oe Conkling, US lawyer and politician, died in New York City (born 30/10/1829 in Albany, New York).
4/3/1888, Amos Alcott, US educationalist, born 29/11/1799, died.
25/12/1887, Conrad Hilton, American hotelier, was born in San Antonio, New Mexico.
23/11/1887. Violence erupted in a sugar cane workers strike in Louisiana, and at least 20 Black people were killed.
21/11/1886, Charles Adams, US diplomat (born 18/8/1807 in Boston) died in Boston.
28/10/1886, The Statue of Liberty in New York was unveiled by President Grover Cleveland. It was presented by France to mark the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and designed by the French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi; it took more than nine years to complete.
4/5/1886, The Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago. A bomb exploded at a trades union rally, killing 7 policemen and injuring 70 other people. Four people were executed by the State of Illinois, and the incident greatly eroded public support for the trades union movement.
1/5/1886. Over 100,00 workers across the USA went on strike for an 8 hour day. A bomb thrown by Anarchists in Chicago on 4/5/1886 killed 7 police and strikers and injured 60 more. The perpetrator was never found but a judge ruled that seven who had incited the event were as guilty and sentenced them to death. One committed suicide, four were executed, and two had their sentences commuted.
10/9/1885. The town of Stafford, Kansas, was officially incorporated as such. The boundaries of Stafford County were fixed by the US legislature in 1868, and was named in honour of Lewis Stafford, a Civil War soldier who was killed ion the Battle of Young’s Point. For several years the county had no permanent settlers, but was inhabited by buffalo hunters, cowboys, and surveyors. The first permanent inhabitants arrived in May 1874. Early industries included the gathering of buffalo hides and bones left by earlier settlers; buffalo bones fetched US$3-US$9 a ton. Many of the first houses were made of earth, or sod, hence the first town here was called ‘Sod-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 b