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Custer's Last Stand
Lt. Col. George A. Custer and a detachment of the 11th Cavalry are defeated by Chief Sitting Bull and his allies at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. -
Great Labor Strike of 1877
The workers at railroad yards in Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco, went on strike protesting the wage reductions that they were experiencing. The National Guard was called out and violence ensued. Eventually, due to government intervention the strike was quelled. The riot caused the death of forty people as well as the destruction of millions of dollars worth of equipment and property. -
Edison Patents the Light Bulb
Thomas Edison spent two full years working on the development of the Incandescent light bulb. In 1879 he made a working bulb using platinum as the filament, but it would only burn for 15 minutes. Throughout the next year he tried multiple hundreds of different organic substances as a filament but had little success. Finally, he had success with carbonized cotton thread. The development of this invention lead to the quote "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." -
Hiram Maxim Invents the Machine Gun
This event literally changed the face of world military action. It enabled men to kill each other in greater quantities and with greater ease than ever before. The advent of the machine gun in war necessitated a complete change in "civilized" battle strategy. The first use it was put to was the suppression of uprisings in the colonies of the great European powers. -
The Statue of Liberty Arrives in New York
The Statue of Liberty's construction began in France in 1875. The statue itself was a gift from the people of France and the pedestal that it sits on was paid for by the citizens of the United States. After it's completion in 1885 it was shipped to the US and placed in storage until the pedestal was completed in 1886. In October President Grover Cleveland formally thanked France and the Statue was unveiled. -
Haymarket Square Riot
The Haymarket Square Rally was initially organized as a protest against police brutality of the previous day's strike at the McCormick Reaper Works. When a party of police arrived on the scene to disperse the crowd, an unidentified individual threw a bomb. The police and some of the workers opened fire. By the time the dust settled, eight police officers and one striker had been killed and many others wounded. -
Annexation of Hawaii
A group of white planters under Sanford Dole overthrew Queen Liliuokalani. This was the beginning of the US appropriation of Hawaii as a state, against the will of the Islanders. -
The Spanish American War
After Cuban insurgents rose against the oppressive Spanish Colonial Government, American popular opinion aligned itself behind them. This feeling of empathy was constrained to mere word until the battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor. Despite Spanish protestations to the contrary, Yellow Journalism labeled it as an act of aggression. America declared war and speedily defeated the Spanish forces that rose against them.
