Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Timeline Notes

In 1860, the first Pony Express rider reached Sacramento, California.
in 1885, Wilson Bentley took the first photograph of a snowflake.
In 1885, Good Housekeeping magazine went on sale for the first time.

n 1882, the "Elektromote"-–a forerunner of the trolleybus-–trialed by Ernst Werner von Siemens in Berlin.

And in 1901, New York became the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.
May 7, 1896 -- A serial killer is hanged -- Dr. H. H. Holmes, one of America's first well-known serial killers, is hanged to death in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although his criminal exploits were just as extensive and occurred during the same time period as Jack the Ripper, the Arch Fiend--as Holmes was known--has not endured in the public's memory the way the Ripper has. Born with the unfortunate moniker Herman Mudgett in New Hampshire, Holmes began torturing animals as a child. Still, he was a smart boy who later graduated from the University of Michigan with a medical degree. Holmes financed his education with a series of insurance scams whereby he requested coverage for nonexistent people and then presented corpses as the insured. In 1886, Holmes moved to Chicago to work as a pharmacist. A few months later, he bought the pharmacy from the owner's widow after his death. She then mysteriously disappeared. With a new series of cons, Holmes raised enough money to build a giant, elaborate home across from the store. The home, which Holmes called "The Castle," had secret passageways, fake walls, and trapdoors. Some of the rooms were soundproof and connected by pipes to a gas tank in the basement. His bedroom had controls that could fill these rooms with gas. Holmes' basement also contained a lab with equipment used for his dissections. Young women in the area, along with tourists who had come to see the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and had rented out rooms in Holmes' castle, suddenly began disappearing. Medical schools purchased many human skeletons from Dr. Holmes during this period but never asked how he obtained the anatomy specimens. Holmes was finally caught after attempting to use another corpse in an insurance scam. He confessed, saying, "I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing." Reportedly, authorities discovered the remains of over 200 victims on his property. Devil in the White City, a book about Holmes' murder spree and the World Fair by Erik Larson, was published in 2003.


Born into the Christian home of Irish Presbyterians of Dublin, Ireland in 1841, Robert Anderson did not come into "full assurance of faith" (Hebrews 10:22) until he was nineteen years old, during the Irish Revival (1859-1860). One Sunday, after listening to Dr. John Hall preach, he remained behind to argue with the minister. Dr. Hall solemnly appealed to Robert, "I tell you as a minister of Christ, and in His name that there is life for you here and now, if you will accept Him. Will you accept Christ or will you reject Him?" To this, Robert Anderson paused, but finally exclaimed, "In God's name I will accept Christ!" "And," he said, "I turned turned homeward with the peace of God filling my heart." "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:7). Though he was enrolled at Trinity College (Dublin)-- from which he graduated in 1862-- he became active as a lay-preacher, bringing many to Christ. "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing Precious Seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" (Psalm 126:6). Becoming a member of the Irish Bar in 1863, Anderson was introduced to police work, when he prepared legal briefs and interrogated prisoners that had attempted to overthrow British rule in Ireland. "The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and He delighteth in his way" (Psalm 37:23). Moving to London in 1877, Robert Anderson joined the staff of the Home Office, developing his investigative skills through the detective department. Promoted to Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police and Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard in 1888, the records indicate that crime decreased in London during that period-- when Jack the Ripper infamously terrorized London and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes pursued his nemesis, Moriarty. "6 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. 7 But God is the Judge: He putteth down one, and setteth up another" (Psalm 75:6-7). Serving with Scotland Yard until his retirement in 1896, he was knighted by Queen Victoria. His many friends included Handley G. Moule, Henry Drummond, James M. Gray, and C. I. Scofield. "I am a companion of all them that fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts" (Psalm 119:63). It was Horatius Bonar who first taught Anderson the precious truths concerning the Second Coming of the LORD Jesus Christ. "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto Salvation" (Hebrews 9:28). As a Christian writer, he authored seventeen major books, among them his "Human Destiny" was accounted by C. H. Spurgeon as the "most valuable contribution on the subject" that he had ever seen. Sir Robert Anderson remained active and useful to his LORD until his death in 1918. "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" (2Timothy 4:7).
ANDERSON, Robert
Born : 1841, Dublin, Ireland. Son of Matthew Anderson a Crown Solicitor.
1862 : Recieves a BA from Trinity College Dublin.
1863 : Called to the bar.
1873 : Married Agnes Alexandrina Moore.
1876 : Brought over to London as part of an intelligence branch to combat Fenianism. The branch was soon closed but Anderson remained in London as a Home Office "Advisor in matters relating to political crime". He was also the controller for the spy Thomas Miller Beach who had penetrated the Fenian movement.
1886 : Relieved of all duties except controlling Beach after getting into trouble with Home Secretary Hugh Childers.
1887-1888 : Secretary of the Prison Commissioners.
1888 : Aug - Replaces James Monro as Assistant Commissioner CID.
1901 : Retires and is knighted.
1910 : Publishes his memoirs "The Lighter Side of My Official Life".
1918 : Nov 15 - Died.
Anderson stated several times that the identity of the Whitechapel murderer was known.
"...he had been safely caged in an Asylum." (Criminals and Crime, 1907)
"In saying that he was a Polish Jew I am merely stating a definitely ascertained fact." (The Lighter Side of My Official Life, 1910)
"...there was no doubt whatever as to the identity of the criminal..." (Police Encyclopedia, 1920)
Source:
Begg, Fido, and Skinner. The Jack the Ripper A-Z.

On May 24, 1883, New Yorkers celebrated the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, the first steel-wire suspension bridge. This engineering feat, however, was not accomplished without sacrifice. To lay the bridge’s giant foundations in the water, huge watertight chambers called “caissons” had to be used. Men would work in them for 8 hours while under tremendous air pressure. Returning to normal atmospheric pressure resulted in terrible symptoms later known as caisson disease. It was discovered that a rapid decrease in air pressure releases tiny nitrogen bubbles in the blood. This cuts off the oxygen supply, resulting in nausea, achy joints, paralysis, and even death. Today, scientists know that the use of a decompression chamber allows a gradual reduction of pressure, which prevents the nitrogen bubbles from forming.

In 1879, at New York City's Madison Square Garden, the first artificial ice rink in North America opened.

In 1883, Thomas Edison’s light bulb was demonstrated in Louisville, KY

The Louvre opened as a public museum in Paris on November 8, 1793, after more than two centuries as a royal palace.

On November 11, 1852, the Saturday Evening Gazette published “The Rival Painters: A Story of Rome,” by Louisa May Alcott, author of “Little Women” (1868). Alcott spent most of her life caring for her family financially, emotionally and physically. Her father died in March 1888 and she followed him just two days later.

On November 7, 1916, Montana suffragist Jeannette Rankin was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first woman to win a seat in the federal Congress. A dedicated pacifist, Rankin’s first vote as a U.S. congresswoman was against U.S. entry into World War I.

In 1861, The Pony Express officially ceased operations

October 27, 1858 -- Macy's is a hit -- The eighth time was the charm for Roland Macy. After a string of seven business failures, the resilient entrepreneur finally hit the jackpot in 1858 when he founded his own department store, named (you guessed it!) Macy's. The store, which opened in New York City, was packed with a variety of useful products and became an immediate success. Today, Macy's is, by volume of sales, the biggest department store in the world.

October 29, 1901 -- A mass-murdering nurse is arrested -- Nurse Jane Toppan is arrested in Amherst, Massachusetts, for single-handedly killing the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine during a period of six weeks in July and August.
Toppan's childhood, as with virtually all serial killers, was very troubled. Her mother died when she was very young, and her father had severe mental problems. A tailor by trade, he was sent to an asylum after he stitched together his own eyelids. Although her sister was soon sent off to a mental hospital as well, Jane bounced around between several orphanages for years until she was finally adopted. To all around her, Toppan seemed to be doing fine until a broken engagement led her to attempt suicide.
After recovering from her suicide attempt, she went on to study nursing and developed a fascination with the morgue, corpses, and autopsies. For years, she worked as a private nurse, taking care of elderly patients throughout the New England area, but no one took note of her patients' survival rate until she came to care for Mattie Davis.
Davis, who was an old friend of Toppan's, died on July 4, 1901, in Toppan's care. Volunteering to assist the Davis family as they worked through their grief, Toppan soon began to care for Mattie's sister, Annie, and her father, Alden. On July 29, Annie died, and, only days later, Alden died as well.
Because she had also allowed Toppan to treat her, the only surviving family member, Mary, was not suspicious of her relatives' deaths. However, a few weeks later, she too was dead. Mary's husband, who knew that the deaths had gone beyond coincidence, demanded autopsies of all of the family members. After the coroner determined that they had each been killed by morphine injections, Toppan fled Boston. During her time as a fugitive, Toppan killed her sister, Edna Bannister.
By the time she was arrested, authorities produced solid evidence of 11 murders, and she confessed to 20 more. Some believe that she may have been responsible for as many as 100 deaths. At her trial, Toppan told the court, "That is my ambition, to have killed more people-more helpless people-than any man or woman who has ever lived." Unsurprisingly, she was sent to a Massachusetts mental asylum. There, she allegedly implored the workers to get some morphine so that they could have fun by killing the other patients. Toppan died in 1938.


October 27, 1873 -- Joseph Glidden applies for a patent on his barbed wire design -- On this day in 1873, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer named Joseph Glidden submits an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his clever new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West.
Glidden's was by no means the first barbed wire; he only came up with his design after seeing an exhibit of Henry Rose's single-stranded barbed wire at the De Kalb county fair. But Glidden's design significantly improved on Rose's by using two strands of wire twisted together to hold the barbed spur wires firmly in place. Glidden's wire also soon proved to be well suited to mass production techniques, and by 1880 more than 80 million pounds of inexpensive Glidden-style barbed wire was sold, making it the most popular wire in the nation. Prairie and plains farmers quickly discovered that Glidden's wire was the cheapest, strongest, and most durable way to fence their property. As one fan wrote, "it takes no room, exhausts no soil, shades no vegetation, is proof against high winds, makes no snowdrifts, and is both durable and cheap."
The effect of this simple invention on the life in the Great Plains was huge. Since the plains were largely treeless, a farmer who wanted to construct a fence had little choice but to buy expensive and bulky wooden rails shipped by train and wagon from distant forests. Without the alternative offered by cheap and portable barbed wire, few farmers would have attempted to homestead on the Great Plains, since they could not have afforded to protect their farms from grazing herds of cattle and sheep. Barbed wire also brought a speedy end to the era of the open-range cattle industry. Within the course of just a few years, many ranchers discovered that thousands of small homesteaders were fencing over the open range where their cattle had once freely roamed, and that the old technique of driving cattle over miles of unfenced land to railheads in Dodge City or Abilene was no longer possible.

October 18: General Interest -- 1867 : U.S. takes possession of Alaska -- On this day in 1867, the U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by William Henry Seward, the enthusiasticly expansionist secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson.
Russia wanted to sell its Alaska territory, which was remote, sparsely populated and difficult to defend, to the U.S. rather than risk losing it in battle with a rival such as Great Britain. Negotiations between Seward (1801-1872) and the Russian minister to the U.S., Eduard de Stoeckl, began in March 1867. However, the American public believed the land to be barren and worthless and dubbed the purchase "Seward's Folly" and "Andrew Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," among other derogatory names. Some animosity toward the project may have been a byproduct of President Johnson's own unpopularity. As the 17th U.S. president, Johnson battled with Radical Republicans in Congress over Reconstruction policies following the Civil War. He was impeached in 1868 and later acquitted by a single vote. Nevertheless, Congress eventually ratified the Alaska deal.
Public opinion of the purchase turned more favorable when gold was discovered in a tributary of Alaska's Klondike River in 1896, sparking a gold rush. Alaska became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, and is now recognized for its vast natural resources. Today, 25 percent of America's oil and over 50 percent of its seafood come from Alaska. It is also the largest state in area, about one-fifth the size of the lower 48 states combined, though it remains sparsely populated.
The name Alaska is derived from the Aleut word alyeska, which means "great land." Alaska has two official state holidays to commemorate its origins: Seward's Day, observed the last Monday in March, celebrates the March 30, 1867, signing of the land treaty between the U.S. and Russia, and Alaska Day, observed every October 18, marks the anniversary of the formal land transfer.

October 17, 1864 -- Longstreet returns to command -- Confederate General James Longstreet assumes command of his corps in Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in May, Longstreet missed the campaign for Richmond and spent five months recovering before retuning to his command.
Longstreet was one of the most effective corps commanders in the war. He became a brigadier general before the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861, and he quickly rose through the ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia. He became a divisional commander, and his leadership during the Seven Days' Battles and the Second Battle of Bull Run earned him the respect of the army's commander, General Robert E. Lee, who gave him command of a corps just before the Battle of Antietam in September 1862.
His leadership at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg sealed his reputation as a brilliant corps leader, but Longstreet was less successful when given an independent command. In spring 1863, he led a force in northern North Carolina and southern Virginia, and he made an expedition to relieve Confederate forces in Tennessee in fall 1863. He enjoyed little success in either situation.
The Union Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan River in early May 1864 for another attempt at capturing the Confederate capital at Richmond. At the Battle of the Wilderness on May 6, Longstreet was shot by his own troops while scouting the lines during the battle. Ironically, it was just a few miles from the spot where Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had been mortally wounded by his men just one year earlier. Longstreet was hit in the neck and shoulder, and he nearly died. He was incapacitated for the rest of the campaign and did not rejoin his corps until it was mired in the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, in October 1864.
After the war, Longstreet worked at a variety of government posts, including U.S. minister to Turkey. He broke with his fellow Confederates by joining the Republican Party, and he dared to criticize some of Lee's tactical decisions. Though he was reviled by many of his fellow generals for this later behavior, he outlived most of his detractors. He died in Gainesville, Georgia, at the age of 82 in 1904.

October 26: General Interest -- 1881 : Shootout at the OK Corral -- On this day in 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
After silver was discovered nearby in 1877, Tombstone quickly grew into one of the richest mining towns in the Southwest. Wyatt Earp, a former Kansas police officer working as a bank security guard, and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil, the town marshal, represented "law and order" in Tombstone, though they also had reputations as being power-hungry and ruthless. The Clantons and McLaurys were cowboys who lived on a ranch outside of town and sidelined as cattle rustlers, thieves and murderers. In October 1881, the struggle between these two groups for control of Tombstone and Cochise County ended in a blaze of gunfire at the OK Corral.
On the morning of October 25, Ike Clanton and Tom McLaury came into Tombstone for supplies. Over the next 24 hours, the two men had several violent run-ins with the Earps and their friend Doc Holliday. Around 1:30 p.m. on October 26, Ike's brother Billy rode into town to join them, along with Frank McLaury and Billy Claiborne. The first person they met in the local saloon was Holliday, who was delighted to inform them that their brothers had both been pistol-whipped by the Earps. Frank and Billy immediately left the saloon, vowing revenge.
Around 3 p.m., the Earps and Holliday spotted the five members of the Clanton-McLaury gang in a vacant lot behind the OK Corral, at the end of Fremont Street. The famous gunfight that ensued lasted all of 30 seconds, and around 30 shots were fired. Though it's still debated who fired the first shot, most reports say that the shootout began when Virgil Earp pulled out his revolver and shot Billy Clanton point-blank in the chest, while Doc Holliday fired a shotgun blast at Tom McLaury's chest. Though Wyatt Earp wounded Frank McLaury with a shot in the stomach, Frank managed to get off a few shots before collapsing, as did Billy Clanton. When the dust cleared, Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were dead, and Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday were wounded. Ike Clanton and Claiborne had run for the hills.
Sheriff John Behan of Cochise County, who witnessed the shootout, charged the Earps and Holliday with murder. A month later, however, a Tombstone judge found the men not guilty, ruling that they were "fully justified in committing these homicides." The famous shootout has been immortalized in many movies, including Frontier Marshal (1939), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Tombstone (1993) and Wyatt Earp (1994).


1882, the Nickel Plate Railroad opened for business.

October 15, 1878 A little help from his friends -- Long before the days of Bill Gates, Thomas Edison offered a good lesson in the economics of technical innovation. On October 15, 1878, Edison opened the doors to the Edison Electric Company, but the prolific inventor didn't get the company off the ground by himself. Edison Electric was, in part, funded by wealthy investors like J.P. Morgan, who thought Edison, the inventor of the telegraph, was a wise investment. Though electric light had eluded inventors for over fifty years, Edison had vowed that he would create the first incandescent lamp. He quickly made good on his promise. His company was soon flush with profits, and competitors hoping to cash in on the burgeoning market were springing up everywhere. Under the tutelage of Morgan, Edison adopted the aggressive tactics of vertical integration, buying his rivals and transforming his company into a model modern enterprise. Without anti-trust laws to put the breaks on the feeding frenzy, Edison's shop, re-christened the General Electric Company, dominated the field with just one major competitor, the Westinghouse Company.
Hobble or restrictive skirts first appeared in Western fashion in around 1880. Advantages: Some people enjoy the feeling of legs being "hugged" together by the skirt. Due to their tightness and close proximity to the body, hobble skirts can make the wearer feel very warm, without having to wear bifurcated legwear. Disadvantages: They shorten the wearer's stride. They render the wearer unable to run. It is impossible to do things which require spreading legs or having an object between the legs

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