d-Town’, renamed Stafford in 1885.
23/7/1885, Ulysses Grant, American commander of the Union Army, Republican politician and 18th President from 1869 to 1877, died of cancer in Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, New York State.
19/6/1885. The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York from France. The statue was dedicated to the US-France friendship on 28/10/1886 by President Cleveland. The Statue was 300 foot high, of a woman holding a tablet with the date 4 July 1776 on it. The 225 ton structure made of hand-hammered copper sheet on a steel frame was assembled in France then dismantled and shipped to the USA.
24/2/1885, Chester Nimitz, American admiral and commander in the Pacific during World War II, was born in Fredericksburg, Texas.
4/7/1884, The Statue of Liberty was formally presented to US Minister Morton by Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps.
16/6/1884, The first purpose-built roller coaster, the Switchback railway, opened at Coney Island, New York.
21/5/1884, The Statue of Liberty was completed. Work on it was begun in 1874 by Auguste Bartholdi, in Paris.
21/3/1884, Ezra Abbot, US scholar of the Bible, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
23/10/1883, The Metropolitan Opera House in New York opened.
4/7/1883, The Statue of Liberty was presented to the USA by France.
4/4/1883, Death of Peter Cooper, US inventor and steam locomotive designer (born 12/2/1791).
1882, The US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, to halt Chinese immigration into the USA. See 29/1/1917.
26/10/1881, The gunfight at the OK Corral, Arizona, took place between Doc Holliday and Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp and the Clantons and McLaurys.
3/8/1881, William George Fargo, co-founder of the Wells Fargo Express in 1852, died aged 65.
4/7/1881. The outlaw William H Bonney, or Billy the Kid, born 23/11/1859, was shot dead in New Mexico by lawman Pat Garrett. He reputedly killed his first man before he was a teenager.
31/12/1880, George Marshal, US general and politician who originated the Marshal Plan for the post World War Two reconstruction of Europe, was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
1/6/1880. The first public telephone call box was installed, in New Haven, Connecticut.
8/3/1880. President Hayes of America declared that the USA will have jurisdiction over any canal built across Panama.
26/1/1880, Douglas MacArthur, American military commander in the south-west Pacific in World War Two, was born near Little Rock, Arkansas.
2/1/1879, Caleb Cushing, US statesman, died at Newburyport, |Massachusetts.
10/12/1878, Henry Wells, partner of William Fargo, died.
4/10/1878, The first Chinese Embassy in the USA opened, in Washington DC.
28/1/1878, America’s first commercial telephone switchboard exchange opened in New Haven, Connecticut.
2/8/1876, Death of Wild Bill Hickok, Marshall of Kansas City, who gunned down many outlaws; he was shot in the back this day.
1/8/1876. Colorado became the 38th State of the USA.
17/5/1875, The Kentucky Derby horse race, USA, was first run.
9/12/1874, Ezra Cornell, US industrialist who founded Cornell University in Ithaca, died.
4/3/1873, The New York Daily Graphic became the world’s first illustrated daily newspaper.
5/12/1872. The Marie Celeste was spotted drifting, crewless, in the Atlantic near The Azores, and was boarded by the crew of the Dei Gratia. The 206 ton Marie Celeste had left New York on 7/11/1872, captained by Benjamin Briggs, with his wife, daughter and eight crew on its way to Genoa, with a cargo of 1,700 barrels of alcohol, which was found intact. The lifeboat was missing but the captain’s table was set for a meal that was never eaten.
9/11/1872. A great fire broke out in the commercial district of Boston, USA, on the Saturday night. It burned until Sunday 10th, and destroyed 767 buildings filled with merchandise. 14 lives and an estimated US$75million of goods were lost. Very little residential property was lost and the commercial district was soon rebuilt with better buildings and straighter roads.
7/11/1872, The 282 ton brigantine Marie Celeste set sail from New York on her ill-fated journey.
1/3/1872, The first Natio