/13/13, p.E3)
1874 Former Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston authored “Narrative of Military Operations Directed During the Late War Between the States." In the book he defended himself against allegations of inabilities and failings made by Gen. Hood in an official 1865 report. Hood responded in a book titled “Advance and Retreat," which contained a 90 page section entitled “Reply to General Johnston." It was published posthumously in 1880.
(AH, 10/02, p.43)(www.wtj.com/archives/hood/)
1874 George Marsh, the first American conservationist, published "The Earth as Modified by Human Action."
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.53)
1874 Charles Melville Scammon authored "Marine Animals of the North-Western Coast of North America." Before he became a naturalist Scammon was a ship's captain from Maine engaged in whaling and originated the practice of slaughtering pregnant or nursing female whales.
(WSJ, 8/10/01, p.W14)
1874 Francis Amasa Walker, a former Union Army general and Boston native, authored "The Indian Question," a treatise that justified forcibly removing tribes from their lands and confining them to remote reservations.
(AP, 10/14/21)
1874 The play "The Two Orphans" opened in NYC and starred Kate Claxton as the blind girl named Louise.
(SFC, 4/21/99, Z1 p.6)
1874 The Old Franklin Publishing House printed an illustrated account of the Benders in Kansas, where three women committed murder on a succession of guests. The story was told again in John James more sedate version of 1913, The Benders in Kansas.
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.21)
1874 The end of day bugle call "Taps" was given its name. It had become the official Army call after the Civil War.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.E8)
1874 Trinity Church in Nevada City was established.
(SFC, 7/15/98, p.A20)
1874 The Lincoln County Courthouse in New Mexico was built. It served as the Murphy-Dolan store and monopolized the local business until 1877 when Alexander McSween and John Tunstall opened a rival mercantile.
(SFEC, 2/23/96, p.T9)
1874 Henry Steel Olcott, New York attorney and journalist, met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a down-on-her-luck Russian aristocrat and mystic. They set up house together in a New York apartment that comes to be known as the "Lamasery."
(Smith., 5/95, p.111)
1874 The first national convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was held. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was established to promote the movement for prohibition in the U.S. It shut down saloons all over the country because they believed that male drinking was the cause of prostitution, child abuse and poverty. Under the leadership of its second president, Frances Willard, the WCTU grew to a nationwide movement with 200,000 members, the largest and most socially acceptable women's organization of the time. Although prohibition was the WCTU's primary mission, they also campaigned for woman suffrage, reasoning that if women could vote, they would reform American society for the betterment of all. The WCTU spurred the founding in 1893 of the Anti-Saloon League. On December 18, 1917, the U.S. Congress adopted and submitted to the states an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic liquors. The 18th Amendment was declared ratified on January 29, 1919 and went into effect on January 16, 1920. It was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)(HNQ, 11/189)(HNPD, 8/13/00)
1874 The Chautauqua Institution began as a Methodist community 60 miles south of Buffalo and established a reputation as a purveyor of summer "learning vacations." [see 1878] The Chautauqua Institution was founded to further adult education. In 1970 Alfreda L. Irwin authored a study of the community: "Three Taps of the Gavel."
(SFEC, 9/29/96, Par p.13)(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T2)(WSJ, 7/31/00, p.B1)
1874 The first Kentucky Oaks Race for 3-year-old fillies and the Kentucky Derby was held. [see 1875]
(Sp., 5/96, p.20)
1874 Secret Service headquarters returned to Washington, D.C. after 4 years in NYC.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1874 Arkansas passed a constitution that included a ban on gambling. In 2008 Arkansas voters approved a state lottery by a 63% margin.
(Econ, 11/22/08, p.45)
1874 In San Francisco Italians from Genoa built the Colombo Market two blocks east of a former location on Samsome St. between Clay and Washington. By 2015 only the brick archway survived in Sidney Walton Square Park on Front St. between Jackson and Pacific.
(SFC, 2/28/15, p.C5)
1874 A tunnel was carved through the solid Franciscan rock for Hibernia Bank cofounder Richard Tobin. He wanted to be able to ride his buggy back and forth between his family’s city home and their house in Rockaway Beach, Pacifica, south of Daly City, Ca.. Nature delivered the coup de grace to Tobin’s Folly in 1906, when the SF earthquake reportedly knocked off most of the rock tunnel and threw it into the ocean.
(http://www.princetonbytheseamemories.com/?p=898)
1874 Union Pacific completed a cavernous, brick, train repair shed in West Oakland. It was shuttered in 2002 and in 2010 was scheduled for demolition.
(SSFC, 10/3/10, p.C1)
1874 In San Juan Bautista, Ca., the Plaza Hall was built.
(SSFC, 2/22/04, p.C5)
1874 A schoolhouse was built in Ojai, Calif. that was later converted to a bed and breakfast.
(AAM, 3/96, p.46)
1874 The Elms House in Calistoga, Ca., was built.
(SSFC, 11/15/09, p.M4)
1874 Construction on California’s Folsom Prison began.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)
1874 The San Francisco Federal Mint building opened at 5th and Mission. It was designed by Alfred Mullett, the Treasury's supervising architect.
(SFC, 7/5/97, p.A13)(SSFC, 1/28/03, p.E1)
1874 The California state capitol in Sacramento, built in the Renaissance Revival style, was completed. It was designed by Reuben Clark (d.1866). [see 1869]
(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.T6)(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.A16)
1874 In San Luis Obispo, Ca., the Ah Louis Store was built to serve the 2000 Chinese coolies who worked on nearby railroad tunnels.
(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.T6)
1874 Capt. James Cass of Bristol, England, built a wharf and pier named Cass Landing on the north end of Morro Bay, Ca., to facilitate the loading of ships carrying lumber, staples and dairy products between the Central Coast and San Francisco. It became the town of Cayucos, carved from the Morro y Cayucos Rancho. The name was after a unique plank canoe (cayuco) invented by the local Chumash Indians.
(SSFC, 1/4/09, p.E6)
1874 Jean Laurent founded a vineyard in St. Helena that he named the Laurent Winery. After a series of owners it was purchased in 1977 by Bruce Markham and renamed Markham Vineyards. Mercian Corp. took over in 1988.
(SFC, 10/9/02, p.E7)
1874 The California Legislature passed compulsory school attendance laws.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.H4)
1874 California law made it a felony to encourage or aid in a suicide.
(SFC, 2/11/15, p.D1)
1874 The California state Supreme Court in Ward vs. Flood upheld a law authorizing racial segregation in public schools. Blacks and Indians were granted the right to establish separate schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)(SFC, 4/15/17, p.C2)
1874 In California the Pinnacles rock spires were first seen by non-natives.
(CAS, 1996, p.16)
1874 The Nevada state legislature overrode the Governor’s veto and approved a railroad from Austin to Battle Mountain. Construction only began 4 ½ years later.
(ACC, 2004)
1874 Sandy Hook, New Jersey, became operational as a proving ground for American military weapons. It was later turned into a National Recreation Area.
(AM, 7/04, p.33)(AM, 11/04, p.9)
1874 Ice cream sodas appeared when soda fountain operator Robert Green ran out of his customary flavoring and substituted vanilla ice cream instead. Overnight his sales soared from $6 to $600 a day. The soda jerk got named because of the sharp tug exercised on the fountain levers.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, zone 1 p.2)(HNQ, 6/12/98)
1874 Cleveland set up the first ordinary electric street trolley.
(SFC, 7/19/97, p.E4)
1874 Former slave James Webster Smith was expelled from West Point for failing an exam. He was commissioned by the Army in 1997 and his certificate was presented to South Carolina State Univ.
(SFC, 9/23/97, p.A3)
1874 AT&T started with Bell Patent Association, a legal entity, was established to protect the patent rights of Alexander Graham Bell after he invented the telephone system. Originally a verbal agreement, it was formalized in writing in 1875 as Bell Telephone Company.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation)
1874 The Warner Brothers Co., later Warnaco, was set up by physicians Lucien Warner and I. DeVer Warner to manufacture a "sanitary corset." They were concerned over the strains corsets placed on the female body.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.A19)
1874 The clipper ship Western Shore was built at Coos Bay for the Simpson Brothers Lumber Co. of San Francisco. In 1878 it ran aground on Duxbury Reef near Bolinas, Ca.
(SFC, 10/22/05, p.B2)
1874 In Oregon Elijah Davidson discovered a marble cavern in the Siskiyou Mountains that later became a national monument.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.17)
1874 Cattleman Charles Goodnight rounded up 5 orphaned buffalo calves and set them loose on 10,000 acres in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas Panhandle. The herd grew to 250 animals and a number were sent to start herds elsewhere. In 1997 the herd was put under the guardianship of the state. By 2001 it was realized that inbreeding put the herd at risk of extinction. In 2005 Ted Turner agreed to provide 3 bulls from his herd in New Mexico to help the Texas herd.
(WSJ, 8/2/05, p.A1)
1874 Ezra Cornell (b.1809), American capitalist and philanthropist, died.
(WUD, 1994, p.325)
1874 Edward Troye (b.1808), Swiss-born Kentucky artist, died. He portrayed horses and spent time in the Middle East in search of Arab breeding stock.
(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)
1874 The British East India Company, having paid it final dividend in 1873, folded.
(Econ, 12/17/11, p.111)
1874 David Stanley, British journalist, crossed Africa from the east to the west across the Congo River basin on a 999-day journey sponsored by London’s Daily Telegraph. In 2004 Tim Butcher, also a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, followed Stanley’s path on a trip that took 44 days. In 2008 Butcher authored “Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart."
(WSJ, 10/31/08, p.A15)
1874 In Hawaii David Kalakaua was elected King.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C1)
1874 In France the Bordeaux Ecole de Management was founded. In 2002 the school introduced a master's program in business administration for wine.
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.B1)
1874 A transit of Venus occurred. Pierre Janssen, a French astronomer, invented a multi-exposure camera to view the event, but the results were disappointing.
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.79)
1874 Bicycle couriers came into being in Paris taking messages from banks to telegraph offices.
(Econ, 4/23/11, p.89)
1874 A constitution was granted to Iceland.
(HNQ, 4/28/00)
1874 Japan launched a punitive expedition to Formosa (later Taiwan).
(Econ, 8/15/15, p.34)
1874-1875 The Gatling gun was first used against the Comanche Indians at the Battle of Red River in the Texas Panhandle.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.B4)
1874-1875 The Silverado silver mine in Napa County, Ca. is the largest silver producer in Napa, Ca.
(WCG, 7/95, p.21)
1874-1879 Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former runaway slave from Tennessee, led some 1,100 Tennessee ex-slaves to Kansas and founded the Baxter Springs Colony in Cherokee County and Dunlap colony in Morris County.
(NH, 7/98, p.28)
1874-1942 Alice Duer Miller, American author: "People love to talk but hate to listen."
(AP, 5/15/00)
1874-1945 Ellen Glasgow, American author: "Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar." "No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.... To seize the flying thought before it escapes us is our only touch with reality."
(AP, 12/12/97)(AP, 5/11/98)(AP, 6/25/98)
1874-1947 Nicholas Roerich, Russian painter, archeologist and author. He came to the US in 1920.
(WUD, 1994, p.1241)
1874-1950 William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canadian statesman: "Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government."
(AP, 5/13/97)
1874-1957 George Gustav Heye, New York banker. He began the collection of Indian cultural material in 1903. It now has more than 1 million artifacts from North, Central and south America spanning 10,000 years. The George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian is located in the Alexander Hamilton US custom House in New York. [see 1916, Heye]
(Hem, Mar. 95, p.19)
1874-1965 W. Somerset Maugham English author-dramatist: "The tragedy of love is indifference." "The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love."
(AP, 11/29/97)(AP, 9/17/98)
1874-1967 Mary Garden, considered the first great American modernist singer. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
Go to 1875-1876
Return to home
1871 Jan 1, The US Signal Office began publishing weather maps as the War Department Maps.
(www.lib.noaa.gov/collections/imgdocmaps/daily_weather_maps.html)
1871 Jan 1, Sir Henry Durand (b.1812), British lord of the frontier between India and Afghanistan, died after an elephant he was riding reared and brained him on a stone archway in Tonk (later Tank, Pakistan).
(Econ, 1/2/10, p.18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Marion_Durand)
1871 Jan 3, Henry W. Bradley patented oleomargarine in Binghamton, NY.
(AH, 2/06, p.14)
1871 Jan 8, Prussian troops began to bombard Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1871 Jan 17, The 1st cable car patented by Andrew S. Hallidie. It began service in 1873.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1871 Jan 18, The German Empire (Deutsches Kaiserreich) was proclaimed in Versailles. William I of Prussia was proclaimed "German Emperor" (which was not the same thing as "Emperor of Germany"). The unification of Germany was the greatest geopolitical transformation of the period. Germany went on to adopt the mark as its common currency.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(AP, 1/18/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany)(WSJ, 5/6/08, p.A21)
1871 Jan 26, A US income tax, established during the Civil War, was repealed.
(MC, 1/26/02)(WSJ, 9/25/02, p.D8)
1871 Jan 28, France, under a provisional republican government, continued the war against Germany, but was forced to surrender in the Franco-Prussian War. Surrounded by Prussian troops and suffering from famine, the French army in Paris surrendered. During the siege, balloons were used to keep contact with the outside world.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(AP, 1/28/98)(HN, 1/28/99)
1871 Jan, The bombardment of Paris began.
(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1871 Feb 7, Karl Wilhelm Eugen Stenhammer, composer, was born.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1871 Feb 7, Henry Steinway (b.1797), German-American piano maker, died. In 2006 James Barron authored “Piano," a history of the development of the modern piano.
(WSJ, 7/15/06, p.P8)(http://tinyurl.com/qn6dy)
1871 Feb 9, Howard T. Ricketts, pathologist, was born.
(HN, 2/9/01)
1871 Feb 12, In France the new National Assembly opened at Bordeaux. Two-thirds of members were conservatives and wished the war to end.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1871 Feb 26, France and Prussia signed a preliminary peace treaty at Versailles.
(HN, 2/26/99)
1871 Feb 28, The 2nd Enforcement Act set federal control of congressional elections.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1871 Mar 1, James Denman, the San Francisco superintendent of schools, closed the Chinese school in Chinatown citing its daily attendance of just 20 students.
(SFC, 4/15/17, p.C2)
1871 Mar 1, Germans paraded down the Champs-Elysses, Paris, France during the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 3/1/99)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1871 Mar 1, J. Milton Turner was named US minister to Liberia.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1871 Mar 3, Congress passed the Indian Appropriation Act, which revoked the sovereignty of Indian nations and made Native Americans wards of the American government. The act eliminated the necessity of treaty negotiating and established the policy that tribal affairs could be managed by the U.S. government without tribal consent.
(HNQ, 5/15/98)
1871 Mar 3, Congress established the civil service system.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1871 Mar 5, In Brazil Maria do Carmo Jeronimo was born as a slave in the town of Carmo de Minas in Minas Gerais state under the rule of Emperor Pedro II. Jeronimo died in 2000, but the lack of a birth certificate prevented her being recognized as the world's oldest woman.
(SFC, 6/16/00, p.A34)
1871 Mar 21, Journalist Henry M. Stanley began his famous expedition to Africa to locate the missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone.
(HNPD, 11/10/98)(AP, 3/21/02)
1871 Mar 21, Otto von Bismarck became the 1st Chancellor of the German Empire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck)
1871 Mar 22, William Holden of NC became the 1st US governor removed by impeachment.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1873 Mar 24, Mary Ann Cotton (b.1832), English serial killer, was tried and hanged. She was said to have killed three of her four husbands, a lover, her mother and 11 of her 13 children.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ann_Cotton)(Econ, 1/7/17, p.34)
1871 Mar 26, Serafín Alvarez Quintéro, Spanish dramatist, playwright (El Flechazo), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 Mar 26, Paris Commune was founded. The Parisians revolted against their government and tried to secede by electing their own government. The Commune of Paris refused to obey Adolphe Thiers, the elected president of the country. Thiers asked the Germans to release thousands of French prisoners and organized a powerful force to overcome the Commune.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 May 26, In France five priests, including Enrico Planchart and Ladislao Radigue, were killed as the Paris Commune revolutionary government that took control of Paris.
(AP, 11/25/21)
1871 Mar 27, Heinrich Mann, Germany, novelist, essayist (Blue Angel); brother of Thomas Mann, was born.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1871 Mar 28, Willem Mengelberg, conductor (NY Philharmonic 1922-30), was born in Utrecht, Neth.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1871 Mar 29, Queen Victoria opened Albert Hall in London.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1871 Mar, Pres. Grant sent federal troops to South Carolina to suppress violence instigated by the Ku Klux Klan.
(AH, 6/03, p.28)
1871 Apr 11, James Burns (1808-1871), Scottish publisher and author, died. He had founded The Englishman’s Library in the 1840s, a series that went up to 31 volumes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burns_%28publisher%29)(Econ, 12/20/14, p.86)
1871 Apr 15, 'Wild Bill' Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.
(HN, 4/15/99)
1871 Apr 16, John Millington Synge (d.1909), dramatist and poet, was born in Ireland.
(HN, 4/16/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Millington_Synge)
1871 Apr 16, German Empire ended all anti-Jewish civil restrictions.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1871 Apr 20, The US 3rd Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowed the President to suspend writ of habeas corpus.
(http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/events/04_20)(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1871 Apr 21, Leo Blech, composer, conductor, was born.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1871 Apr 30, Anglo and Mexican vigilantes killed 118 Apaches at Camp Grant, Arizona, and kidnapped 28 children.
(www.desertusa.com/mag98/april/stories/campgrant1.html)
1871 May 9, In southern California debt-ridden Rancho Cucamonga was foreclosed on by Isaias Hellman.
(www.sbsun.com/ci_7323066)
1871 May 12, Segregated street cars were integrated in Louisville, Ky.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 May 12, Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (89), French opera composer, died.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 May 17, Gen. Sherman, Indian fighter, escaped in ambulance from the Comanches.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1871 May 21-May 28, French government troops attacked the Commune of Paris. As many as 10,000 communards were killed. Of 36,000 people arrested some 10,000 were executed, imprisoned or deported. In 2014 John Merriman authored “Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune)(Econ, 11/29/14, p.74)
1871 May 23, In France extremists burned the Tuileries Palace.
(SFC, 10/8/07, p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuileries_Palace)
1871 May 28, The last French communards of the Paris commune were shot against the Mur des Federes in Pere Lachaise cemetery by troops from Versailles. The Parisians had revolted against their government and tried to secede by electing their own government. The Commune of Paris refused to obey Adolphe Thiers, the elected president of the country. Thiers asked the Germans to release thousands of French prisoners and organized a powerful force to overcome the Commune.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(HN, 5/28/98)
1871 Jun 1, Korea’s Yongdu Fortress fired at a US fleet as it sailed up the Ganghwa Straits, which leads to the Han river. Some 650 Marines launched the first US invasion of Korea following a failed attempt by diplomats to open the Hermit Kingdom to trade. In the end, the Americans won the battle militarily, but lost diplomatically.
(www.shinmiyangyo.org/nsynopsis.html)(AH, 10/07, p.57)
1871 Jun 3, Jesse James and his gang robbed Obocock Bank in Corydon, Iowa, of $15,000.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1871 Jun 10, A landing force of 110 U.S. Marines came ashore on Korea's Kangwha Island, a fortress island guarding the approaches to Seoul. The Korean Punitive Expedition was launched from an American fleet, which anchored in the Han River after the isolationist Korean government rejected U.S. diplomatic demands for an explanation of the fate of an American ship and her crew believed killed by the Koreans. In two days of fighting, the Marines and sailors captured the defensive forts on the Island, leaving 243 Koreans dead. Nevertheless, the expedition failed to open Korea to foreign trade.
(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1871 Jun 17, James Weldon Johnson, African American poet and novelist who wrote "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man," was born.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1871 Jun 27, The yen became the new form of currency in Japan.
(HN, 6/27/98)
1871 Jun, The California Historical Society was founded with 25 members. Many of its records were destroyed in the 1906 SF earthquake and fire.
(SFEC,10/26/97, DB p.55)
1871 Jul 3, William Henry Davies, Welsh poet, was born.
(HN, 7/3/01)
1871 Jul 3, Jesse James robbed a bank in Corydon, Iowa, of $45,000.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1871 Jul 10, Marcel Proust (d.1922), French novelist was born. His masterpiece was "Remembrance of Things Past." In 1998 it was turned into a comic book series. In 1999 Edmund White published the biography "Marcel Proust" for the Penguin Lives series. "We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full."
(SFC, 9/16/98, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/7/99, Par p.14)(AP, 8/2/99)(HN, 7/10/01)
1871 Jul 20, British Columbia joined Confederation as a Canadian province. Canada’s government promised BC a railroad link to the eastern provinces as it joined the nation.
(AP, 7/20/97)(ON, 11/07, p.9)
1871 Jul 25, A carrousel was patented by Wilhelm Schneider in Davenport, Iowa.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1871 Jul 26, Ferdinand Hayden (1830-1887) and his government sponsored team arrived at the Yellowstone Lake and the geyser fields.
(ON, 11/02, p.3)
1871 Jul 29, [Gregory Efimovich] Rasputin, mad Russian monk, seer, was born.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1871 Aug 3, Vernon Louis Parrington, critic, educator, author (Pulitzer 1928), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1871 Aug 19, Orville Wright (d.1948), aviation pioneer, was born in Dayton, Oh. His birthday is celebrated as National Aviation Day.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers)(WUD, 1994, p.1647)
1871 Aug 26, The Boston Revere Railroad Depot collision left 32 people dead on a single track railroad with no telegraph communications.
(THC, 12/2/97)
1871 Aug 27, Theodore Dreiser (d.1945), American novelist (Sister Carrie), was born. "Our civilization is still in a middle stage, no longer wholly guided by instinct, not yet wholly guided by reason."
(AP, 1/4/00)(HN, 8/27/00)
1871 Aug 30, Ernest Rutherford (d.1937), physicist who discovered and named alpha, beta and gamma radiation and was the first to achieve a man-made nuclear reaction, was born in New Zealand.
(HN, 8/30/98)
1871 Aug, Joseph became chief of Nez Perce Indians in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon.
(ON, 3/04, p.1)
1871 Aug, Heinrich Schliemann obtained a permit to excavate the ruins of Troy.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.45)
1871 Sep 7, Cowper Phipps Coles, English inventor (Steel warships), drowned.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1871 Sep 11, The 1st passenger train passed through the Mount Cenis Tunnel between France and Italy. Work on the 8-mile tunnel had begun in 1861 under the direction of French engineer Germain Sommeiller (d.7/11/1871).
(ON, 2/03, p.9)
1871 Sep 19, President Abraham Lincoln's body was transferred to a partially completed permanent tomb at Springfield, Il.
(www.state.il.us/HPA/hs/Tomb.htm)
1871 Sep, John Wesley Powell began a 2nd expedition to survey the Grand Canyon, this time with a congressional grant of $10,000.
(ON, 5/02, p.5)
1871 Oct 2, Cordell Hull, Secretary of State for President Franklin Roosevelt who promoted cooperation with the Soviet Union against Adolf Hitler, was born.
(HN, 10/2/98)
1871 Oct 2, Mormon leader Brigham Young, 70, was arrested for polygamy. He was later convicted, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction.
(HN, 10/2/98)
1871 Oct 8, Around 9 p.m. on Sunday a fire broke out in or near Patrick and Catherine O'Leary's barn in the crowded southwestern section of Chicago. Fanned by high winds, the fire burned out of control in the tinder-dry city for more than 24 hours, until rain on Tuesday morning finally extinguished the flames. Three and a half square miles were leveled wiping out one-third of the city. The business district, the courthouse and the central water pumping station, burned to the ground. Thousands of Chicagoans fled the flames over the Randolph Street Bridge. Approximately 250 people were killed in the fire; 98,500 people were left homeless; 17,450 buildings were destroyed. The original Emancipation Proclamation was destroyed. Yet in spite of the devastation, the city was so quickly rebuilt that by 1875, few traces of the fire remained. Many people still believe that Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over a lantern which started the fire. The Chicago City Council once passed a resolution exonerating the cow and apologizing to the O'Leary family. Pegleg O'Sullivan kicked over a lantern after breaking into the O'Leary dairy barn to steal milk for a whiskey punch party.
(HNPD, 10/8/98)(HN, 10/8/98)(MC, 10/8/01)(SFC, 1/11/03, p.D6)
1871 Oct 8, The 1938 film "In Old Chicago," with Tyrone Power and Alice Faye, was a musical that built up to the Chicago fire.
(HFA, '96, p.40)(Hem., 7/95, p.83)(AP, 10/8/97)(TVM, 1975, p.276)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.C8)
1871 Oct 8-14, In Peshtigo, Wisc., some 1,500 people were killed in the nation’s worst forest fire, which burned across six counties and into Michigan. Fires also broke out in the Michigan communities of Holland, Manistee and Port Huron.
(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(WSJ, 8/4/04, p.B1)(SSFC, 9/4/05, p.A7)(AP, 10/8/08)
1871 Oct 11, The Great Chicago Fire was finally extinguished after 3 days. Over 300 were killed. [see Oct 8]
(MC, 10/11/01)
1871 Oct 12, President Grant ordered the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan to disperse and disarm in five days.
(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1871 Oct 14, Alexander von Zemlinsky (d.1942), composer (Schneeman), was born in Vienna, Austria. His work included "Frulingsbegrabnis" (a cantata from 1897), "Die Seejunbfrau" (1902-1903), "Eine Florentinische Tragodie" (an opera from 1914-1915), "Symphonic Songs" (1929), and "Der Zwerg" (The Dwarf, an opera from 1921) and 7 other operas.
(WSJ, 6/11/98, p.A20)(MC, 10/14/01)
1871 Oct 17, President Grant suspended writ of habeas corpus in South Carolina in response to violence by the KKK. It applied to all arrests made by US marshals and federal troops in nine of the state’s western counties. By the end of November some 600 arrests were made.
(AH, 6/03, p.31)
1871 Oct 18, Charles Babbage (b.1792), English mathematician and inventor of a calculating machine, died. In 2001 Doron Swade authored “The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer."
(www.thocp.net/biographies/babbage_charles.html)(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.W8)
1871 Oct 24, Anti-Chinese rioting took place in Los Angeles. A mob in Los Angeles hanged 16 Chinese men and one woman after a policeman was shot, but not killed.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.M5)(Econ, 10/3/15, p.88)
1871 Oct 27, Boss Tweed (William Macy Tweed), Democratic leader of Tammany Hall, was indicted on charges of fraud and grand larceny after NY Times exposed his corruption. The conviction were overturned but civil charges sent him to prison.
(MC, 10/27/01)(Arch, 7/02, p.24)
1871 Oct 30, Paul Valery (d.1945), French poet and essayist, was born in Sete. "Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder."
(HN, 10/30/00)(AP, 6/10/00)(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.T10)
1871 Nov 1, Steven Crane, poet and novelist, was born. He is best remembered as the author of "The Red Badge of Courage" (1895), a realistic portrayal of one soldier's Civil War battle experience. Crane's novels and short stories, which were influenced by the French Naturalistic writers, showed individuals at the mercy of natural and social forces. In the early 1890s Crane became a freelance writer in the Bowery area of New York City and, resulting from his firsthand observation of poverty in the slums, he wrote "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" (1893), a book considered shocking at the time. Crane covered the Greco-Turkish War in 1897 and the Spanish-American War in 1898 as a news correspondent. His later short-story collections, such as "The Open Boat" and "Other Tales of Adventure" (1898), are recognized as masterpieces of the form. Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis in 1900 at the age of 28.
(WSJ, 8/6/98, p.A13)(HNPD, 11/1/98)(HN, 11/1/98)
1871 Nov 10, Journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Central Africa at Ujiji near Unyanyembe on Lake Tanganyika. Stanley delivered his famous greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Livingstone replied: "Yes, and I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you." The two explored Lake Tanganyika, but did not find the source of the Nile. When Stanley left on March 14, 1872, he begged the doctor to return to England with him, but Livingstone refused. He died in May 1873. Stanley returned to Africa a year later, the first of many subsequent African explorations.
(HFA, '96, p.42)(AP, 11/10/97)(HN, 11/10/98)(HNQ, 6/2/98)(HNPD, 11/10/98)
1871 Nov 17, In New York Army and Navy Journal editor William Conant Church and Captain George Wood Wingate founded the National Rifle Association, believing that northerners needed better firearms training.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association)(Econ., 1/23/21, p.23)
1871 Nov 21, Moses F. Gale patented a cigar lighter in NYC.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1871 Nov 21, The 1st human cannonball, Emilio Onra, was fired from a cannon.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1871 Nov 24, The National Rifle Association was incorporated in NYC, and its first president named: Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside.
(AP, 11/24/97)(MC, 11/24/01)
1871 Nov 27, Ku Klux Klan trials began in Federal District Court in Columbia, SC.
(AH, 6/03, p.32)
1871 Dec 19, Albert L. Jones patented corrugated paper in NYC.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1871 Dec 24, Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Aida" had its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt. He completed it too late to celebrate the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)(AP, 12/24/97)(PCh, 1992, p.522)
1871 Dec 27, World's 1st cat show took place at the Crystal Palace, London.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1871 Emily Carr (d.1945), Canadian artist and author, was born in Victoria. "You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming."
(AP, 7/11/98)(SSFC, 9/23/01, p.T2)
1871 Mary Edmonia Lewis, African-American sculptress, created her marble work "Hiawatha's Marriage."
(WSJ, 8/8/00, p.A20)
1871 Degas painted "Racehorses at Longchamp."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
1871 Edouard Manet made his lithograph "Civil War."
(LSA, fall/96, p.21)
1871 Thomas Moran of England was the artist on a US government expedition to Yellowstone and painted "Nearing Camp, Evening on the Upper Colorado River." The painting sold for $2.2 million in 1999 to the municipal art gallery in Bolton, Lancashire.
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B2)
1871 In France James McNeill Whistler completed his best known work: "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother," aka “Whistler's Mother." His mother, Anna McNeill Whistler (d.1881), had moved into his apartment displacing his Irish model and sweetheart, Jo Heffernan. When his mother died Whistler borrowed £50 to get her portrait back from a pawn shop.
(WSJ, 5/31/95, p. A-14)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.C6)
1871 French artist Jules Tavernier arrived in New York and was commissioned by Harper's Weekly to travel across the US to make artistic renderings of the country. At the end of his expedition he settled in San Francisco and spent two years visiting the Elem Pomo Indian village at Clear Lake where he created "Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse" (1878).
(SFC, 8/28/21, p.D4)
1871 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published his "Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_of_Man,_and_Selection_in_Relation_to_Sex)
1871 English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1989), aka Lewis Carroll, authored “Through the Looking Glass," as sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll)
1871 St. George Mivart published "The Genesis of Species," a critique of Darwinism.
(NH, 5/96, p.54)
1871 John Tyndall, Irish scientist, authored “Fragments of Science." He was in effect the first science popularizer.
(WSJ, 4/14/07, p.P10)
1871 Euphemia Allen, 16, composed "Chopsticks," a one finger piano tune.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, z1 p.7)
1871 In Utah the Mormon temple in St. George was completed. This was the 3rd Mormon temple to be built in the US and the first one in Utah.
(WSJ, 5/12/07, p.R10)
1871 The Salt Lake Tribune was founded by dissident Mormons.
(WSJ, 10/6/00, p.A1)
1871 The California Historical Society was founded. It is now located in SF at 678 Mission near Third. 415-357-1848. Open Tuesday-Saturday 11-5.
(SFC, 8/30/96, p.D5)
1871 The San Francisco Art Association was founded. This was the first art school in the West.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.8)(SFC, 5/30/03, p.E7)(SFC, 2/2/17, p.E6)
1871 The Red Star Line, an ocean passenger line, was founded as a joint venture between the International Navigation Company of Philadelphia, which also ran the American Line, and the Société Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Américaine of Antwerp, Belgium.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_Line)(SSFC, 4/21/13, p.H4)
1871 The Knights of Labor organization was started as a secret order at a meeting of tailors called by Uriah Stephens in Philadelphia. The Knights of Labor was organized on a national basis in 1878. It was an industrial union open to all gainfully employed skilled or unskilled workers and headed by a General Assembly. By 1886 there were 5,892 local assemblies and more than 700,000 members. Among other reforms, the Knights supported an 8-hour day, graduated income tax, boycotts, arbitration, and consumer and producer cooperatives. The organization began to decline after 1886. [other sources give 1869 as the founding year.]
(HNQ, 9/5/99)
1871 P.T. Barnum (Phineas Taylor Barnum,1810-1891), US showman, founded "The Greatest Show On Earth" in Delavan, Wis. He presented General Tom Thumb and Jenny Lind (1820-1870), "The Swedish Nightingale," to the public. He also introduced 3 rings to the circus.
(WUD, 1994, p.121)(WSJ, 1/7/97, p.A19)(WUD, 1994, p.832)(AP, 6/10/07)
1871 Steel plants and coal mines began to open up in Birmingham, Alabama.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.A6)
1871 The College of California was acquired by the state and became the Univ. of California.
(SFEC, 2/9/97, p.W4)
1871 In San Francisco William Hammond Hall was appointed the 1st Superintendent of Golden Gate Park after conducting his first survey there early this year. “Destroy a public building and it can be rebuilt in a year; destroy a city woodland park and all the people living at the time will have passed away before its restoration can be effected." Hall created the park’s original design over sand dunes known as the “Outside Lands."
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.A8)(SFC, 7/29/97, p.A7)(SFC, 9/19/20, p.B4)
1871 Fr. Joseph Neri, SJ, demonstrated the 1st electric light in SF from a window of St. Ignatius on San Francisco’s Market St. He used a large electro-magnetic device, the Alliance Machine, that had been used in the 2nd Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War for lighting defensive work.
(SFCM, 2/6/05, p.3)(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1871 The Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility was built and opened on the western edge of Cañon City.
(SFC, 6/13/13, p.A8)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.22)
1871 Robert Knight, Rhode Island textile mill owner, secured patent number 418 for the brand Fruit of the Loom.
(SSFC, 11/29/09, p.N6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_Loom)
1871 Catharine Beecher traveled around the US and found "a terrible decay of female health all over the land."
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.31)
1871 Baseball's National Association was formed and marks the beginning of the US major leagues.
(WSJ, 1/30/04, p.A1)
1871 The US federal government created the Life-Saving Service (LSS). It later became the US Coast Guard.
(ON, 1/02, p.1)
1871 The US Congress appropriated $50,000 to the new Department of Justice (DOJ) to form a suborganization devoted to "the detection and prosecution of those guilty of violating federal law." The amount was insufficient for the DOJ to fashion an integral investigating unit, so the DOJ contracted out the services to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective_Agency)
1871 In NYC the Black Laborer's Union and the Fenian O'Donovan Rossa paraded up Baxter St. to fight for the 8-hour day.
(SFC, 7/29/98, p.A19)
1871 US state insurance regulators created the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) to address the need to coordinate regulation of multistate insurers. Headquarters was later established in Kansas City, Mo.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.62)(www.naic.org/index_about.htm)
1871 In San Francisco Philip Arnold (40) and John Slack, prospectors from Kentucky, introduced a find of alleged diamonds and other precious stones to local businessmen.
(SFC, 4/26/14, p.D1)
1871 Haeger Potteries of Dundee, Ill., dates to this time.
(SFC, 1/4/06, p.G2)
1871 Mississippi purchased the property of Oakland College and renamed it Alcorn University in honor of James L. Alcorn, governor of the state. The college had closed its doors at the beginning of the Civil War so that its students could answer the call to arms.
(www.alcorn.edu/about/history.htm)
1871 A glass plant was built in a Missouri town that was named Crystal City. By 1895 the factory was acquired by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, later PPG Industries, which added a glass factory billed as the largest in the world. In 1990 it was closed and bulldozed, leaving lingering environmental contamination at the 250-acre site.
(WSJ, 9/16/08, p.A22)
1871 Phil D. Beckwith founded the Round Oak Stove Co. in Dowagiac, Mich.
(SFC, 1/4/06, p.G2)
1871 J. Pierpont Morgan joined with a friend to form the banking firm Drexel, Morgan.
(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)
1871 Western Union started handling money transfers.
(SFC, 2/2/06, p.A13)
1871 Luther Burbank developed the Russet Burbank potato, later identified with Idaho.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.4)
1871 Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev developed the periodic classification system of the elements, presenting a periodic table listing the elements in 1871. [see 1869] Born in Siberia, the last of 17 children, Mendeleyev eventually found success in academia. While writing a basic textbook on chemistry in the 1860s, he attempted to find a way to classify the elements. His periodic system gained acceptance over time. His periodic table left gaps for elements as yet undiscovered, but he correctly predicted the properties of three of those elements. The table and his concepts of periodic law gained more acceptance with the approach of the 20th century, forming the basis for modern chemistry.
(HNQ, 1/4/01)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A17)
1871 America added 6,000 miles of railway track this year in an endeavor that occupied a tenth of its industrial labor force.
(Econ, 8/19/06, p.64)
1871 The number of cattle shipped to Chicago grew to 600,000. Abilene may have been the first cow town, but disease and rowdy cowboys shifted the cow capital first to Wichita, then to Dodge City, Kansas. The profits to be made were immense, with a $5 steer in Texas bringing up to $45 in Kansas. In fact, the profitability of the cattle kingdom was one of the factors contributing to its demise in 1886. Greedy ranchers dangerously overstocked the grasslands with cattle by the mid-1880s.
(HNPD, 1/4/99)
1871 In Alaska a whaling fleet of 32 ships was abandoned off Icy Cape in the Chukchi Sea. Seven other vessels escaped with all the crew members saved. In 1998 an attempt was made to locate the shipwreck site.
(SFC, 7/24/98, p.A3)
1871 The Great Chicago Fire killed hundreds and left some 100,000 people homeless. Debris from the fire was dumped into a lagoon between downtown and the shore of lake Michigan and the landfill became Grant Park.
(WSJ, 8/21/96, p.A6)
1871 Brit Johnson, a black Texas ranch foreman, was killed by Kiowa raiders. His home life had been shattered in 1864 when an Indian raiding party killed his son and captured his wife along with 2 of their other children. He reportedly ransomed back his family in 1865 and continued searching for other stolen children before he was killed. Author Alan Le May (1899-1964) later used his story as a model in his novel “The Searchers" (1954).
(AH, 6/07, p.64)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Searchers_%28film%29)
1871 Tad Lincoln (18), son of Abraham Lincoln, died. Pneumonia was suspected.
(SSFC, 3/20/05, Par p.2)
1871 In Australia Sister Mary MacKillop (1842-1909) was briefly dismissed from the Roman Catholic Church after her order of nuns exposed a pedophile priest. She and 47 other nuns were thrown onto the streets of Adelaide, relying on the charity of friends to survive. In 2010 MacKillop was canonized as Australia's first saint.
(AP, 10/15/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacKillop)
1871 Belize was declared a Crown Colony.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A12)
1871 Brazil’s parliament passed the law of free womb, which stated that children born to slave mothers would not themselves be slaves.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.52)
1871 David O’Keefe (d.1901), an Irish sea captain, was shipwrecked on Yap Island. He hitched a ride to Hong Kong, found a new ship and returned to Yap. He made a fortune using a Chinese junk and metal cutting tools to bring stone money from Palau to Yap.
(SSFC, 11/26/00, p.T6)(AM, 3/04, p.22)
1871 The government of Costa Rica hired Minor C. Keith (23), an engineer from Brooklyn, to build a rail line. Keith grew bananas on the right of way to help finance the project. His enterprise grew to become the United Fruit Company, later Chiquita.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.A1)
1871 In Denmark the Jutland-based Jyllands-Posten newspaper was founded.
(AP, 2/8/06)
1871 The Rothschild banking empire bankrolled France's reparations to Germany.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1871 Charles Joseph Minard, French civil engineer, died. In 1861 he used techniques, which he had invented to display flows of people, to create a graphic display of Napoleon’s 1812-1813 march to and from Russia.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.74)
1871 Germany adopted the gold standard.
(Econ, 7/5/14, p.57)
1871 Germany codified its antisodomy laws under “Paragraph 175" of the penal code.
(SSFC, 11/16/14, p.P2)
1871 B. Bloch & Co. was founded in Eichwald, Germany, for the manufacture of earthenware, porcelain dinnerware, household items and decorative pieces. The name was changed after World War I to Eichwalder Porcelain and Stove Factory Bloch & Co.
(SFC, 8/16/06, p.G7)
1871 In India the Leopold Café opened in Bombay (later Mumbai). It became an institution very popular with foreign tourists trading India stories over beer.
(AP, 11/27/08)
1871 In India the Raj introduced the Criminal Tribes Act, under which members of some 150 tribes were forced to register with the police, forbidden to move around freely and in many cases herded into barbed-wire camps.
(Econ, 4/24/10, p.42)
1871 In Russia Alexander Ostrovsky wrote "The Forest." It was a comedy play of bad manners and greed that featured the character Raissa Pavlovna, a cousin to Turgenev's Natalia Petrovna.
(SFC, 7/29/97, p.E1)
1871 Pepita, a celebrated Spanish dancer, died. She had captivated British diplomat Lionel Sackville, later the second Lord Sackville in 1852 and bore him seven children, five of whom survived. In 2014 Robert Sackvile-West authored “The Disinherited: A Story of Family, Love and Betrayal."
(Econ, 4/26/14, p.82)
1871-1872 George Eliot (1819-1880), English writer born as Mary Ann Evans, published her novel "Middlemarch" in 8 parts.
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P8)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gelliot.htm)
1871-1909 James Burrill Angell (1829-1916) served as the president of the Univ. of Mich.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002271/James-Burrill-Angell)(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.23)
1871-1909 John Millington Synge, Irish playwright. He wrote such plays as The Shadow of the Glen, The Well of the Saints, Riders to the Sea, The Playboy of the Western World, The Tinker's Wedding, and the unfinished Deirdre of the Sorrows. He died on March 24. A biography of his life was written by David M. Kiely in 1995 titled: John Millington Synge: A Biography.
(WSJ, 12/6/95, p.A-18)
1871-1914 Robert Hugh Benson, English author and clergyman: "You can love a person deeply and sincerely whom you do not like. You can like a person passionately whom you do not love."
(AP, 9/16/98)
1871-1946 Florine Stettheimer, American painter, was born in Rochester, N.Y. She was a friend of Marcel Duchamp, her circle included Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove and Elie Nadelman. She was also close to Alfred Stieglitz, Henry McBride and Georgia O'Keeffe. "She keeps the comedy of her era alive for our own."
(WSJ, 7/18/95, p.A-12)
1871-1947 Louise Homer, American opera singer. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
1871-1951 Olive Fremstad, American opera singer. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
1872 Jan 6, Alexander N. Scriabin, composer (Prometheus), was born in Moscow.
(MC, 1/6/02)
1872 Jan 12, Russian Grand Duke Alexis began a gala buffalo hunting expedition with Gen. Phil Sheridan and Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1872 Jan 31, Zane Grey, American West novelist (Riders of the Purple Sage), was born.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1872 Jan, US Attorney Gen’l. Amos T. Akerman (1821-1880), ardent prosecutor of KKK activities, resigned at the request of Pres. Grant.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_T._Akerman)(AH, 6/03, p.33)
1872 Feb 5, Lafayette Benedict Mendel, biochemist, was born.
(HN, 2/5/01)
1872 Feb 6, Sir Thomas Phillips (b.1792), English book collector, died. He had declared that he wanted a copy of every book in the world.
(www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ngcoba/ph.htm)(Econ, 12/24/05, p.110)
1872 Feb 7, Alcorn A & M College opened.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1872 Feb 20, Metropolitan Museum of Art, incorporated in 1870, opened in NYC.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art)
1872 Feb 20, A hydraulic electric elevator was patented by Cyrus Baldwin.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1872 Feb 20, Luther Crowell patented a machine for manufacturing paper bags.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1872 Feb 20, Silas Noble and JP Cooley patented a toothpick manufacturing machine.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1872 Mar 1, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a measure creating Yellowstone National Park (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming). The act of Congress creating Yellowstone National Park was based on a report from an expedition led by Ferdinand Hayden. The 2.2 million-acre preserve was the first step in a national park system. Nathaniel Pitt Langford (39) was appointed the 1st Superintendent.
(SFC, 5/19/96, Z1, p.2)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(ON, 11/02, p.4)(PCh, 1992, p.526)(AP, 3/1/08)
1872 Mar 1, Doc Holliday received his Doctor of Dental Surgery.
(MesWP)
1872 Mar 5, George Westinghouse Jr. patented triple air brake for trains.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1872 Mar 7, Piet Mondrian (d.1944), Dutch abstract painter, was born. He was born in Amersfoort, near Amsterdam. His two principal styles date from before and after 1907. His Red Tree in 1908 reflects the stance of a Van Gogh. In 1911 he went to Paris and quickly changed his style in response to Cubism. He emigrated to New York in 1940. His Broadway Boogie Woogie was done in 1942-1943. He was labeled as a degenerate by the Nazis and was sent to New York to continue working. He went through a number of styles i.e. fauvist, neoimpressionist Dutch landscapes, to total abstractions in a manner of his own that he called neoplasticism. He was a pioneer of abstract painting.
(WSJ, 6/6/95, p.A-14)(WSJ, 10/3/95, p.A-18)(SFC, 10/4/97, p.E1)(HN, 3/7/98)
1872 Mar 10, Giuseppe Mazzini (66), Italian revolutionary (Giovane, Italy), died.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1872 Mar 13, Oswald Garrison Villard, American journalist, was born.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1872 Mar 19, Sergei Diaghilev, ballet director, was born in Gruzino Novgorod, Russia. [see Mar 31]
(MC, 3/19/02)
1872 Mar 22, Illinois became 1st state to require sexual equality in employment.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1872 Mar 25, Vito Pardo, Italian sculptor (Columbus monument in Argentina), was born.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1872 Mar 26, Thomas J. Martin patented a fire extinguisher.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1872 Mar 26, A 7.8 earthquake shook the Owens Valley, California.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1872 Mar 31, Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, dance master (Imperial Ballet), was born in Russia. [see Mar 19]
(MC, 3/31/02)
1872 Mar, Joshua Norton, aka Emperor Norton, ordered SF and Oakland citizens to build a suspension bridge across the bay. His similar Aug 19, 1869, proclamation was later considered a forgery.
(SFC, 12/15/04, p.A1)(www.notfrisco.com/nortoniana/)
1872 Apr 1, The first edition of The Standard was published.
(OTD)
1872 Apr 2, George B. Brayton patented a gasoline powered engine.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1872 Apr 2, Samuel F.B. Morse (80), developer of the electric telegraph, died in New York. In 2003 Kenneth Silverman authored "Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse."
(AP, 4/2/99)(MC, 4/2/02)(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 11/23/03, p.M2)
1872 Apr 9, Samuel R. Percy patented dried milk.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1872 Apr 12, Jesse James gang robbed bank in Columbia, Kentucky, of $1,500 with 1 person killed.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1872 Apr 15, A cyclone hit the coast of Tanzania. All the ships in the harbor of Zanzibar, with the exception of a steamer that escaped to sea, were sunk or wrecked on the shore with great loss of life.
(https://tinyurl.com/3d7ujz54)(SSFC, 5/2/21, p.A16)
1872 Apr 24, Mt. Vesuvius erupted.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1872 May 1, Hugo Alfvjen, composer (Midsommarvaka), was born in Stockholm, Sweden.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1872 May 10, The US General Mining Act law was passed. It let anyone 18 years or older claim public land for hardrock mining for as little as $2.50 per acre with no royalties to the federal government for gold, silver and other precious metals. The law was used by a Danish mining firm in 1995 for 110 acres of public land in Idaho that may contain a billion dollars worth of minerals.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Mining_Act_of_1872)(WSJ, 9/7/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A6)(SFC, 5/22/02, p.A7)(SFC, 12/25/15, p.A10)
1872 May 10, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for U.S. president. Thomas Nast depicted her as "Mrs. Satan." Woodhull adhered to a diet prescribed by Sylvester Graham, known for his ginger-colored crackers. Sylvester preached against demon rum and died at age 57 after administering himself a medicinal treatment with considerable liquor. Frederick Douglas, African-American statesman, was nominated as vice president on the Equal Rights Party ticket.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, Par p.14-16)(SFC, 10/17/98, p.E5)(HN, 5/10/98)(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)
1872 May 12, J.C. Watson discovered asteroid #121, Hermione.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1872 May 18, Bertrand Russell (d.1970), English mathematician, philosopher and social reformer, was born.
(WSJ, 9/27/96, p.A16)(AP, 1/7/99)(HN, 5/18/99)
1872 May 22, The Amnesty Act restored civil rights to Southerners.
(HN, 5/22/98)
1872 May, In San Francisco Andrew Smith Hallidie started excavation on Clay St. for a cable car system.
(ON, 10/03, p.9)
1872 May, Don Carlos (24), Spanish pretender, entered Navarre. King Amadeo I routed his forces at Oroquista and forced him to take refuge in the Pyranees.
(PCh, 1992, p.523)
1872 Jun 4, Kentucky conmen Philip Arnold (40) and John Slack took a party of San Francisco investors, including Asbury Harpending, to a site in Wyoming where diamonds and other precious stones were salted about. The con job took in hundreds of thousands of dollars before geologist Clarence King (30) identified the Wyoming site as a scam.
(SFC, 4/26/14, p.D2)
1872 Jun 4, Harvey Flint (d.1882) patented his Quaker Bitters, a general cure-all with 21.4% alcohol. He had recently left a family furniture business in Providence, Rhode Island, and began making Quaker Bitters under the name Flint & Co.
(SFC, 8/8/07, p.G2)(www.bottlebooks.com/temperance/temperance.htm)
1872 Jun 5, The Republican National Convention, the first major political party convention to include blacks, commenced.
(HN, 6/5/98)
1872 Jun 6, Alexandra Fjodorovna Romanova, the last Russian Tsarina (1894-1918), was born. She was later killed with her husband by revolutionaries.
(HN, 6/6/99)(MC, 6/6/02)
1872 Jun 17, Canadian George Hoover hauled in a wagon load of whiskey and set up a tent shop called Hoover’s Bar five miles west of Fort Dodge, Kansas. It was the founding business of Dodge City. The town up to this time had been dry.
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.E4)(HN, 6/17/98)
1872 Jun 27, Paul Laurence Dunbar, African-American poet and writer, was born in Dayton, Ohio. His poems include "Oak and Ivory" and "Majors and Minors."
(HN, 6/27/99)(SC, 6/27/02)
1872 Jul 2, Jacob W. Davis of Reno, Nevada, sent Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco a sample of his work pants and a business proposal for Strauss to apply for a patent in exchange for a half share in the patent. Davis soon sold his half share to Strauss and moved to San Francisco to supervise the manufacture of the work pants.
(ON, 4/05, p.11)
1872 Jul 4, John Calvin Coolidge (d.1933) 30th President of the United States (1923-29), was born in Plymouth, Vermont. Calvin Coolidge, also known as 'Silent Cal,' was a Republican; Vice President from 1921-23 and succeeded to the Presidency on the death of Warren Harding in 1923; elected President in 1924 and served a full term. He was especially known for his economy of language. A lady dinner companion during his presidency told him she had a bet she could get him to say more than two words; he replied: "You lose." "Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good."
(AP, 7/4/97)(HN, 7/4/98)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)(AP, 12/26/99)
1872 Jul 16, Roald Amundsen (d.1928), Norwegian explorer, discoverer of the South Pole, was born.
(Ind, 4/27/02, 5A)(MC, 7/16/02)
1872 Jul 18, Britain introduced the Ballot Act for voting by secret ballot. [see Aug. 15]
(AP, 7/18/97)(HN, 7/18/98)
1872 Jul 18, Benito Juarez (66), general (battle of Acapulco) and Pres. of Mexico (1858-1872), died of a heart attack in the National Palace.
(MC, 7/18/02)(WSJ, 8/13/97, p.A12)
1872 Jul 20, Mahlon Loomis patented a wireless radio.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1872 Aug 1, The first long-distance gas pipeline in the U.S. was completed. Designed for natural gas, the two-inch pipe ran five miles from Newton Wells to Titusville, Pennsylvania.
(HN, 8/1/00)
1872 Aug 3, Haakon VII, King of Norway, was born in Charlottenlund, Denmark.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1872 Oct 10, William Henry Seward (b.1801), former Gov. of New York (1839-1842) and American Sec. of State from 1861-1869, died in Auburn, NY. He had arranged the purchase of Alaska for the United States. In 2012 Walter Stahr authored “Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man."
(Economist, 9/29/12, p.90)( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Seward)
1872 Aug 14, Chief Joseph met in council with some 40 settlers in the Wallowa Valley and ordered them to leave the Nez Perce Indian land.
(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1872 Aug 15, The first secret ballot voting in England was conducted to re-elect Hugh Childers as MP for Pontefract in a ministerial by-election following his appointment as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. [see July 18]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_Act_1872)
1872 Aug 19, Eugene-Prosper Prevost (63), composer, died.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1872 Aug 21, Aubrey Beardsley (d.1898), English artist (Salome), was born in Brighton.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1872 Aug 23, The 1st Japanese commercial ship visited SF carrying tea.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1872 Aug 24, Max Beerbohm (d.1956), critic, caricaturist, writer, wit (Saturday Review), was born in England. His work included "Nobody ever died of laughter."
(AP, 4/9/97)(MC, 8/24/02)
1872 Aug, The Black Duck, a 51-foot, single-mast ship, sank in Lake Ontario during a gale off the coast of New York. In 2016 divers found the wreck in 350 feet of water off Oswego.
(SFC, 11/26/16, p.A3)
1872 Sep 14, Britain paid US $15 million for damages during Civil War. The British government paid £3 million in damages to the United States in compensation for building the Confederate commerce-raider Alabama. The confederate navy‘s Alabama was built at the Birkenhead shipyards. Despite its official neutrality during the American Civil War, Britain allowed the warship to leave port, and it subsequently played havoc with Federal shipping. The U.S. claimed compensation, and a Court of Arbitration at Geneva agreed, setting the amount at £3 million.
(HNQ, 9/2/00)(ON, 9/01, p.12)
1872 Sep 17, Phillip W. Pratt patented his sprinkler system for extinguishing fires.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1872 Sep 21, John Henry Conyers of SC became the 1st black student at Annapolis.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1872 Oct 3, Bloomingdale's department store opened in NYC.
(MC, 10/3/01)
1872 Oct 9, Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913), a young traveling salesman of dry goods, started his mail-order business. The catalog of Aaron Montgomery Ward was the first to be called a "Wish Book." The 1871 Chicago fire had destroyed his initial inventory.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Montgomery_Ward)(SFC, 7/8/97, p.A1)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)(SFC, 12/29/00, p.A12)
1872 Oct 11, Harlan Fiske Stone, Supreme Court (1925-41) Chief Justice (41-46), was born in New Hampshire.
(MC, 10/11/01)
1872 Oct 12, Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer (Hugh the Drover), was born in Down Amp, England.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1872 Oct 12, Chiricahua Apache leader Cochise (d.1874) signed a peace treaty with Special Indian Commissioner, General Oliver Otis Howard (1830-1909), in the Arizona Territory.
(HN, 10/12/98)(ON, 4/07, p.8)
1872 Oct 17, The Aculeo, a British square-rigged sailing ship, struck rocks near Montara. All 21 crew survived. The ship broke up in a week with her cargo of sheet iron, steel wire and coal from Liverpool.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T3)(Ind, 3/31/01, 5A)
1872 Oct 19, World's largest gold nugget (215 kg) was found in New South Wales, Australia.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1872 Oct 21, The U.S. Naval Academy admitted John H. Conyers, the first African American to be accepted.
(HN, 10/21/98)
1872 Oct 23, Theophile Gautier (61), French poet, writer, historian, and critic, died.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1872 Oct 29, J.S. Risdon patented a metal windmill.
(MC, 10/29/01)
1872 Nov 5, Ulysses S. Grant was re-elected US president.
(http://tinyurl.com/hdvqv)
1872 Nov 5, Horace Greeley (1811-1872), the New York editor who helped found the Republican Party, was badly defeated when he ran with Benjamin Gratz Brown as a Democrat against Ulysses S. Grant. He died two weeks later. Greeley's political aspirations were realized when he was named by the Liberal Republican Party to run for, but he lost the election, even though he polled almost as many popular votes as the hero of Vicksburg. His running mate, Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown, was a drunk. Greeley was in favor of graham crackers and opposed to women's corsets. He had also proposed to change the name of the country to Columbia.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.E8)(HNPD, 2/3/99)(WSJ, 6/5/96, p.A12)
1872 Nov 5, Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was arrested for trying to vote. On June 18, 1873, she was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election. She never paid the fine.
(AP, 11/5/97)(HN, 11/5/98)
1872 Nov 7, US cargo ship Mary Celeste set sail from NY on a journey which ended when it was found mysteriously abandoned the following month.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1872 Nov 9, Fire destroyed nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
(AP, 11/9/08)
1872 Nov 15, In California the 115 foot Pigeon Point Light Station near Pescadero started operation. It was built due to a series of shipwrecks in the area. Service ended in the 1980s and in 2004 it was transferred to the Peninsula Open Space Trust and the Calif. Dept. of Parks. On May 25, 2005 ownership was transferred from the US Coast Guard to the California State Parks. A 5-year, $5 million restoration campaign was begun.
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.T3)(SFEC,11/16/97, p.A2)(SFC, 3/23/04, p.B4)(SFC, 5/26/05, p.B1)
1872 Nov 28, The Modoc War of 1872-73 began in Siskiyou County, northern California when fighting broke out between Modoc Chief Captain Jack and a cavalry detail led by Captain James Jackson. At Lava Beds National Monument in northern California 52 [60] Modoc warriors held off over 1,000 US Army troops for five months. The 4 year conflict was described in the 1997 book "Hell with the Fire Out" by Arthur Quinn, a re-creation of the war from eye-witness accounts.
(SFC,10/16/96,zz1p.1)(SFEC, 4/6/97, BR p.5)(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T9)(HN, 11/28/98)
1872 Nov 29, Horace Greeley (b.1811), founder of the New York Tribune, died. The daily paper reflected much of the morality of his New England upbringing and he partnered a high standard of news gathering with printed arguments and urges against drinking, gambling, capital punishment and—increasingly in the 1850s—slavery. The slavery issue and his lifelong desire for high political office led him away from his political party, the Whigs, and to the newly emerging Republican Party. He usually sided with the radical wing of the Republicans, advocating early emancipation of slaves. Still unsuccessful in state and national bids, he eventually joined a group of Republican dissenters who formed the Liberal Republican Party to oppose Grant. While he received almost 44% of the popular vote, he received only 18% of the electoral vote, which were cast for other candidates due to his death. In 2006 Robert C. Williams authored “Horace Greeley.
(HNQ, 11/3/00)(WSJ, 5/25/06, p.D8)
1872 Dec 5, The Marie Celeste, a Canadian-built American-owned merchant brigantine, was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, unmanned and apparently abandoned (the one lifeboat was missing, along with its crew of seven). In 1885 the ship was destroyed when her last owner intentionally wrecked her off the coast of Haiti in an attempt to commit insurance fraud.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste)
1872 Dec 9, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921) became acting governor of Louisiana following impeachment charges against the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth. Pinchback continued as the state's 24th governor to Jan. 13, 1873. He was one of the most prominent African-American officeholders during the Reconstruction Era.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._B._S._Pinchback)
1872 Dec 12, Edwin Forrest (b.1806), American actor, died in Philadelphia.
(WSJ, 6/5/06, p.D8)(http://famousamericans.net/edwinforrest/)
1872 Dec 21, The HMS Challenger, under Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth, England, on a 4-year journey to survey the world’s oceans.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_expedition)(Econ, 4/17/10, SR p.13)
1872 Dec 26, The 4th largest snowfall in NYC history reached 18 inches.
(MC, 12/26/01)
1872 Dec 28, A U.S. Army force defeated a group of Apache warriors at Salt River Canyon, Arizona Territory, with 57 Indians killed but only one soldier.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1872 Dec 28, James Van Ness (b.1808), the 7th mayor of San Francisco (1855-1856), died in San Luis Obispo, Ca.
(SSFC, 8/25/13, p.G3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Van_Ness)
1872 Dec, "Texas Jack" Omohundro, a genuine frontier scout, joined the more famous Western scout William "Buffalo Bill" Cody on a Chicago stage as the stars of Ned Buntline's melodrama The Scouts of the Prairie. John Burwell "Texas Jack" Omohundro was a Virginian who served with the Confederate Army and later fought a few Indians in Texas before helping to drive Longhorn cattle to North Platte, Neb. He met Buffalo Bill Cody there in 1870, and Cody persuaded Texas Jack to become a scout at nearby Fort McPherson. The two scouts resigned in the fall of 1872 and headed for the bright lights of the stage. The Scouts of the Prairie was a success, and they took the action-packed act on the road. In 1873, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack began starring in a similar melodrama called The Scouts of the Plains. They were joined for a short time by another frontier legend, Wild Bill Hickok, who had a lesser role because he was said to have "a voice like a girl."
(HNQ, 10/10/01)
1872 Julia Morgan (d.1957), architect, was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A8)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.F4)
1872 Edgar Degas, French painter, journeyed to New Orleans where his mother was born. He made 22 paintings there. His time in New Orleans is covered in the 1997 book "Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)(SFC, 3/5/99, p.W12)
1872 Prussian-born American artist John Gast (1842-1896) painted “American Progress," a seminal example of American Western art.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gast_(painter))
1872 Winslow Homer painted the calendar favorite: "Snap the Whip."
(WSJ, 4/2/96, p.A-12)
1872 Thomas Moran painted "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone," a work that helped Congress decide to designate Yellowstone as the first national park.
(WSJ, 12/30/97, p.A8)
1872 Mihaly von Munkacsy painted his oil "The Prisoner." It captured the despair and resignation of a ragged prisoner and his guard.
(WSJ, 3/19/97, p.A16)
1872 Camille Pissarro, French artist, painted "Louveciennes" and “The Fence."
(SFC, 1/20/99, p.E1)(SFC, 3/29/14, p.E5)
1872 Auguste Renoir painted a portrait of Camille Monet. In 1998 it was part of Steve Wynn's collection at the Nevada Bellagio casino.
(SFEM, 11/29/98, p.13)
1872 Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-1882), English painter and founder of the a Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood created his work "Veronica Veronese."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti)(SSFC, 7/1/18, p.E2)
1872 Darwin wrote his "Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals." Also a 6th and last edition of "Origin of the Species" was published.
(NH, 8/96, p.56)(NH, 5/96, p.54)
1872 Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), French novelist, authored “Tartarin of Tarascon," the comic story of a big-hearted braggart.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.W7)
1872 Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), Russian author, completed his novel “The Possessed," also known as “Besy" or “The Devils." In it he foresaw political terrorism on the eve of its birth among revolutionary groups.
(WSJ, 1/28/06, p.P12)
1872 William Dean Howells authored his novel: "Their Wedding Journey."
(ON, 4/02, p.6)
1872 Friedrich Nietzsche published his first book: "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music," in which Greek tragedy was interpreted along Wagnerian lines with Appolonian and Dionysian opposites.
( LGC, 1970, p.266)(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A20)
1872 English author Marie Louise de la Ramee published “A Dog of Flanders" under her pseudonym "Ouida." It is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog Patrasche. Film versions were produced in 1914, 1924, 1935, 1959, 1975, 1992, 1995 and 1999.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dog_of_Flanders)(SFC, 6/11/10, p.C7)
1872 Leo Tolstoy wrote "Anna Karenina."
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.58)
1872 Mark Twain’s "Roughing It" was published. It chronicles the night he and 2 friends spent in a blizzard only 15 steps from the Desert Wells Trading Station in Nevada.
(SFEM, 9/15/96, p.24)(AM, Jul/Aug '97 p.19)(http://tinyurl.com/2wvbxd)
1872 Jules Verne published his novel "A Journey to the Center of the Earth."
(PacDisc. Spring/'96, p.26)
1872 The French opera "Djamilah," composed by Georges Bizet, was set in Turkish-ruled Egypt. It told the story of a Muslim pasha who buys a young mistress in the Cairo slave market.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)(ON, 5/06, p.11)
1872 The opera "La Fille de Madame Angot" was written by Charles Lecocq. An English version in 1998 by David Scott Marley was titled "Daughter of the Cabinet."
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.D5)
1872 California banned boxing but fights continued to take place on boats and open fields and anywhere that police could be avoided.
(SFC, 5/3/14, p.C2)
1872 A brick lighthouse was erected on St. Simons Island off the US coast of Georgia. The island is one of 4 barrier islands called the Golden Isles.
(SSFC, 2/11/07, p.G7)
1872 The New Market Theater in Portland, Oregon, was built at a cost of $100,000. A huge produce market occupied its ground floor.
(Exc, 6/96, p.71)
1872 The International Bible Students Association was founded in Pittsburgh by Charles Taze Russell. During the 1870s, Charles Taze Russell established himself as an independent and controversial Adventist teacher. Russell was succeeded as president in 1917 by Joseph Franklin Rutherford (Judge Rutherford; 1869–1942), who changed the group’s name to Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931 to emphasize its members’ belief that Jehovah, or Yahweh, is the true God and that the Witnesses were his specially chosen followers.
(AH, 4/07, p.30)(www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/302393/Jehovahs-Witness)
1872 The German Evangelical Synod of North America was established.
(SFC, 7/21/97, p.A11)
1872 The Butter and Cheese Exchange opened in NYC. It later became known as the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).
(WSJ, 9/28/05, p.C3)
1872 Peter French (23) rode from Ca. to Oregon with 1,200 head of shorthorn cattle for Dr. Hugh Glenn and settled in what is now called Frenchglen.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, p.T5)
1872 The federal government of the United States became more involved with education by granting public land to the states for the purpose of establishing agricultural and mechanical arts colleges. The initiative resulted in 68 of such land-grant colleges.
(HNQ, 9/4/00)
1872 A US law was passed to prevent bar owners from luring sailors offshore with booze and prostitutes. In 2002 it was used against Greenpeace activists.
(SFC, 12/30/03, p.A1)
1872 US Congress passed legislation forbidding advertisements on American currency and postage. The law regarding postage was amended in Jan, 2006.
(SFC, 6/1/06, p.A1)
1872 The Osage Indians purchased close to 2,300 square miles in the Oklahoma Territory from the Cherokee and created the Osage Reservation.
(SFCM, 3/9/08, p.20)
1872 The high chief of the tribes of the eastern Samoan islands gave America permission to establish a naval base in exchange for military protection.
(SFCM, 10/14/01, p.45)
1872 Little Rock, Arkansas, blasted huge chunks of its namesake rock to make room for a railway bridge. In 2009 the city launched a $650,000 project to excavate the remains of the neglected “Little Rock," estimated to be 300 million years old.
(WSJ, 1/28/09, p.A1)
1872 A group of New Orleans businessmen invented a King of Carnival -- Rex -- to parade in the first daytime parade. They introduced the Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold; the Mardi Gras song, and the Mardi Gras flag.
(www.mardigrasneworleans.com/history.html)
1872 In Cambridge, Mass., the Metaphysical Club was founded as a discussion group and included Oliver Wendall Holmes, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and Chauncy Wright. In 2001 Louis Menand authored "The Metaphysical Club: A Story of ideas in America," which traced the American development of pragmatism.
(SSFC, 6/10/01, DB p.70)(SFC, 6/15/01, p.C15)
1872 The Arnold Arboretum was founded when the President and Fellows of Harvard College became trustees of a portion of the estate of James Arnold (1781–1868), a whaling merchant from New Bedford, Massachusetts.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Arboretum)
1872 In New Hampshire workers digging fence post hole, for businessman and naturalist Seneca Ladd (d.1892), discovered a lump of clay that contained a 4x2½-inch egg-shaped stone with a variety of carved features. It came to be known as the “Mystery Stone." Ladd’s daughter donated the stone to the New Hampshire Historical Society in 1927.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.E3)
1872 Jesse Hiatt on his farm in Winterset, Iowa, discovered a wild apple tree that he named the Hawkeye. It was later bought by the Stark brothers nursery in Louisiana, Missouri, and renamed the Delicious Apple.
(T&L, 10/1980, p.42)
1872 The Ransom and Randolph Co. was founded in Ohio for the manufacture of supplies to dentists, doctors and barbers.
(SFC, 8/24/05, p.G6)
1872 Andrew Carnegie built a steel plant and revolutionized the American steel industry. A few years after being hired by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1852, he began to invest in railroads, receiving huge dividends. When a new steel-making process made cheap steel possible, Carnegie built his own plant.
(HNPD, 8/11/98)
1872 Kaposi's sarcoma was first described by the Austro-Hungarian dermatologist, Moritz Kaposi.
(Ligand Corp. PB, 5/17/00)
1872 Jane Wells of Chicago invented the baby jumper, a hanging canvas saddle for tots to bounce in place.
(SFC, 2/28/98, p.B4)
1872 The San Francisco Bohemian Club was founded by 5 newspapermen, a Shakespearean actor, a vintner and a local merchant. The Bohemian grove, a 2,700 acre redwood grove on the Russian River, became their summer encampment. In 1974 John van der Zee authored “The Greatest Men’s Party on Earth."
(SFC, 1/24/02, p.A18)(WSJ, 7/15/04, p.A1)(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.A18)
1872 Vallejo, Ca., built its first City Hall. A new City Hall, was constructed in 1925. in 2010 structure was combined with the Masonic Temple to create Temple Arts Lofts.
(http://tinyurl.com/ya835znc)(SSFC, 10/15/17, p.N2)
1872 F.M. Riehl became the 1st man to swim across the SF Bay.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W4)
1872 Simon L. Jones, a secretive Welsh importer and exporter, acquired 1,500 acres of the original Coppinger land grant in San Mateo Ct. and named the area Hazel Wood Farm. 942-acres of the area later became San Mateo’s Wunderlich Park.
(Ind, 5/26/01, 5A)
1872 Rev. Ellsworth Jerome Hill of Kankakee crossed the river to Langham Island, 40 miles southwest of Chicago and found a number of rare native plants and a new plant that was not named until 1906 by botanist Edward Lee Greene as Iliamna remota, or the Kankakee mallow. A related plant, found 800 miles to the east in 1927, was named the Peters Mountain mallow.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.57-58)
1872 At a Memphis warehouse, a cask of molasses burst open on a loading dock and a wall of goo eight feet tall slowly surged downhill toward the Mississippi River. It caught a dozen slow-moving pedestrians unawares.
(HFA, '96, p.71)
1872 In Nevada Francis Marion "Borax" Smith (d.1931) found borax in Peel’s Marsh. In 1890 he developed the Pacific Coast Borax Company to transport the borax on a 1-day, 169-mile trip from Death Valley to a railhead at Mohave with the famed 20-mule team. He later consolidated the SF Bay Area trolley lines into the Key System.
(SFC, 11/6/98, p.D5)(SSFC, 10/20/02, p.A19)
1872 The US had 61,000 miles of railroads and about 15,000 acres of prime woodland were cut for rail ties in this year alone.
(NOHY, 3/90, p.51)
1872 Robert S. Duncanson, American painter, died. Duncanson was a black painter who lived in Cincinnati, Canada and Detroit. He had established himself in Cincinnati with portraits of abolitionist leaders and landscapes of the Hudson Valley. His paintings include: Land of the Lotus Eaters (1861), Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River, and View of Cincinnati, Ohio, from Covington, Kentucky (1851).
(WSJ, 11/1/95, p.A-12)
1872 William Henry Seward (b.1801), former US Sec. of State (1861-1869), died. In 1900 Frederic Bancroft authored "The Life of William H. Seward."
(WUD, 1994 p.1307)
1872 C.P. Scott began editing the Guardian in England and continued for almost 60 years. Scott was a friend of Zionist Chaim Weizmann. In 2004 Daphna Baram authored “Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel."
(Econ, 7/31/04, p.71)
1872 London’s Clerkenwell fire station began operations. Its closure on Jan 9, 2014, marked the end of Britain’s oldest operating fire station.
(AFP, 1/9/14)
1872 In England the right of assembly was established and the first lawful public meetings were held at the Reformer's Tree in Hyde Park.
(SFEM, 3/21/99, p.24)
1872 The British Consulate building, a colonial style house with an arcaded veranda was built along the banks of the Huang Pu River in Shanghai, and is now occupied by the Shanghai Foreign Investment Co.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 84)
1872 Zey, king of the Asante (Ghana), wrote to the British monarch asking for the slave trade to be renewed.
(Econ, 2/24/07, p.73)
1872 Hawaii’s King Kamehameha V asked the Kaiser of Prussia to send a music teacher for the Royal Hawaiian Band. Henry Berger, a Prussian military band leader, arrived and led the group for 43 years. He was later considered the father of Hawaiian music.
(WSJ, 3/10/05, p.A1)
1872 A census, begun in 1867, was completed in India under the direction of the British.
(Econ, 2/26/11, p.48)(http://tinyurl.com/5wdrbws)
1872 A Japanese government decree struck down ancient conventions that kept women off many of the country’s mountains. In 2004 a 1,300-year tradition against women climbers on Mount Omine continued.
(SSFC, 9/5/04, p.A2)
1872 A police raid in Glasgow, Scotland, found only 2 pubs in 30 serving real Scotch whiskey.
(WSJ, 1/4/02, p.A7)
1872-1874 More than 4 million buffalo were killed by white hunters.
(HNPD, 8/21/98)
1872-1873 Vincenzo Gemito, Italian sculptor, makes terra-cotta busts of Giuseppi Verdi and his wife, Giuseppina Strepponi, during their stay in Naples.
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.90)
1872-1873 The Modoc War was fought in Siskiyou County, Ca. 60 Indian men, outnumbered 20 to 1, held off an army for nearly 6 months. In 1977 Arthur J. Quinn wrote "Hell With the Fire Out," a re-creation of the war from eye-witness accounts.
(SFC, 5/17/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 10/25/98, p.T9
1872-1933 Addison Mizner, American architect and playwright: "Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate." "God gives us relatives; thank God, we can choose our friends." In 2003 the Sondheim play "Bounce" was based on Addison and Wilson Mizner.
(AP, 12/2/97)(AP, 1/24/98)(WSJ, 7/3/03, p.D8)
1872-1945 Gottardo Piazzoni, Swiss-born artist. He moved to Marin, Ca. and painted landscapes.
(SFC, 7/5/96, p.D1)
1872-1949 Georges Gurdjieff, Armenian author and explorer: "Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go."
(AP, 9/12/98)
1872-1950 Leon Blum, French statesman: "Life does not give itself to one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice."
(AP, 8/22/98)
1872-1951 Dr. Albert Barnes amassed a large collection of impressionist art (Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse) and locked the doors to his collection when art critics of the 1920s called the work "lunatic art." His story is documented on a new CD titled Passion for Art by Continuum (Corbis Publ.) and priced at $40-50. He made his money just after the turn of the century with Argyrol, a medical compound for treating infections.
(New Media, 2/95, p.84)(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.84)
1872-1960 Ellery Sedgwick, American editor: "In America, getting on in the world means getting out of the world we have known before."
(AP, 4/30/98)
1872-1961 Judge Learned Hand, American jurist: "A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few."
(AP, 12/13/97)
1872-1964 Alexander Meiklejohn, American educator: "There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is."
(AP, 2/19/98)
1872-1970 Bertrand Russell, English philosopher and mathematician: "Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?"
(AP, 1/7/99)
1873 Jan 7, Adolph Zukor, movie producer, director, executive (Paramount), was born in Hungary.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1873 Jan 7, Charles Peguy (d.1914), French poet and writer, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P%C3%A9guy)
1873 Jan 13, William Pitt Kellogg (1830-1918), American politician and carpetbagger, began serving as the governor of Louisiana and continued to 1877. He was the state's last Republican governor until the inauguration of David C. Treen in 1980.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P._Kellogg)
1873 Jan 14, "Celluloid" was registered as a trademark.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1873 Jan, Ann Eliza Young (b.1844), one of the many wives of Mormon leader Brigham Young, revolted against the indignities and hypocrisy of polygamy. Her divorce was granted in January, 1875.
(SFC, 8/12/08, p.E5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Eliza_Young)
1873 Feb 1, Matthew Fontaine Maury (b.1806), American astronomer, died in Lexington Va.. He was also a historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer, author, geologist, and educator. Maury proposed that the US invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a “universal system" of meteorology, and he was the leading spirit of that pioneer scientific conference when it met in Brussels in 1853. Within a few years, nations owning three fourths of the shipping of the world were sending their oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where the information was evaluated and the results given worldwide distribution. His books included "The Physical Geography of the Sea" (1855), the first such comprehensive book on oceanography to be published.
(Econ, 2/27/10, SR p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury)
1873 Feb 2, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, German secretary of State (1932-38), was born. After WW II he was tried as war criminal and received jail sentence.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1873 Feb 12, The US Congress abolished bimetallism and authorized $1 & $3 gold coins.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1873 Feb 12, The 1st Spanish Republic was proclaimed. King Amadeo I abdicated following a 2-year reign. Emilio Cistelar y Ripolo (40) became prime minister, but the Carlist civil war continued.
(PCh, 1992, p.527)
1873 Feb 13, Feodor Chaliapin, opera singer, was born.
(HN, 2/13/01)
1873 Feb 27, Enrico Caruso (d.1921), was born. He was the Italian operatic lyric tenor who excelled in operas such as Pagliacci.
(Internet)
1873 Mar 1, E. Remington and Sons (1816–1896), a firearms manufacturer founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, started manufacturing the first commercial typewriter. James Densmore and George Yost contracted Remington to build 1,000 machines designed by Christopher Latham Sholes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Remington_and_Sons)(ON, 12/10, p.8)
1873 Mar 3, William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor (1924-52), was born.
(HN, 3/3/99)(SC, 3/3/02)
1873 Mar 3, US Congress authorized federal departmental postage stamps.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1873 Mar 3, US Congress and government raised their own salary, retroactively.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1873 Mar 4, Pres. Ulysses S. Grant accepted the oath of office, administered by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, for his 2nd term. At the inauguration ceremony 150 canaries, whose chirping was to amuse guests, froze to death in their cages.
(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A7)(www.bartleby.com/124/pres34.html)
1873 Mar 4, New York Daily Graphic, 1st illustrated daily newspaper in US, was published.
(SC, 3/4/02)
1873 Mar 9, Royal Canadian Mounted Police founded. [see May 23]
(MC, 3/9/02)
1873 Mar 10, Jakob Wassermann (d.1934), novelist (My Life as German & Jew), was born in Germany. "In every person, even in such as appear most reckless, there is an inherent desire to attain balance."
(AP, 3/25/97)(MC, 3/10/02)
1873 Mar 19, Max Reger, composer, pianist, prof. (Leipzig Univ), was born in Brand, Bavaria.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1873 Mar 20, Sergei V. Rachmaninov, Russian-US pianist, composer (Aleko), was born. [see Apr 1]
(MC, 3/20/02)
1873 Mar 22, Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1873 Mar 30, Benedict Augustin Morel (63), psychologist (dementia praecox), died.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1873 Apr 1, M. Namik Kemal's play " Vatan yahut Silistre" premiered in Constantinople.
(OTD)
1873 Apr 1, Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (d.1943) was born in Novgorod Province, Russia. [see Mar 20]
(AP, 4/1/98)
1873 Apr 1, The British White Star steamship Atlantic, enroute to NYC from Liverpool with 811 passengers under Capt. James Agnew Williams (33), sank off Nova Scotia killing 565 people, mostly women and children. A court of inquiry suspended Williams for 2 years.
(ON, 4/03, p.7)
1873 Apr 13, In the Colfax Massacre in Grant Parish, Louisiana, some 105 blacks were killed on Easter Sunday. Many bodies, hidden or dumped into the Red River; were recovered and found to have been mutilated. In the end, only nine men were arrested, and they were charged with the murder of only one man. Among those arrested was William J. Cruikshank. In 2007 Lalita Tademy authored her novel “Red River" based on the massacre.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Massacre)(http://tinyurl.com/2dyfuj)
1873 Apr 22, Ellen Glassgow, American novelist, was born.
(HN, 4/22/01)
1873 Apr 25, Howard R. Garis, children's writer, was born.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1873 Apr 25, Walther de la Mare, poet and novelist (Memoir of a Midget, Come Hither), was born.
(HN, 4/25/01)
1873 Apr 28, A. Manzoni (88), writer, died. Giuseppi Verdi dedicated his "Requiem" to his memory.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1873 May 1, David Livingstone (60), British physician, explorer (Africa), died in Chitambo, Zambia. His body passed through Zanzibar for a funeral in London in Apr 18, 1874.
(www.heroesofhistory.com/page55.html)(SSFC, 7/13/03, p.C9)
1873 May 2, Jurgis Baltrušaitis (d.1944), Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator, was born.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurgis_Baltru%C5%A1aitis)
1873 May 3, Nikolay N. Tcherepnin, composer of ballets, songs, was born in St. Petersburg.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1873 May 7, US marines attacked Panama.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1873 May 8, Melvil Dewey (d.1931) presented the 1st draft of his decimal classification system to the Amherst College Library Committee. [see 1876]
(ON, 3/04, p.12)
1873 May 8, John Stuart Mill (b.1806), British philosopher and economist, died in Avignon, France. He completed his autobiography just before death. Here he wrote that happiness is the incidental by-product of pursuing some other worthy goal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill)(Econ, 4/21/12, p.84)
1873 May 9, Howard Carter, discoverer of King Tutankhamen's tomb, was born.
(HN, 5/9/98)
1873 May 10, Belgian priest Joseph de Veuster (d.1889), aka Father Damien, arrived on Molokai, Hawaii, to tend the spiritual needs of the lepers. The Catholic priest spent his life ministering to the lepers and built homes, churches and moved the whole colony to a more sheltered area. Damien was beatified in 1995. The settlement peaked at about 1200. A film about him was shot in 1998 with Peter O’Toole and Kris Kristofferson.
(www.whirledwydeweb.com/kalaupapa/chronology.html)(SFEC, 9/8/96, p.T3)(WSJ, 8/14/98, p.A1)
1873 May 12, The penny postal card, issued by the Post Office Department, was first put on sale in Springfield, Mass., and in other cities a day later.
(www.dailymail.com/static/specialsections/lookingback/lb0201.htm)
1873 May 15, Nikolay N. Tcherepnin, composer of ballets, songs, was born in St Petersburg, Russia.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1873 May 20, Levi Strauss (b.1829), a Bavarian-born merchant in San Francisco, and Jacob Davis of Reno, Nevada, received a US patent their miners' work pants reinforced with copper rivets. They soon began marketing "waist overalls" at $13.50 per doz.
(SFC, 4/29/03, B1)(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A10)(SFC, 8/28/98, p.B4)(ON, 4/05, p.12)(SSFC, 3/24/19, p.D4)
1873 May 23, Canada's North West Mounted Police force was established. The North West Mounted Police was formed by the Canadian government to protect new settlers in the territory between Manitoba and British Columbia. [see Mar 9]
(AP, 5/23/97)(HNQ, 5/5/98)
1873 May 24, Leo Delibes' opera "Le Roi l'a Dit," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1873 May 27, The first Preakness [horserace] was held at Pimlico, Md. It later became part of the Triple Crown. Edward R. Bradley's Kalitan was the 1st winner.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(SFEC, 5/30/99, Z1 p.8)(WSJ, 11/21/00, p.A24)
1873 Jun 5, Sultan Bargash closed the slave market of Zanzibar. Missionaries bought the site and began building an Anglican cathedral.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C13)(MC, 6/5/02)
1873 Jun 16, Pres. Grant signed an executive order that permitted Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce to live in the Wallowa Valley, Oregon, to perpetuity.
(SFEC, 6/15/97, Par. p.5)(ON, 3/04, p.2)
1873 Jun 18, Suffragist Susan B. Anthony (1815-1906) was fined $100 in Canandaigua, NY, for attempting to vote in the 1872 presidential election. The fine was never paid [see Nov 5, 1872].
(AP, 6/18/97)(HN, 6/18/98)(ON, 12/09, p.4)
1873 Jun 28, Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and biologist, was born. He won a Nobel Prize in 1912 for the development of blood vessel suture technique.
(HN, 6/28/99)(MC, 6/28/02)
1873 Jun 29, China’s Emperor Tongzhi held the first imperial audience with foreign diplomats in 80 years. Japan’s foreign minister asked for compensation for an attack on sailors from the Ryukyu islands by aborigines on Taiwan. China disavowed responsibility.
(Econ, 12/21/13, p.72)
1873 Jul 1, Prince Edward Island became the 7th Canadian province.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1873 Jul 10, French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) wounded Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) with a pistol.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud)
1873 Jul 21, At Adair, Iowa, more than seven years after the Liberty holdup, the James-Younger gang made their first train robbery. See 1866 for the 1st US train robbery.
(OGA, 11/24/98)(HN, 7/18/00)
1873 Aug 3, Inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco. Hallidie made the first cable car trip aboard his Nob Hill Line traveling down Clay St. from Knob Hill to Kearney and then back up.
(www.sfmuseum.org/bio/hallidie.html)(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A16)(AP, 8/2/06)(SFC, 5/30/15, p.C2)
1873 Aug 18, Leo Slezak, Austria tenor, actor (Othello), was born.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1873 Aug 18, Otto Harbach, songwriter (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes), was born.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1873 Aug 26, Lee De Forest (d.1961), inventor of the audion vacuum tube, was born in Council bluffs, Iowa. He is considered the father of radio.
(WUD, 1994 p.379)( http://www.britannica.com)
1873 Aug, The cannibalized remains of 5 men were found on the banks of the Gunnison River, Colorado. Alfred Packer (d.1907), one of a 6-man prospecting party, had emerged from the area 3 months earlier. Packer was arrested but escaped for 9 years. He then spent 18 years in jail and was paroled in 1901. [see Apr 13, 1883]
(AM, 5/01, p.50)
1873 Sep 2, San Francisco’s first cable car hit the tracks starting at Clay and Jones streets on Nob Hill.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Smith_Hallidie)(SFC, 2/1/14, p.C1)
1873 Sep 18, Jay Cooke & Co. announced that it was suspending trading due to bankruptcy. The firm had pioneered the sale of war bonds.
(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A22)
1873 Fall, Leaders of the Northern California 1872 Modoc War were executed and survivors were exiled to Oklahoma.
(SFEC, 6/18/00, p.T7)
1873 Sep 20, A financial panic hit the NY Stock Exchange when the high-flying bond dealer, Jay Cooke, granted too many loans to the railroads. Panic spread to Europe as London and Paris markets crashed and the New York Stock Exchange closed for the first time for 10 days. The economy went into a 6 year depression. Philadelphia banker and newspaperman Anthony Drexel teamed up with J.P. Morgan to depose a rival bank run by Jay Cooke. They published allegations to undermine confidence and cause a run that led to a panic.
(WSJ, 2/27/95, p.A-10)(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.C1)(WSJ, 10/7/98, p.A22)(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.G2)
1873 Oct 3, Captain Jack and three other Modoc Indians were hanged in Oregon for the murder of General Edward Canby.
(HN, 10/3/98)
1873 Oct 9, Charles Rudolph Walgreen, "the father of the modern drugstore" was born.
(HN, 10/9/00)
1873 Oct 19, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Rutgers universities drafted the first code of football rules.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1873 Oct 20, The P.T. Barnum Hippodrome featuring the "Greatest Show on Earth," opened in NYC.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1873 Oct 27, Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applied for a patent on barbed wire. Glidden eventually received five patents and is generally considered the inventor of barbed wire. [see Nov 24, 1874] Joseph Glidden and Isaac Ellwood formed a company in De Kalb, Illinois to manufacture barbed wire, an essential product of old West. Patents on barbed wire were granted as early as 1867, but Glidden was the first to devise a commercially viable way of producing it after seeing a sample of barbed wire at a fair in 1873. Glidden and Ellwood’s product greatly increased the use of barbed wire to protect crops and livestock from roaming cattle. Open ranges dramatically dwindled in the face of new fencing over the next two decades.
(HN, 10/27/98)(HNQ, 2/12/01)
1873 Oct 27, Emily Post (d.1960), authority on social behavior and writer, was born into high society in Baltimore. Md.
(WSJ, 10/16/08, p.A13)
1873 Oct 30, P T Barnum's circus, "Greatest Show on Earth," debuted in NYC.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1873 Nov 1, In San Francisco Ned Allen, owner of the Bull Run dance hall on Pacific Ave., adjacent to Chinatown, was stabbed to death. Allen had rejoiced in being called the wickedest man in SF. Bartlett J. Freel, aka Barney Flinn, was soon identified as the killer. In April, 1874, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years in San Quentin.
(SFC, 4/25/15, p.C2)(SFC, 5/2/15, p.C4)
1873 Nov 4, Dentist John Beers of SF patented the gold crown.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1873 Nov 16, William Christopher Handy, W.C. Handy, father of the blues famous for "St. Louis Blues," was born in Alabama.
(HN, 11/16/98)(MC, 11/16/01)
1873 Nov 17, Budapest was formed from 2 rival cities, Buda and Obuda on the west bank of the Danube and Pest on the east bank.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Budapest)
1873 Nov 19, James Reed and two accomplices robbed the Watt Grayson family of $30,000 in the Choctaw Nation.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1873 Dec 1, In San Francisco James Otis (1826-1875) was sworn in as mayor.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Otis_(politician))
1873 Dec 7, Willa Cather (d.1947), American author famous for "O Pioneers" and "My Antonia," was born. "I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do."
(HN, 12/7/98)(AP, 10/26/99)
1873 Leon Czolgosz (d.1901), anarchist and assassin of Pres. McKinley (1901), was born to Polish parents in Detroit.
(AH, 10/01, p.25)
1873 Degas painted “Degas Blanchisseuses souffrant des dent" (Laundry women with toothache). It was stolen in 1973 while on loan from the Louvre and recovered at a NYC Sotheby’s auction in 2010.
(Econ, 11/27/10, p.83)
1873 Edgar Degas painted "Cotton Merchants in New Orleans."
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)
1873 Claude Monet painted "Sunrise," a depiction of the port of La Havre with ships in the Spring. Monet moved from Paris to Giverny in this year.
(SFC, 11/13/98, p.C8)(SSFC, 5/20/01, p.T8)
1873 Camille Pissarro painted "Street in Pontoise, Winter."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D1)
1873 Renoir painted "Woman in a Garden." It sold for $6.7 million in 2000.
(SFC, 11/10/00, p.W13)
1873 Repin created his painting "The Volga Barge."
(SSFC, 11/3/02, p.M6)
1873 Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), British economist, authored “Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market." The 1st edition was dated Dec 31, 1872.
(Econ, 8/18/07, p.68)(www.econlib.org/Library/Bagehot/bagLom.html)
1873 Mrs. H.W. Beecher published her "Motherly Talks With Young House-Keepers."
(SFC, 2/19/96, zz-1 p.2)
1873 James Fitzjames Stephen, journalist and jurist, authored "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," a devastating attack on the liberalism of John Stuart Mill.
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W17)
1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner authored “The Gilded Age," a novel set in the scandalous Grant administration.
(WSJ, 9/16/06, p.P10)
1873 American writer Charles Stoddard (1843-1909) began a long tour as special correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle. The “South Sea Idyls," a collection of his travel tales, were published based on his 1864 travels to the South Sea Islands.
(SFC, 2/27/14, p.D5)
1873 Gen'l. Lew Wallace wrote "The Fair God."
(HT, 3/97, p.66)
1873 The original Harford pier was built at Port San Luis Harbor, Ca. It was rebuilt in 1915 following a tidal wave and became known as the Avila Beach Pier.
(SSFC, 9/17/06, p.G8)
1873 In SF the city’s International Hotel, built in 1854, moved from Jackson Street to 848 Kearny.
(SSFC, 8/19/07, p.B1)
1873 San Francisco’s first cable car hit the tracks starting at Clay and Jones streets on Nob Hill.
(SFC, 2/1/14, p.C1)
1873 The Alaska Packers organized in San Francisco to transport workers for seasonal salmon canning work in Alaska. The Alaska Packers' Association (APA) was a San Francisco based manufacturer of Alaska canned salmon founded in 1891 and sold in 1982.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Packers%27_Association)(SSFC, 3/21/21, p.A2)
1873 The Hamilton-Turner House on Lafayette Square in Savannah, Georgia was built. It now sports a horse from a carousel on its roof, placed there by its current owner Ms. Nancy Hillis, author of the Savannah Map of Good and Evil.
(SFC, 6/25/95, p.T-6)
1873 In NYC a long brick building, 9½ feet by 42 feet, was built on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village on land used as an alley. Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay later lived there, as did anthropologist Margaret Mead. It was dubbed NYC’s skinniest house and in 2010 sold for $2.1 million.
(SFC, 1/14/10, p.A4)
1873 Hope, Arkansas, was founded to accommodate the newly emerging Cairo & Fulton Railroad. It was named after Hope Loughborough, the daughter of one of the executives. Later Pres. Bill Clinton spent 4 childhood years at 117 South Hervey St. with his grandparents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy.
(SFC, 3/13/99, p.A3)
1873 Modern lawn tennis made its debut. It was a variation of a game played for centuries by royals. Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, a British army officer, devised the game for the entertainment of guests at his country estate.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(Econ, 4/24/04, p.81)
1873 Baseball was banned in Cuba under Spanish rule, but was never completely quelled and came back strong after the Spanish-American War.
(SFC, 5/29/99, p.B5)
1873 The "franking privilege" of sending mail free of charge, initiated in 1776 and extended to war veterans, became too widespread and was abolished because it had become too widespread and abused. In 1874 Congress began to gradually reinstate to federal agencies and representatives.
(HNQ, 9/19/00)
1873 The US Comstock Act was passed. It declared the public dissemination of information about contraception illegal. Until this time newspapers and magazines were filled with ads for birth-control devices and services. Anthony Comstock, morals crusader, successfully lobbied for a strict federal law on obscenity and established the New York Society for the suppression of Vice.
(SFEM, 6/28/98, p.39)(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)
1873 The US Supreme Court in the Slaughter-House cases limited the Privileges or Immunities in the 14th Amendment to a few minor federal prerogatives.
(WSJ, 3/14/09, p.W3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse_Cases)
1873 A lighthouse was built on East Brother island off Richmond between SF Bay and San Pablo Bay. It was automated in 1969 and turned into a bed and breakfast inn in 1979. A power cable to the island failed in 2021 threatening the future of the lighthouse.
(SFC, 7/6/01, p.A21)(SSFC, 11/10/02, p.C5)(SFC, 5/11/21, p.B1)
1873 The Univ. at Berkeley became part of the Univ. of California and was required by law to admit women. The first roofed halls including south Hall opened at Berkeley and Daniel Coit Gilman from Yale served as the first president of the new state university until 1875, when he accepted an offer at Johns Hopkins.
(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.24)(SFEM, 1/30/00, p.8)
1873 In San Francisco the Toland Medical college was gifted to the Univ. of California system.
(UCSF, Spring, 2003)(SFC, 5/22/16, p.N10)
1873 In SF Mifflin Gibbs, the owner of a boot shop at 636 Clay St., was elected as San Francisco’s 1st black judge.
(SFC, 7/2/07, p.B2)
1873 In Yosemite Valley the Cosmopolitan, a bath house and saloon, began its “Grand Register of Yo-Semite Valley" and continued with entries until 1884. In 2007 Bill Lane, former publisher of Sunset Magazine, purchased the book from the family of the owners of the Cosmopolitan for $130,000 and donated to Yosemite National Park.
(SFC, 12/15/07, p.A1)
1873 The big coho salmon runs of Marin County, Ca., began to decline when the first of seven dams was built in the Lagunitas Creek watershed.
(SFC, 6/24/14, p.A8)
1873 Adolph Coors selected the waters of Clear Creek, Colorado, for his dream of high producing a high quality beer.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, BR p.4)
1873 In Chicago bonds were issued for the Saginaw & Canada Railroad Co. The operation built 40 miles of track and went broke in 1876. The worthless bonds were later found and given to the Public Museum of Grand Rapids in 1992, where they were sold in the gift shop for $22.95. Scam artists acquired a large quantity in bulk and sold them as real bonds to investors for a total scam of some $12 million.
(WSJ, 2/25/99, p.A1,8)
1873 Adam Schaaf opened a piano company in Chicago. Pianos were made at his 6-story building on Wabash Ave until 1926.
(SFC, 2/22/06, p.G6)
1873 In Kansas an excavation found 11 bodies in a garden. A family of four who came to be known as the "Bloody Benders" had lured travelers into their home inviting them for a hot meal and a place to rest. Some later suspected the Benders killed up to 21 people. The Bender family had fled and were never captured.
(AP, 1/25/20)
1873 Boston, Mass., established a mounted police unit, the first such unit in the country. The unit was disbanded in 2009 due to budget cuts.
(SFC, 6/29/09, p.A4)
1873 In Marblehead, Mass., Lydia Pynkham, a Quaker and women's rights advocate, developed and began to produce and sell the Lydia Pynkham Vegetable Compound for problems that ailed women.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.A10)
1873 The ship Ironsides, a 219-foot long steamship, sank in 110 feet of water about four miles from her destination at Grand Haven, Michigan.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.8)
1873 James Edmond Scripps (1835-1906), the son of a prominent British book binder, tapped the growing class of working men and women by launching a newspaper, The Evening News (later, The Detroit News).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Scripps)
1873 The firm of Drexel, Morgan moved to 23 Wall Street. The firm grew by shifting its business from government finance in the 1870s to railroads in the 1880s.
(WSJ, 3/30/99, p.A24)
1873 Asa T. Soule of Rochester, NY, concocted the alcohol laced Hop Bitters patent medicine and made a fortune. The Univ. of Rochester later declined a $100,000 offer to change its name to Hops Bitters Univ.
(SFC, 12/11/99, p.B6)
1873 In Wisconsin the Racine Silver Plate Co. was founded.
(SFC,11/26/97, Z1 p.7)
1873 The Peshtigo inferno burned huge stretches of forest along the border of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota.
(HFA, '96, p.71)
1873 Booksellers Barnes & Noble began business.
(WSJ, 9/3/96, p.A6)
1873 Color photography was devised.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1873 James D. Dana, American geologist, rejected Hall's theory of subsidence by loading of the crust. He offered a new interpretation, namely that the down-warping of the crust was a cause not a result of the thick column of sediment. A long, deep depression in the crust offered a site for the accumulation of sands, silts and other sediments over a long period. This phase of down-warping and sedimentation gave way to one of uplift and compression. The trough was referred to by Dana as a geosyncline and the association of geosynclines with mountain building has now been demonstrated in many parts of the world.
(DD-EVTT, p.32)
1873 The "Big Bonanza," a huge silver deposit, was found by miners working for the Comstock Kings in Virginia City. The 1999 book "The Roar and the Silence" by Ronald James described the silver boom in Virginia City.
(SFEC, 2/14/99, Z1 p.4)
1873 Heinrich Schliemann, German archeologist, discovered a hoard of magnificent treasure within the ruins of Troy.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.42)
1873 Jean Louis Agassiz (b.1807), Swiss naturalist and educator, died. He wrote a succession of papers [1840] outlining continental glaciation not only of Europe but of North America.
(DD-EVTT, p.129)(AHD,1971, p.24)(HN, 5/28/01)
1873 The British Open was played at St. Andrews in Scotland for the first time. Nine Scots and an Englishman competed for the first prize of £11.
(Econ, 7/18/15, p.51)
1873 The four Martin brothers began making stoneware in London and continued to 1923. In 1885 they introduced jugs modeled with human faces on each side.
(SFC, 12/19/06, p.G3)
1873 British army officers brought back from India the game of poona. They played it on the country estate of the Duke of Beaufort. The estate was named Badminton and thus poona became known as badminton.
(WSJ, 7/23/96, p.A6)
1873 Britain sent an agent, Henry Wickham, to Brazil to get rubber seeds. The Seedlings were cultivated in Kew Gardens and transplanted to Malaysia.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R50)
1873 Hancock & Whittingham made earthenware in Stoke, Staffordshire, England, and continued to 1879.
(SFC, 1/23/08, p.G5)
1873 The four Martin brothers began making stoneware in London and continued to 1923. In 1885 they introduced jugs modeled with human faces on each side.
(SFC, 12/19/06, p.G3)
1873 In England the Brunner Mond chemical firm began operating a few miles from Quarry Bank Mill at Styal. In 2006 Brunner Mond was bought by India’s Tata Chemicals.
(Econ, 9/24/11, SR p.19)
1873 The British based Rio Tinto Company was formed by investors to mine ancient copper workings at Rio Tinto near Huelva in southern Spain. By 2003 the company had mining interests in 40 countries and revenues of $11.8 billion.
(www.riotinto.com/whoweare/timeline.asp)(WSJ, 11/17/04, p.A12)
1873 In Canada Louis Riel of Manitoba was elected to the federal Parliament in Ottawa but lawmakers were resentful of his 1869 uprising and moved to deny him his seat. This led to a nervous breakdown and he spent three years in a mental institution in Quebec.
(SFC, 1/22/98, p.B2)
1873 In Canada female property owners in British Columbia got the right to vote in municipal elections.
(Econ., 11/28/20, p.16)
1873 A French expeditionary force in Vietnam sacked Hanoi's citadel.
(NG, May, 04, p.87)
1873 Ludwig II of Bavaria began the construction of his palace at Linderhof.
(SFEC, 4/9/00, p.T5)
1873 Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer founded the Rabbinerseminar zu Berlin as German Orthodoxy’s answer to the Judisch-Theologische Seminar in Breslau. Its outlook was that although Jewish law, the halacha, was immutable, it had to be couched in contemporary language. In 1990 Rabbi David Ellenson authored a biography of Rabbi Hildesheimer.
(Econ, 7/28/12, SR p.10,11)
1873 The Verein für Socialpolitik, Germany’s economic association, was founded.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.48)
1873 In Germany Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin began the conceptual work for his improved air machine. He planned a rigid structure with gas held at various intervals in the framework with engines for propulsion and a suspended gondola to house the engines, crew and passengers.
(AHM, 1/97)
1873 India’s introduced into the Statue Book of the Bengal Births and Deaths Registration Act, to be followed later by the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act of 1886.
(http://tinyurl.com/5wdrbws)
1873 Oji Paper was founded in Japan. In 2006 it was Japan’s biggest paper company.
(Econ, 8/12/06, p.51)
1873 The Dutch began colonization efforts in Aceh province (Indonesia), which led to a decades-long war.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A30)(SFCM, 11/2/03, p.8)
1873 Holland America cruise line began operations from the Netherlands.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, p.T5)
1873 In Romania a 130-km (80-mile) rail line was built from the city of Brasov to the medieval fortress town of Sighisoara.
(AP, 1/23/19)
1873 Many Basques fled Spain during the 2nd Carlist War.
(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A2)
1873 Some 400 Hindustani laborers arrived in Suriname. The Hindu festival, known as Diwali (the festival of lights), later became officially observed on Nov 3.
(SSFC, 10/27/13, p.N4)(http://tinyurl.com/o34hcdr)
1873 Russia established a fixed boundary between Afghanistan and it's new territories. Russia promised to respect Afghanistan's territorial integrity.
(https://www.afghan-web.com/history/chronology/)
1873 Siam’s (Thailand) King Chulalongkorn abolished prostration.
(Econ 5/20/17, p.33)
1873-1874 Spain’s system of federal government failed.
(Econ, 11/17/12, p.15)
1873-1878 Alexander MacKenzie, Liberal Party, served as the 2nd Prime Minister of Canada.
(CFA, '96, p.81)
1873-1879 A US economic recession took place over this period.
(WSJ, 11/29/08, p.B2)
1873-1914 Charles Peguy, French poet and writer: "It is impossible to write ancient history because we lack source materials, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many."
(AP, 7/28/98)
1873-1924 The Scandinavian Monetary Union established a common currency for its members.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A1)
1873-1933 Sandor Ferenczi, a Hungarian disciple of Freud. He accompanied Freud and Carl Jung on a visit to the US. His extensive correspondence with Freud was later published.
(SFC, 7/14/96, DB p.6)
1873-1939 Ford Madox Ford, English novelist, poet, critic and editor. Prof. Frank MacShane (d.1999) later authored a biography on Ford.
(WUD, 1994, p.554)(SFC, 11/18/99, p.C8)
1873-1951 Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist: "When I rest, I rust."
(AP, 7/29/97)
1873-1954 Colette, French author, whose works included "Cheri" and "Gigi." "To talk to a child, to fascinate him, is much more difficult than to win an electoral victory. But it is also more rewarding." In 1999 Claude Francis and Fernande Gontier published a 2-part biography: "Creating Colette: Volume One: From Ingenue to Libertine 1873-1913. The 2nd volume was "From Baroness to Woman of Letters 1913-1954." Other biographies included: "The Difficulty of Loving" by Margaret Crossland; "Colette: A Taste for Life" by Yvonne Mitchell; "Colette" by Joanna Richardson; "Colette: A Passion for Life" by Genevieve Dorman.
(AP, 10/18/97)(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.8)
1873-1961 Karl Schwarzschild, German astronomer and mathematician, made important contributions to Einstein's relativity theory. The Schwarzschild radius is the theoretical limit of a mass in size shrunken so as its escape velocity is equal to the velocity of light.
(TNG, Klein, p.77-78)
1874 Jan 1, New York City annexed the Bronx.
(MC, 1/1/02)
1874 Jan 4, Josef Suk, Czech violinist and composer (Asrael), was born.
(MC, 1/4/02)
1874 Jan 5, Joseph Erlanger, doctor (shock therapy Nobel 1944), was born.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1874 Jan 11, Gail Borden (b.1801), inventor of condensed milk, died in Borden, Tx. Epitaph: “I tried and failed, I tried again and again and succeeded."
(ON, 5/04, p.5)( www.famoustexans.com/GailBorden.htm)
1874 Jan 13, Battle between jobless and police in NYC left 100s injured.
(MC, 1/13/02)
1874 Jan 17, Chang and Eng Bunker (62), Chinese-Thai Siamese twins, died.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1874 Jan 22, [David Wark] D.W. Griffith, U.S. film director, was born. He was the most influential figure in early film history, and made "The Birth of A Nation" and "Intolerance."
(HN, 1/22/99)
1874 Jan, 25, The birthday of Somerset Maugham (d.1965), English author and playwright.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AHD, p.807)
1874 Jan 29, John David Rockefeller Jr, philanthropist, was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1874 Jan 31, Jesse James gang robbed a train at Gads Hill, Missouri.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1874 Feb 3, Gertrude Stein (d.1946), poet and novelist, was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. Her older brother, Michael, managed the family business, which included San Francisco's Market Street railway line. Her parents were Daniel and Milly. The family returned to America from Europe in 1878, and settled in Oakland, California, where Gertrude attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school. Her relationship with her brother, Leo (1872-1947), abruptly ended in 1914. Her work included "Three Lives," "G.M.P." and "Tender Buttons." Stein coined the term "Lost Generation" in reference to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the post-World War I years. The 40-year relationship between Gertrude and Leo is told by Brenda Wineapple in "Sister Brother, Gertrude and Leo Stein." "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." "It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business."
(SFEC, 8/11/96, DB, p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Stein)(AP, 12/27/97)(AP, 9/3/98)
1874 Feb 9, Amy Lowell (d.1925), poet, critic, was born. "Youth condemns; maturity condones."
(AP, 11/25/00)(HN, 2/9/01)
1874 Feb 9, Jules Michelet (75), French historian (History of France), died. He was the first historian to use and define the word Renaissance ("Re-birth" in French), as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented a drastic break from the Middle Ages.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Michelet)
1874 Feb 12, Auguste Perret, French architect, was born. He pioneered in designs of reinforced concrete buildings.
(HN, 2/12/01)
1874 Feb 12, King David Kalakaua (1836-1891) of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), became the 1st king to visit US. King Lunalilo had died without an heir and the legislature elected lawyer David Kalakaua as king.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81kaua)(ON, 11/02, p.5)
1874 Feb 17, Thomas J. Watson Sr. (d.1956), U.S. industrialist, was born in upstate New York. In 1914 he began running the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., a predecessor to IBM. He converted the financially ailing manufacturing business into the international giant IBM.
(WUD, 1994, p.1614)(HN, 2/17/99)(WSJ, 5/15/03, p.A1)
1874 Feb 17, Adolphe Quetelet (b.1796), Belgian astronomer and mathematician, died. He founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in introducing statistical methods to the social sciences.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Quetelet)
1874 Feb 20, Mary Garden, opera star, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1874 Feb 20, Benjamin Disraeli replaced William Gladstone as English premier. Disraeli's 2nd ministry continued to 1880.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli)
1874 Feb 21, The Tribune of Oakland, Ca., was founded by George Staniford and Benet A. Dewes. The Oakland Daily Tribune was first printed at 468 Ninth St. as a 4-page, 3-column newspaper, 6 by 10 inches. Staniford and Dewes gave out copies free of charge. The paper had news stories and 43 advertisements.
(SFEC, 5/17/98, BR p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Tribune)
1874 Feb 24, Honus Wagner, baseball shortstop, was born. He later became known as "The Flying Dutchman."
(HN, 2/24/01)
1874 Mar 2, Baseball batter's box was officially adopted.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1874 Mar 5, Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898), elected by the Mississippi Legislature, formally entered the US Senate. Bruce was the first full-term African American Senator (1874-1881). In 2006 Lawrence Otis Graham authored “The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty."
(SSFC, 7/2/06, p.M1)(www.csusm.edu/Black_Excellence/documents/pg-b-bruce.html)
1874 Mar 7, The opera “I Lituani," by Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886) premiered at Milan’s La Scala with great success. The libretto was based on Adam Mickiewicz's long epic poem Konrad Wallenrod. The opera was about the incursions of the Teutonic Knights against the pagan Lithuanians.
(www.lituanus.org/1991_2/91_2_09.htm)
1874 Mar 8, Millard Fillmore (b.1800), the 13th president of the United States (1850-1853), died of a stroke in Buffalo, N.Y.
(SFC, 2/21/97, p.A25)(AP, 1/7/98)(AP, 3/8/98)
1874 Mar 11, Charles Sumner (63), a white civil rights leader, died.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1874 Mar 15, Harold L. Ickes, New Deal politician, was born.
(HN, 3/15/98)
1874 Mar 17, Kincsem, a horse that never lost a race, was born.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1874 Mar 18, Hawaii signed a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
(HN, 3/18/99)
1874 Mar 22, Young Men's Hebrew Association was organized in NYC.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1874 Mar 24, Harry Houdini (d.1926), magician, escape artist, was born as Erik Weisz (Ehrich Weiss) in Budapest. Young Ehrich Weiss emigrated with his parents to New York and then to Wisconsin (1878). Sometime around 1891 he and a partner in a magic act billed themselves as the Brothers Houdini, in homage to French magician Eugène Robert-Houdin. As Harry Houdini, Weiss became world-famous for his mind-boggling escapes. At age 43 he had a volcanic love affair with the widow of Jack London, Charmian. In 1996 Kenneth Silverman wrote the biography: "Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss."
(WSJ, 10/29/96, p.A21)(HN, 3/24/98)(SFC, 7/7/98, p.B3)(WSJ, 4/22/99, A10)(HNQ, 5/16/99)
1874 Mar 26, Robert Frost, poet (d.1963), was born in San Francisco. Robert Lee Frost, American poet. In a biography of Frost by Jeffrey Myers: "Robert Frost: A Biography," the author claims that Frost moved his birthday up a year to make himself legitimate. A 3-volume biography by Lawrence Thompson was completed in 1976. Myers reveals that Frost's lover, Kay Morrison, was also involved with Lawrence Thompson, but that that would not be disclosed in the Thompson biography. "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out." [see Mar 26, 1875]
(WUD, 1994, p.571)(HN, 3/25/98)(AP, 3/26/97)(AP, 11/9/98)
1874 Apr 3, Eduardo Sanchez de Fuentes, composer, was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1874 Apr 5, Johann Strauss, Jr.'s Opera "Die Fledermaus" was produced in Vienna.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1874 Apr 15, George Harrison Shull, American botanist, developer of hybrid corn, was born.
(HN, 4/15/01)
1874 Apr 15, Johannes Stark, Nobel Prize-winning German physicist, was born.
(HN, 4/15/01)
1874 Apr 15, Members of the “Societe anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs" opened their first show, The First Exhibition of Independent Artists" on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.
(ON, 9/06, p.7)
1874 Apr 16, Dr. David Livingstone's corpse arrived in Southampton.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1874 Apr 18, David Livingstone was buried in Westminster Abbey.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1874 Apr 24, John Russell Pope, US architect (Jefferson Memorial), was born.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1874 Apr 24-26, The 2-story mansion leased by Thomas Clarke on the southwest corner of 16th and Castro in Oakland, Ca., was reported to be haunted. Dr. Joseph LeConte Sr., co-founder of the Univ. of California and the Sierra Club, was called in to evaluate the situation. A 360 page report was compiled but not released. In 1877 Clarke published a 23-page pamphlet called "The Oakland Ghost," in which he argued that the house was haunted.
(SFC,10/31/97, p.A4)
1874 Apr 25, Guglielmo Marconi (d.1937), inventor of the radio, was born. He was an Italian electrical engineer and the developer of wireless telegraphy. He won a Nobel Prize in 1909.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(AHD, p.798)(HN, 4/25/98)(SS, 4/25/02)
1874 May 4, Frank Conrad, electrical engineer and broadcasting pioneer, was born.
(HN, 5/4/01)
1874 May 12, The US Assay office in Helena, Montana, was authorized.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1874 May 13, Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical "On the Greek-Ruthenian rite."
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1874 May 29, G.K. Chesterton (d.1936), English poet-essayist, was born. "Every man is dangerous who only cares for one thing."
(AP, 8/4/99)(HN, 5/29/01)
1874 May 29, The present constitution of Switzerland took effect.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1874 May, John Wesley Hardin gunned down Charlie Webb in Comanche, TX.
(MesWP)
1874 Jun 8, Cochise (b.~1810), Chiricahua Apache war chief (his name meant “his nose") and leader of the Chokonen band, died on a reservation in the Dragoon Mountains in southeastern Arizona.
(http://tinyurl.com/aqhkr)
1874 Jun 21, The Schooner America, designed by George Steers, was sold at auction for $5000 to former Union Gen. Benjamin Butler, who transferred it from Annapolis to Portsmouth, NH, where he sailed it till he died. By 1942 the hull of the schooner became unsalvageable and it was burned. The rudder was saved and put on display at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut.
(AH, 2/03, p.29,31)
1874 Jun 22, Dr. Andrew T. Sill of Macon, Missouri, founded osteopathy.
(MC, 6/22/02)
1874 Jun 22, Howard Staunton, world chess champion and designer of chess pieces, died.
(YarraNet, 6/22/00)
1874 Jun 25, Rose Cecil O’Neill (d.1944), illustrator, writer and creator of the Kewpie doll, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
(AH, 2/05, p.24)(www.britannica.com/ebi/article?tocId=9331987)
1874 Jun 28, The Freedmen's Bank, created to assist former slaves in the United States, closed. African American depositors lost some $3 million.
(HN, 6/28/99)
1874 Jun, In the Summer Willie Kennard, black Civil War veteran, was appointed the new Marshall at Yankee Hill, Colorado, after arresting Barney Casewit, rapist and murderer, and killing his 2 companions. Casewit was hung the next day after being tried and convicted under councilman Bert Corgan.
(WW, 12/96)
1874 Jul 1, The 1st US zoo opened in Philadelphia.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1874 Jul 2, Colonel Custer departed from Fort Abraham Lincoln with some 1,000 soldiers and 70 Indian scouts on a 1200 mile expedition to chart the Black Hills of eastern Wyoming western South Dakota, land which belonged to the Sioux. The expedition returned on August 30.
(AH, 6/03, p.37)
1874 July 3, In southern California Isaias Hellman forms the Cucamonga Homestead Association to sell land north of Base Line Road and west of Hermosa in Alta Loma.
(www.sbsun.com/ci_7323066)
1874 Jul 4, Social Democratic Workmen's Party of North America was formed.
(Maggio, 98)
1874 Jul 12, Start of Sherlock Holmes Adventure, "Gloria Scott."
(MC, 7/12/02)
1874 Jul 24, James Woodward and a colleague by the name of Mathew Evans, described in the patent as a "Gentleman" but in reality a hotel keeper, filed a patent for the Woodward and Evan's Light.
(http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Ontario/first_electric_light_bulb.htm)
1874 Jul 26, Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony, was born in Vishny-Volotchok, Russia.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1874 Jul 28, Ernst Cassirer, German philosopher, educator (Essay on Man), was born.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1874 Aug 2, Gold was discovered in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming and western South Dakota during an expedition led by Colonel Custer. The land belonged to the Sioux but was invaded by prospectors. Sioux leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull retaliated.
(HT, 3/97, p.43)(AH, 6/03, p.37)
1874 Aug 10, Herbert Clark Hoover (d.1964), the 31st president of the United States (1929-1933), was born in West Branch, Iowa.
(AP, 8/10/97)(SFEC, 1/12/97, Z3 p.4)(HN, 8/10/98)(AH, 12/02, p.20)
1874 Aug 10, Antanas Smetona (d.1944), the 1st president of Lithuania, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas_Smetona)
1874 Aug 11, Harry S. Parmelee patented a sprinkler head.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1874 Aug 27, Karl Bosch, German chemist (BASF, Nobel 1931), was born.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1874 Sep 1, In Australia Sydney General Post Office opened.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1874 Sep 2, Reese Durham, local manager of the Butterfield Stage Station in Yankee Hill, Colorado, decided to try to run the new black Marshall, Willie Kennard, out of town. He failed and died.
(WW, 12/96)
1874 Sep 12, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (b.1787), French historian, orator, and statesman, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Guizot)
1874 Sep 13, Arnold Franz Walter Schoenberg (d.1951), 12-tone composer, was born in Vienna, Austria. He wrote the book "Style and Idea" and composed such works as the 21 songs of "Pierrot Lunaire" based on a poem by Albert Giraud translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben, "Moses und Aron," "A Survivor from Warsaw" and "Erwartung."
(LGC-HCS, 1970, p. 562-575)(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 8/22/96, p.A12)(MC, 9/13/01)
1874 Sep 14, In Louisiana the Battle of Liberty Place was an attempted insurrection by the Crescent City White League against the legal Reconstruction state government in New Orleans.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Liberty_Place)
1874 Sep 18, The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society was formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West. [see 1875]
(HN, 9/18/98)
1874 Sep 20, Gustav Holst, composer of "The Planets," was born.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1874 Sep 28, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie (d.1889) raided a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.
(HN, 9/28/98)(SFCM, 3/11/01, p.53)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta, known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrenders in Darlington, Texas. He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1874 Oct 9, In Switzerland the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was established by the Treaty of Bern. Prior to this each country had to prepare a separate postal treaty with other nations if it wished to carry international mail to or from them.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union)
1874 Oct 15, A US child labor law took 12 year olds out of work force.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1874 Oct 20, Charles Ives (d.1954), composer, was born in Danbury, Ct. His work included symphonies, songs, and "Three Places in New England." He was pioneer of dissonance as flavoring.
(WSJ, 8/15/96, p.A10)(HN, 10/20/00)(MC, 10/20/01)
1874 Oct 26, Peter Cornelius, German composer, died at 49.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1874 Oct, Alexander Graham Bell stated his basic idea for the telephone. The 1997 book "Alexander Graham Bell, The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone," was written by Edwin Grosvenor and Morgan Wesson. Antonio Meucci, an Italian-American candlemaker, was also later credited for inventing the telephone, 5 years before Bell.
(SFEM, 1/11/98, p.12)(WSJ, 6/25/99, p.A1)
1874 Nov 7, The elephant first appeared as a political icon in a Thomas Nast cartoon in Harper's Weekly. The Republican Party was symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly magazine.
(Hem, 8/96, p.84)(AP, 11/7/97)
1874 Nov 18, Clarence Day, American writer, was born in NYC. His work included "Life with Father."
(HN, 11/18/00)(MC, 11/18/01)
1874 Nov 19, Karl Adrian Wohlfart, composer, was born.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1874 Nov 19, William Marcy "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall (NYC) was convicted of defrauding city of $6M and sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1874 Nov 24, Farmer Joseph Glidden's patent for barbed wire was granted. Glidden designed a simple wire barb that attached to a double-strand wire, as well as a machine to mass-produce the wire. The invention was a welcome alternative to other types of fencing for farming on the arid Great Plains--wood fences and stone walls were difficult to construct because of the lack of sufficient rocks and trees, and the existing wire fences were easily broken when cattle leaned against them. The use of barbed-wire fences changed ranching and farming life. Farmers could keep roaming cattle and sheep off their land, but open-range cowboys and Native American farmers were restricted to the land and resources not claimed and marked by the new fences. As more settlers moved onto the plains, the amount of public, shared land decreased and open-range farming became obsolete.
(HNPD, 11/23/98)(HN, 11/24/98)
1874 Nov 27, Charles A. Beard, distinguished American historian who wrote "History of the United States," was born.
(HN, 11/27/98)
1874 Nov 27, Chaim Weizmann was born (d.1852). He was an Israeli chemist and Zionist leader and the first President of Israel from 1948-1952.
(HFA, '96, p.42)(WUD, 1994, p.1619)
1874 Nov 29, Antonio Egas Moniz, lobotomist (Nobel 1949), was born in Portugal.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1874 Nov 30, Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman, was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. After attending the Royal Military College, he served as a reporter and writer, and then in different positions in Parliament as his political power grew. His most influential role was as British prime minister during World War II from 1940 to 1945. Churchill had been part of the Cabinet during World War I, but his judgment was questioned and his political career ebbed. Up against the threat of Adolf Hitler, however, Churchill committed himself to defeating the Nazis and succeeded. Working together with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin, he managed to turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies. Churchill served again as prime minister from 1951 to 1955. He died at his home in London in 1965.
(AP, 11/30/97)(HNPD, 11/30/98)(HN, 11/30/98)
1874 Nov 30, Lucy Maud Montgomery, author, was born. Her work included "Anne of Green Gables."
(HN, 11/30/00)
1874 Dec 8, The Jesse James gang took a train at Muncie, Kansas.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1874 Laura Montoya (d.1949) was born in Colombia. She founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Mary and was beatified in 2004.
(AP, 4/25/04)
c1874 Caillebotte painted "Oarsmen."
(SFC, 10/30/96, p.E2)
1874 William Hahn painted "Sacramento Railway Station."
(SFEC, 6/7/98, Z1 p.2)
1874 Edward Burne-Jones painted "The Beguiling of Merlin."
(WSJ, 5/29/98, p.W10)
1874 Kramskoi created his painting "The Peasant Ignatii Pirogov."
(SSFC, 11/3/02, p.M6)
1874 Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Albert Sisley and Edouard Manet gathered at Argenteuil on the banks of the Seine to relax and paint.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W16)
1874 Alfred Sisley painted "Snow Effect at Argenteuil."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1874 Dion Boucicault, Irish playwright, authored "The Shaughraun." It was a serious picture of oppressed Ireland and a satirical take on human folly.
(WSJ, 11/18/98, p.A20)
1874 Thomas Brewer, Spencer Baird and Robert Ridgeway wrote "A History of North American Birds."
(AH, 6/02, p.40)
1874 John William Draper, a physician, authored "History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science." He focused on the conflict between "the expansive force of human intellect" and "the compressing arising from traditional faith."
(WSJ, 10/8/99, p.W15)
1874 Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist, authored “The Temptation of St. Anthony."
(SFC, 7/13/13, p.E3)
1874 Former Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston authored “Narrative of Military Operations Directed During the Late War Between the States." In the book he defended himself against allegations of inabilities and failings made by Gen. Hood in an official 1865 report. Hood responded in a book titled “Advance and Retreat," which contained a 90 page section entitled “Reply to General Johnston." It was published posthumously in 1880.
(AH, 10/02, p.43)(www.wtj.com/archives/hood/)
1874 George Marsh, the first American conservationist, published "The Earth as Modified by Human Action."
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.53)
1874 Charles Melville Scammon authored "Marine Animals of the North-Western Coast of North America." Before he became a naturalist Scammon was a ship's captain from Maine engaged in whaling and originated the practice of slaughtering pregnant or nursing female whales.
(WSJ, 8/10/01, p.W14)
1874 Francis Amasa Walker, a former Union Army general and Boston native, authored "The Indian Question," a treatise that justified forcibly removing tribes from their lands and confining them to remote reservations.
(AP, 10/14/21)
1874 The play "The Two Orphans" opened in NYC and starred Kate Claxton as the blind girl named Louise.
(SFC, 4/21/99, Z1 p.6)
1874 The Old Franklin Publishing House printed an illustrated account of the Benders in Kansas, where three women committed murder on a succession of guests. The story was told again in John James more sedate version of 1913, The Benders in Kansas.
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.21)
1874 The end of day bugle call "Taps" was given its name. It had become the official Army call after the Civil War.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.E8)
1874 Trinity Church in Nevada City was established.
(SFC, 7/15/98, p.A20)
1874 The Lincoln County Courthouse in New Mexico was built. It served as the Murphy-Dolan store and monopolized the local business until 1877 when Alexander McSween and John Tunstall opened a rival mercantile.
(SFEC, 2/23/96, p.T9)
1874 Henry Steel Olcott, New York attorney and journalist, met Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a down-on-her-luck Russian aristocrat and mystic. They set up house together in a New York apartment that comes to be known as the "Lamasery."
(Smith., 5/95, p.111)
1874 The first national convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was held. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was established to promote the movement for prohibition in the U.S. It shut down saloons all over the country because they believed that male drinking was the cause of prostitution, child abuse and poverty. Under the leadership of its second president, Frances Willard, the WCTU grew to a nationwide movement with 200,000 members, the largest and most socially acceptable women's organization of the time. Although prohibition was the WCTU's primary mission, they also campaigned for woman suffrage, reasoning that if women could vote, they would reform American society for the betterment of all. The WCTU spurred the founding in 1893 of the Anti-Saloon League. On December 18, 1917, the U.S. Congress adopted and submitted to the states an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic liquors. The 18th Amendment was declared ratified on January 29, 1919 and went into effect on January 16, 1920. It was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)(HNQ, 11/189)(HNPD, 8/13/00)
1874 The Chautauqua Institution began as a Methodist community 60 miles south of Buffalo and established a reputation as a purveyor of summer "learning vacations." [see 1878] The Chautauqua Institution was founded to further adult education. In 1970 Alfreda L. Irwin authored a study of the community: "Three Taps of the Gavel."
(SFEC, 9/29/96, Par p.13)(SFEC, 5/30/99, p.T2)(WSJ, 7/31/00, p.B1)
1874 The first Kentucky Oaks Race for 3-year-old fillies and the Kentucky Derby was held. [see 1875]
(Sp., 5/96, p.20)
1874 Secret Service headquarters returned to Washington, D.C. after 4 years in NYC.
(http://www.ustreas.gov/usss/history.shtml)
1874 Arkansas passed a constitution that included a ban on gambling. In 2008 Arkansas voters approved a state lottery by a 63% margin.
(Econ, 11/22/08, p.45)
1874 In San Francisco Italians from Genoa built the Colombo Market two blocks east of a former location on Samsome St. between Clay and Washington. By 2015 only the brick archway survived in Sidney Walton Square Park on Front St. between Jackson and Pacific.
(SFC, 2/28/15, p.C5)
1874 A tunnel was carved through the solid Franciscan rock for Hibernia Bank cofounder Richard Tobin. He wanted to be able to ride his buggy back and forth between his family’s city home and their house in Rockaway Beach, Pacifica, south of Daly City, Ca.. Nature delivered the coup de grace to Tobin’s Folly in 1906, when the SF earthquake reportedly knocked off most of the rock tunnel and threw it into the ocean.
(http://www.princetonbytheseamemories.com/?p=898)
1874 Union Pacific completed a cavernous, brick, train repair shed in West Oakland. It was shuttered in 2002 and in 2010 was scheduled for demolition.
(SSFC, 10/3/10, p.C1)
1874 In San Juan Bautista, Ca., the Plaza Hall was built.
(SSFC, 2/22/04, p.C5)
1874 A schoolhouse was built in Ojai, Calif. that was later converted to a bed and breakfast.
(AAM, 3/96, p.46)
1874 The Elms House in Calistoga, Ca., was built.
(SSFC, 11/15/09, p.M4)
1874 Construction on California’s Folsom Prison began.
(SFEC, 1/26/97, p.B4)
1874 The San Francisco Federal Mint building opened at 5th and Mission. It was designed by Alfred Mullett, the Treasury's supervising architect.
(SFC, 7/5/97, p.A13)(SSFC, 1/28/03, p.E1)
1874 The California state capitol in Sacramento, built in the Renaissance Revival style, was completed. It was designed by Reuben Clark (d.1866). [see 1869]
(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.T6)(SSFC, 10/27/02, p.A16)
1874 In San Luis Obispo, Ca., the Ah Louis Store was built to serve the 2000 Chinese coolies who worked on nearby railroad tunnels.
(SFEC, 10/11/98, p.T6)
1874 Capt. James Cass of Bristol, England, built a wharf and pier named Cass Landing on the north end of Morro Bay, Ca., to facilitate the loading of ships carrying lumber, staples and dairy products between the Central Coast and San Francisco. It became the town of Cayucos, carved from the Morro y Cayucos Rancho. The name was after a unique plank canoe (cayuco) invented by the local Chumash Indians.
(SSFC, 1/4/09, p.E6)
1874 Jean Laurent founded a vineyard in St. Helena that he named the Laurent Winery. After a series of owners it was purchased in 1977 by Bruce Markham and renamed Markham Vineyards. Mercian Corp. took over in 1988.
(SFC, 10/9/02, p.E7)
1874 The California Legislature passed compulsory school attendance laws.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.H4)
1874 California law made it a felony to encourage or aid in a suicide.
(SFC, 2/11/15, p.D1)
1874 The California state Supreme Court in Ward vs. Flood upheld a law authorizing racial segregation in public schools. Blacks and Indians were granted the right to establish separate schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)(SFC, 4/15/17, p.C2)
1874 In California the Pinnacles rock spires were first seen by non-natives.
(CAS, 1996, p.16)
1874 The Nevada state legislature overrode the Governor’s veto and approved a railroad from Austin to Battle Mountain. Construction only began 4 ½ years later.
(ACC, 2004)
1874 Sandy Hook, New Jersey, became operational as a proving ground for American military weapons. It was later turned into a National Recreation Area.
(AM, 7/04, p.33)(AM, 11/04, p.9)
1874 Ice cream sodas appeared when soda fountain operator Robert Green ran out of his customary flavoring and substituted vanilla ice cream instead. Overnight his sales soared from $6 to $600 a day. The soda jerk got named because of the sharp tug exercised on the fountain levers.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, zone 1 p.2)(HNQ, 6/12/98)
1874 Cleveland set up the first ordinary electric street trolley.
(SFC, 7/19/97, p.E4)
1874 Former slave James Webster Smith was expelled from West Point for failing an exam. He was commissioned by the Army in 1997 and his certificate was presented to South Carolina State Univ.
(SFC, 9/23/97, p.A3)
1874 AT&T started with Bell Patent Association, a legal entity, was established to protect the patent rights of Alexander Graham Bell after he invented the telephone system. Originally a verbal agreement, it was formalized in writing in 1875 as Bell Telephone Company.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Corporation)
1874 The Warner Brothers Co., later Warnaco, was set up by physicians Lucien Warner and I. DeVer Warner to manufacture a "sanitary corset." They were concerned over the strains corsets placed on the female body.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.A19)
1874 The clipper ship Western Shore was built at Coos Bay for the Simpson Brothers Lumber Co. of San Francisco. In 1878 it ran aground on Duxbury Reef near Bolinas, Ca.
(SFC, 10/22/05, p.B2)
1874 In Oregon Elijah Davidson discovered a marble cavern in the Siskiyou Mountains that later became a national monument.
(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.17)
1874 Cattleman Charles Goodnight rounded up 5 orphaned buffalo calves and set them loose on 10,000 acres in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas Panhandle. The herd grew to 250 animals and a number were sent to start herds elsewhere. In 1997 the herd was put under the guardianship of the state. By 2001 it was realized that inbreeding put the herd at risk of extinction. In 2005 Ted Turner agreed to provide 3 bulls from his herd in New Mexico to help the Texas herd.
(WSJ, 8/2/05, p.A1)
1874 Ezra Cornell (b.1809), American capitalist and philanthropist, died.
(WUD, 1994, p.325)
1874 Edward Troye (b.1808), Swiss-born Kentucky artist, died. He portrayed horses and spent time in the Middle East in search of Arab breeding stock.
(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)
1874 The British East India Company, having paid it final dividend in 1873, folded.
(Econ, 12/17/11, p.111)
1874 David Stanley, British journalist, crossed Africa from the east to the west across the Congo River basin on a 999-day journey sponsored by London’s Daily Telegraph. In 2004 Tim Butcher, also a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, followed Stanley’s path on a trip that took 44 days. In 2008 Butcher authored “Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart."
(WSJ, 10/31/08, p.A15)
1874 In Hawaii David Kalakaua was elected King.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, p.C1)
1874 In France the Bordeaux Ecole de Management was founded. In 2002 the school introduced a master's program in business administration for wine.
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.B1)
1874 A transit of Venus occurred. Pierre Janssen, a French astronomer, invented a multi-exposure camera to view the event, but the results were disappointing.
(Econ, 5/29/04, p.79)
1874 Bicycle couriers came into being in Paris taking messages from banks to telegraph offices.
(Econ, 4/23/11, p.89)
1874 A constitution was granted to Iceland.
(HNQ, 4/28/00)
1874 Japan launched a punitive expedition to Formosa (later Taiwan).
(Econ, 8/15/15, p.34)
1874-1875 The Gatling gun was first used against the Comanche Indians at the Battle of Red River in the Texas Panhandle.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.B4)
1874-1875 The Silverado silver mine in Napa County, Ca. is the largest silver producer in Napa, Ca.
(WCG, 7/95, p.21)
1874-1879 Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former runaway slave from Tennessee, led some 1,100 Tennessee ex-slaves to Kansas and founded the Baxter Springs Colony in Cherokee County and Dunlap colony in Morris County.
(NH, 7/98, p.28)
1874-1942 Alice Duer Miller, American author: "People love to talk but hate to listen."
(AP, 5/15/00)
1874-1945 Ellen Glasgow, American author: "Experience has taught me that the only cruelties people condemn are those with which they do not happen to be familiar." "No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.... To seize the flying thought before it escapes us is our only touch with reality."
(AP, 12/12/97)(AP, 5/11/98)(AP, 6/25/98)
1874-1947 Nicholas Roerich, Russian painter, archeologist and author. He came to the US in 1920.
(WUD, 1994, p.1241)
1874-1950 William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canadian statesman: "Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government."
(AP, 5/13/97)
1874-1957 George Gustav Heye, New York banker. He began the collection of Indian cultural material in 1903. It now has more than 1 million artifacts from North, Central and south America spanning 10,000 years. The George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian is located in the Alexander Hamilton US custom House in New York. [see 1916, Heye]
(Hem, Mar. 95, p.19)
1874-1965 W. Somerset Maugham English author-dramatist: "The tragedy of love is indifference." "The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love."
(AP, 11/29/97)(AP, 9/17/98)
1874-1967 Mary Garden, considered the first great American modernist singer. She is discussed in the 1997 book "The American Opera Singer" by Peter G. Davis.
(WSJ, 11/6/97, p.A20)
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