1889
- German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced compulsory
national public old age pension scheme for German industrial and
lower-paid white-collar workers (payroll tax, state added small
flat-rate subsidy, earnings-related benefits were paid to
contributors who reached the age of 70); formal social security
program, world's oldest pension system; called 'retirement
insurance' (instead of social security) because it is intended to
extend into retirement the standard of living achieved during an
individual's work life.
March 4, 1889
- Benjamin Harrison inaugurated as 23rd president.
March 31, 1889
- French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French
tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower to mark its completion in
honor of the centenary of the French Revolution. Out of more than
100 designs submitted, the Centennial Committee chose Eiffel's
plan of an open-lattice wrought-iron tower that would reach almost
1,000 feet above Paris and be the world's tallest man-made
structure (984 feet tall) until the completion of the Chrysler
Building in New York in 1930.
April 22, 1889
- The Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon as thousands of
homesteaders staked claims; nearly two million acres of land
opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a
large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. In
1889, President Benjamin Harrison agreed, making the first of a
long series of authorizations that eventually removed most of
Indian Territory from Indian control. March 3, 1889
- Harrison announced the government would open the 1.9
million-acre tract of Indian Territory for settlement precisely at
noon on April 22. Anyone could join the race for the land, but no
one was supposed to jump the gun. Referred to as "Boomers," by the
appointed day more than 50,000 hopefuls were living in tent cities
on all four sides of the territory. Cases involving "Sooners"--people
who had entered the territory before the legal date and
time--overloaded courts for years to come; 1905 -
white Americans owned most of the land in Indian Territory. Two
years later, the area once known as Indian Territory entered the
Union as a part of the new state of Oklahoma.
May 6, 1889
- The Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the
just-completed Eiffel Tower.
May 31, 1889
- 2,209 people perished when a dam break sent water rushing
through Johnstown, PA (city of 25,000 inhabitants, 14 miles
downstream from Lake Conemaugh, a reservoir turned recreational
lake that was owned and maintained by the prestigious South Fork
Fishing and Hunting Club); South Fork Dam, a large earth-fill dam
that was completed by the club in 1881, was struck by a
waterspout; flood swept onward to the Conemaugh like a tidal wave,
over twenty feet in height, to Johnstown, six or eight miles
below, gathering force as it tore along through the wider channel,
and quickly swept everything before it. Houses, factories, and
bridges were overwhelmed. South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was
widely criticized for its failure to maintain the South Fork Dam,
but no successful lawsuits were ever brought against the
organization.
November 2, 1889
- North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states.
November 8, 1889
- Montana became the 41st state.
November 15, 1889
- After a 49-year reign, Pedro II, the second and last emperor of
Brazil, is deposed in a military coup. 1822 - The
Brazilian monarchy was established when Portugal's crown prince,
Dom Pedro, defied his Parliament and proclaimed an independent
Brazil under his rule. 1831 - Emperor Pedro I
abdicated in favor of his five-year-old son and returned to
Portugal. 1841 - Pedro II was crowned emperor and
proved to be a much more capable leader than his father. During
his five-decade reign, Brazil enjoyed unprecedented stability, as
its troubled economy stabilized and began to grow. However, he
later alienated certain sectors in society, such as the military
and the growing urban middle class. After being deposed, Pedro II
went to Europe, where he died in exile two years later.
December 1889
- President Benjamin Harrison was the first president to set up an
indoor Christmas tree for his family and visitors to enjoy. It was
decorated with ornaments and candles.
January 2, 1890
- President Benjamin Harrison welcomes Alice Sanger as the first
female White House staffer.
March 24, 1890
- Supreme Court handed down what some deemed a "surprise" decision
in Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad v. Minnesota. The case
revolved around the question of whether or not a state held the
right to impose fees that would cap a company's "reasonable
profits." Based on the decision that such a cap violated a
"person's" rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court ruled
in favor of the midwestern railroad. People howled that the Court
had effectively installed itself as the lone judge of what
constituted a "reasonable profit." In essence, the Supreme Court
had overstepped its bounds and thus imperiled the "delicate
balance" between the judiciary, executive, and legislative
branches of the government.
April 11, 1890 -
President Benjamin Harrison designated Ellis Island as the site of
the first federal immigration station (named for Samuel Ellis,
private owner of the island in the 1770's); January 1, 1892
- Ellis Island opened to immigrants; January 2 - Annie Moore,
15-year-old Irish girl, first immigrant to be processed;
1954 - more than 12 million immigrants entered the U.S.
via Ellis Island.
May 2, 1890
- The Oklahoma Territory was organized.
July 2, 1890
- President Benjamin Harrison signed the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act, first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to
prohibit trusts. Sponsored by Senator John Sherman of Ohio,
chairman of the Senate finance committee and the
Secretary of the Treasury under President Hayes. Authorized the
Federal Government to institute proceedings against trusts in
order to dissolve them. Any combination "in the form of trust or
otherwise that was in restraint of trade or commerce among the
several states, or with foreign nations" was declared illegal.
Persons forming such combinations were subject to fines of $5,000
and a year in jail. Individuals and companies suffering losses
because of trusts were permitted to sue in Federal court for
triple damages. The Sherman Act was designed to restore
competition but was loosely worded and failed to define such
critical terms as "trust," "combination," "conspiracy," and
"monopoly." 1895 - Supreme Court dismantled the
Sherman Act in United States v. E. C. Knight Company.
July 3, 1890
- Idaho became the 43rd state of the Union. 1889
- Idaho territorial legislature approved a strongly anti-Mormon
constitution; Democratic Mormon vote disarmed, Idaho became a
Republican-dominated territory.
July 10, 1890
- Wyoming became the 44th state.
July 14, 1890
- Sherman Silver Purchase Act passes; coinage law increasing the
amount of silver coined to 4.5 million ounces a month, which came
to about the total being mined at the time; permitted the U.S.
government to print paper currency backed by silver; passed
because of pressure from silver miners, farmers, and debtors;
superseding the Bland-Allison Act (1878); failed to expand the
money supply.
August 6, 1890
- Convicted murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be
executed in the electric chair as he was put to death at Auburn
State Prison in New York; convicted of murdering his lover,
Matilda Ziegler, with an axe. After he was strapped in, a charge
of approximately 700 volts was delivered for only 17 seconds
before the current failed. Although witnesses reported smelling
burnt clothing and charred flesh, Kemmler was far from dead, and a
second shock was prepared. The second charge was 1,030 volts and
applied for about two minutes, whereupon smoke was observed coming
from the head of Kemmler, who was clearly deceased. An autopsy
showed that the electrode attached to his back had burned through
to the spine. 1881 - Dr. Albert Southwick, a
dentist, first suggested electrocution as a humane means of
execution. Southwick had witnessed an elderly drunkard
"painlessly" killed after touching the terminals of an electrical
generator in Buffalo, New York. In the prevalent form of execution
at the time--death by hanging--the condemned were known to hang by
their broken necks for up to 30 minutes before succumbing to
asphyxiation; 1889 - New York's Electrical Execution
Law, the first of its kind in the world, went into effect, and
Edwin R. Davis, the Auburn Prison electrician, was commissioned to
design an electric chair. Closely resembling the modern device,
Davis' chair was fitted with two electrodes, which were composed
of metal disks held together with rubber and covered with a damp
sponge. The electrodes were to be applied to the criminal's head
and back.
September 25, 1890
- Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park was
established by President Benjamin Harrison.
September 25, 1890
- U.S. Congress established Yosemite National Park.
October 1, 1890
- United States Congress dedicates Yosemite National Park; decrees
that about 1,500 square miles of public land in the California
Sierra Nevada will be preserved forever as Yosemite National Park;
once the home to Indians whose battle cry Yo-che-ma-te ("some
among them are killers") gave the park its name; June 1864
- President Abraham Lincoln agreed, signing a bill that ceded the
small Yosemite Valley area, along with the Mariposa Grove of giant
sequoia trees, to the state of California with the requirement
that it be held as a national public trust "for all time";
1890 - John Muir's efforts, as well as those of the newly
founded Sierra Club, convinced Congress that Yosemite would be
better protected as one part of a 1,500-square-mile national park.
Though later reduced in size to 540 square miles, Yosemite
National Park has ever since been one of the most popular nature preserves in the world. Today the park receives more than four
million visitors annually.
October 1, 1890
- Congress passed the McKinley Tariff Act; seemed to support
American manufacturers by hiking tariffs on imported products to
unprecedented levels; established sources of cheap raw materials
for American manufacturers, helped alter the nation's approach to
foreign trade; William McKinley was trying to boost sales of
American-made goods and to pry open foreign markets and push for
reciprocal trade relations by wielding the Tariff Act as a
bargaining tool..
October 23, 1890
- Benjamin Harrison issues a proclamation that extends the
northern boundary of Nebraska into the Dakota territory. The
decree also declares that all Indian claims to Nebraska territory
have been officially "extinguished." The proclamation brought an
official end to territorial conflicts in Nebraska between Indians
and white settlers that had sporadically erupted from the 1860s to
the late 1880s. As white settlement increased in Nebraska after
the Homestead Act of 1862 (signed by President Abraham Lincoln),
tribes such as the Sioux, Fox, Omaha and Ponca were gradually
forced farther north onto reservations that could not sustain a
traditional tribal way of life. Many Indians died from malaria,
exposure or starvation. Members of the Ponca tried to return to
their ancestral homelands in Nebraska and even took their case to
court in 1879. The case made national headlines and earned the
tribe sympathetic supporters. Although President Chester Arthur
signed a decree in 1885 that returned a tiny portion of the
Ponca’s original lands, he stipulated that all other lands
"unselected by" any Indian tribes would be returned to the public
domain. This included portions of already established Sioux, Omaha
and Ponca reservations. Harrison’s proclamation of 1890
re-confirmed the boundaries of Ponca territory within the state of
Nebraska and settled the rest of the disputed northern border,
speeding settlement of Nebraska by whites. Federal recognition of
the Ponca tribe was officially terminated in 1966. Without their
status as a recognized tribe, they lost title to what little land
had been left to them by Harrison. One hundred years after
Harrison’s proclamation, on October 31, 1990 -
President George H.W. Bush reinstated the tribe, giving them the
right to reestablish their homeland in the state of Nebraska.
December 29, 1890
- In the final chapter of America's long Indian wars, the U.S.
Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge
reservation in South Dakota. U.S. Army's 7th cavalry surrounded a
band of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded
Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was
happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier
and a shot was fired, although it's unclear from which side. A
brutal massacre followed, in which it's estimated almost 150
Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as
high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25
men. Massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last
major confrontation in America's deadly war against the Plains
Indians.
January 29, 1891
- Liliuokalani becomes the last monarch of the Hawaiian Islands
(upon death of her brother). Refused to recognize the constitution
of 1887, replacing it instead with a constitution that restored
the monarchy's traditional authority; 1887 -
under pressure from U.S. investors and American sugar planters,
King Kalakaua agreed to a new constitution that stripped him of
much of his power. 1893 - revolutionary "Committee
of Safety," organized by Sanford B. Dole, a Hawaiian-born
American, staged a coup against Queen Liliuokalani with the
support of U.S. Minister John Stevens and a division of U.S.
Marines. Stevens recognized Dole's new government on his own
authority and proclaimed Hawaii a U.S. protectorate. Dole
submitted a treaty of annexation to the U.S. Senate, but most
Democrats opposed it, especially after it was revealed that most
Hawaiians did not want annexation. President Grover Cleveland sent
a new U.S. minister to Hawaii to restore Queen Liliuokalani to the
throne under the 1887 constitution, but Dole refused to step aside
and instead proclaimed the independent Republic of Hawaii, which
was organized into a U.S. territory in 1900.
January 1, 1892
- The Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York opened.
May 5, 1892
- Congress extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for 10 more years;
May 6, 1882 - Originally passed over President
Chester A. Arthur's veto.
June 7, 1892
- Homer Plessy was arrested when he refused to move from a seat
reserved for whites on a train in New Orleans. The case led to the
U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ''separate but equal'' decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
June 23, 1892
- The Democratic convention in Chicago nominated former President
Grover Cleveland on the first ballot.
November 8, 1892
- Former President Grover Cleveland beat incumbent Benjamin
Harrison; became the only president to win non-consecutive terms
in the White House.
January 13, 1893 -
Britain's Independent Labor Party, a precursor to the Labor Party,
first met.
January 17, 1893
- Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as a group of businessmen
(revolutionary "Committee of Safety," organized by Sanford B.
Dole) and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
The coup occurred with the foreknowledge of John L. Stevens, the
U.S. minister to Hawaii, and 300 U.S. Marines from the U.S.
cruiser Boston were called to Hawaii, allegedly to protect
American lives.
Charles W. Calhoun (2005).
Benjamin Harrison. (New York, NY: Times Books, 192 p.).
Professor of History (East Carolina University). Harrison,
Benjamin, 1833-1901; Presidents--United States--Biography; United
States--Politics and government--1889-1893.
