Timeline 1871-1874
Return to home
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established during the Civil War, was repealed.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)
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)
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, 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 22, William Holden of NC
became the 1st US governor removed by impeachment.
(MC, 3/22/02)
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 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 15, 'Wild Bill' Hickok
became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.
(HN, 4/15/99)
1871 Apr 16, John Millington
Synge, dramatist and poet Playboy of the Western World, was born in
Ireland.
(HN, 4/16/99)(MC, 4/16/02)
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-July 28, French
government troops attacked the Commune of Paris; 17,000 died.
(MC, 5/21/02)
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.
(HN, 8/19/00)(WUD, 1994, p.1647)(MC, 8/19/02)
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.
(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)(SSFC, 6/3/07, p.M5)
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 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 Whistler completed
his best known work: "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the
Painter's [Artist's] Mother," [i.e. Whistler's Mother] His mother, Anna
McNeill Whistler, had moved into his apartment displacing his Irish
model and sweetheart, Jo Heffernan. The mother died in 1881 and
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 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 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.
(SFEM, 11/24/96, p.8)(SFC, 5/30/03, p.E7)
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, Superintendent of Golden Gate Park stated: "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."
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.A8)
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 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 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 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 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 Belize was declared a Crown
Colony.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A12)
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 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 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 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)
1871-1872 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 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, 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, 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, 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
includes 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 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 ballot
voting in England was conducted. [see July 18]
(HN, 8/15/98)
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 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 4, The U.S. brigantine
Marie Celeste was found adrift and deserted with its cargo intact, in
the Atlantic Ocean between the Azores and Portugal.
(HN, 12/4/00)
1872 Dec 9, P.B.S. Pinchback
became the first African American Governor of Louisiana. [see Dec 11]
(HN, 12/9/98)
1872 Dec 11, America's first black
governor took office as Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became acting
governor of Louisiana. [see Dec 9]
(AP, 12/11/97)
1872 Dec 12, Edwin Forrest
(b.1806), American actor, died in Philadelphia.
(WSJ, 6/5/06,
p.D8)(http://famousamericans.net/edwinforrest/)
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, "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 John Gast, American painter,
created his "American Progress."
(AH, 10/01, p.18)
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 Pissarro painted
"Louveciennes."
(SFC, 1/20/99, p.E1)
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 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 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 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 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 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 1st place golf prize for
the British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrew's, a red leather belt
with a silver buckle, was retired and replaced with a silver claret jug.
(WSJ, 7/21/00, p.W9)
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 Mining Act law was
passed that let anyone claim public land for hardrock mining for as
little as $2.50 per acre with no royalties to the federal government.
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.
(WSJ, 9/7/95, p.A-1)(SFC, 2/28/97, p.A6)(SFC,
5/22/02, p.A7)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 9, Howard Carter,
discoverer of King Tutankhamen's tomb, was born.
(HN, 5/9/98)
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 of San
Francisco and Jacob Davis of Reno, Nevada, received a patent for
miners’ work pants that included rivets to reinforce the pockets.
(SFC, 4/29/03, B1)(SFC, 1/23/04, p.A10)(ON, 4/05,
p.12)
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 2, Ground was broken on
Clay St. in SF for the world's 1st cable railroad.
(SC, 6/2/02)
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 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 2, Inventor Andrew S.
Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city
of San Francisco. Various references give the date of this event as
Aug. 1, but more recent research points to Aug. 2. Hallidie made the
first cable car trip aboard his Nob Hill Line at 4 a.m. It traveled
down Clay St. from Knob Hill to Kearney.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A16)(AP, 8/2/06)
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 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 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 19, James Reed and two
accomplices robbed the Watt Grayson family of $30,000 in the Choctaw
Nation.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1873 Nov 20, Budapest was formed
from 2 Rival cities, Buda and Obuda on the west bank of the Danube and
Pest on the east bank.
(WUD, 1994, p.193)(MC, 11/20/01)
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 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 Pissaro 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 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 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 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 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 Booksellers Barnes &
Noble began business.
(WSJ, 9/3/96, p.A6)
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 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 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 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 Wisconsin the Racine
Silver Plate Co. was founded.
(SFC,11/26/97, Z1 p.7)
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 Color photography was devised.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
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 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 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.
(SFEC, 9/8/96, p.T3)(WSJ, 8/14/98, p.A1)
1873 The Peshtigo inferno burned
huge stretches of forest along the border of northern Wisconsin and
Minnesota.
(HFA, '96, p.71)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 The Verein für
Socialpolitik, Germany’s economic association, was founded.
(Econ, 1/22/05, p.48)
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 Many Basques fled Spain
during the 2nd Carlist War.
(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A2)
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. Her older brother, Michael,
managed the family business, which included San Francisco's Market
Street railway line. Her parents were Daniel and Milly. 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)(AP, 12/27/97)(AP,
9/3/98)(HN, 2/3/99)(HNQ, 7/24/99)
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.
(MC, 2/9/02)
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
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.
(MC, 2/12/02)(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 21, Benjamin Disraeli
replaced William Gladstone as English premier. Disraeli's 2nd ministry
continued to 1880.
(MC, 2/21/02)(PC, 1992, p.530)
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 20, Levi Strauss began
marketing blue jeans with copper rivets at $13.50 per doz. [see 1872]
(HN, 5/20/98)(SFC, 8/28/98, p.B4)(MC, 5/20/02)
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 The California state Supreme
Court in Ward vs. Flood upheld a law authorizing racial segregation in
public schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)
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 The first practical
commercial typewriter was manufactured and placed on the market by
Philo Remington. The early model had only capital letters.
(SJSVB, 3/25/96, p.27)(SFC, 1/29/97, z-1 p.2)
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 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 A constitution was granted to
Iceland.
(HNQ, 4/28/00)
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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