orn 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$75million of goods were lost. Very little residential property was lost and the commercial district was soon rebuilt with better buildings and straighter roads.
7/11/1872, The 282 ton brigantine Marie Celeste set sail from New York on her ill-fated journey.
1/3/1872, The first National Park in America, and its largest, Yellowstone National Park, was established.
17/10/1871, Death of Sylvester Mowry (born 17/1/1833). He was a miner and land speculator who promoted the establishment of the Arizona Territory.
11/10/1871, The Great Fire of Chicago ended.
8/10/1871. The Great Fire of Chicago started, killing 300 people. 90,000 were made homeless and US$ 200 million damage was done. The fire ended on 11/10/1871; it was supposedly started in Mrs O’Leary’s barn in De Koven Street, by a cow upsetting a lantern. Four square miles of the city were destroyed, as a long spell of dry weather had made buildings tinder-dry.
30/7/1871. In New York, an explosion on the Staten Island ferry killed 72 and injured 135.
20/4/1871, In the US, the Klu Klux Klan Act outlawed paramilitary organisations such as the Klu Klux Klan.
12/10/1870, Robert E Lee, US Confederate General during the Civil War, died in Lexington, Virginia.
14/7/1870, David Farragut, US naval hero of the Civil War, died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
12/7/1870, John Dahlgreen, US Admiral, died.
22/6/1870, The US Department of Justice was established.
9/2/1870, The United States weather service was published.
3/2/1870, In the US, the Fifteenth Amendment gave every US citizen, regardless of race, the right to vote.
10/5/1869. The first railroad across the USA from east to west, 1,776 miles long, was completed after three years work at a ceremony west of Ogden, in Utah. The Union Pacific Line finally met with the Central Pacific Line. Both companies raced to lay as much track as possible as they converged, spurred on by government payments of US$16,000 per mile, more for mountainous areas. A golden spike was driven in at Promontory Point, Utah, where the railways met. Travel time between New York and San Francisco was slashed from 3 months to 8 days.
8/4/1869, Harvey Cushing, US surgeon, was born.
7/11/1868, Royal Samuel Copeland, US politician, was born in Michigan.
3/11/1868. Ulysses S Grant, ultimate commander of the Union armies in the Civil War, 