Key Events in American History: 1888

President: Grover Cleveland

VP: vacant

Date, Event

  • Jan 12th The 'Schoolhouse Blizzard' hits the Dakota Territory, MT, MN, NE, KS & TX leaving 235 dead
  • Feb 19th A cyclone hits Mt. Vernon, IL killing 35
  • Mar 11th The 'Great Blizzard of 1888' begins along the East Coast of the U.S. shutting down commerce & killing more than 400
  • Mar 19th 3 guards are robbed & murdered during a robbery in Arizona's Vulture Mine. Gold bars are taken
  • Jun 3rd The San Francisco Examiner publishes "Casey at the Bat"
  • Jun 4th New York state replaces death by hanging with electrocution as the preferred method of the death penalty
  • Jul 2nd Pawnee Bill's Frontier Exhibition opens in New Jersey with Annie Oakley as the headliner
  • Jul 3rd Mattie Blaylock, Wyatt Earp's common law wife, is found dead in Pinal, AZ with laudanum bottles nearby
  • Jul 4th The world's first professional rodeo opens in Prescott, AZ
  • July The South is again hit with an epidemic of yellow fever. 4,500 cases are reported along with 400 deaths
  • Aug 21st A patent is taken out for the first adding machine by William S. Burroughs
  • Oct 1st President Cleveland signs the Scott Act which prohibits Chinese laborers from returning to the U.S.
  • Oct 9th The Washington Monument opens to the public
  • Oct 30th A patent is taken out for the first ballpoint pen
  • Nov 6th Grover Cleveland wins the popular vote in the election but loses the electoral vote to Benjamin Harrison
  • Nov 20th The first employee time clock is patented
  • December 2 steamboat fires kill 55 over 2 days on the Mississippi

    • Other

  • George Eastman introduces Kodak's box camera, making photography possible for amateurs
  • Edward Bellamy publishes "Looking Backward, 2000-1887"
  • John Dunlap invents the pneumatic tire
  • Thomas Edison produces the first moving picture film
  • The Pullman Car Company builds an electric locomotive for hauling freight

    • Births

  • May 11th Irving Berlin (Composer/Songwriter)
  • Sep 26th T.S. Eliot (Poet/Playwright/Editor)
  • Nov 24th Dale Carnegie (Writer/Lecturer/Author, "How to Win Friends & Influence People")

    • Deaths

  • Mar 6th Louisa May Alcott (Author, "Little Women")
  • Aug 16th John Pemberton (Pharmacist/Inventor, Coca-Cola)