1888 in the United States
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Events from the year 1888 in the United States.
Incumbents
Federal Government
- President: Grover Cleveland (D-New York)
- Vice President: vacant
- Chief Justice: Morrison Waite (Ohio) (until March 23), Melville Fuller (Illinois) (starting October 8)
- Speaker of the House of Representatives: John G. Carlisle (D-Kentucky)
- Congress: 50th
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Governors2
Lieutenant Governors2
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Events
- January 12 – "Schoolhouse Blizzard": Blizzards hit Dakota Territory, the states of Montana, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas, leaving 235 dead, many of whom are children on their way home from school.
- January 13 – In Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society is founded.
- February 27 – In West Orange, New Jersey, Thomas Edison meets with Eadweard Muybridge, who proposes a scheme for sound film.
- March 8 – The Agriculture College of Utah, (later Utah State University) is founded in Logan, Utah.
- March 11 – The "Great Blizzard of 1888" begins along the East Coast of the United States, shutting down commerce and killing more than 400.
- May 1 – The United States Congress establishes the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.
- May 5 –The IAM was founded in Atlanta, Ga
- June 19 – In Chicago, the Republican Convention opens at the Auditorium Building. Benjamin Harrison and Levi Morton win the nominations for President and Vice President, respectively.
- July 25 – Frank Edward McGurrin, a court stenographer from Salt Lake City, Utah, purportedly the only person using touch typing at this time, wins a decisive victory over Louis Traub in a typing contest held in Cincinnati, Ohio. This date can be called the birthday of the touch typing method that becomes widely used.
- October 9 – The Washington Monument officially opens to the general public in D.C.
- November 6 – United States presidential election, 1888: Democratic Party incumbent Grover Cleveland wins the popular vote, but loses the Electoral College vote to Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison, therefore losing the election.
- November 27 – The sorority Delta Delta Delta is founded at Boston University.
- November 29 – Celebration of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah coincide.
Undated
- Susan B. Anthony organizes a Congress for Women's Rights in Washington, D.C.
- The Baldwin School is founded in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
- President of the United States Grover Cleveland declares the Chinese "impossible of assimilation with our people and dangerous to our peace and welfare".
- Katz's Delicatessen is founded in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Ongoing
- Gilded Age (1869–c. 1896)
Births
- c. January 20 – Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly), folk and blues singer (died 1949)
- February 22 – Owen Brewster, U.S. Senator from Maine from 1941 to 1952 (died 1961)
- February 25 – John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959 (died 1959)
- March 4 – Knute Rockne, American football player and coach (died 1931)
- March 10 – Ilo Wallace, wife of Henry A. Wallace, Second Lady of the United States (died 1981)
- April 26 – Anita Loos, writer (died 1981)
- May 11
- Irving Berlin, composer (died 1989)
- Willis Augustus Lee, admiral and sport shooter (died at sea 1945)
- May 15 – John E. Miller, U.S. Senator from Arkansas from 1937 to 1941 (died 1981)
- July 5 – Herbert Spencer Gasser, physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1944 (died 1963)
- July 10 – Hazel Abel, U.S. Senator from Nebraska in 1954 (died 1966)
- July 23 – Raymond Chandler, novelist (died 1959)
- July 31 – William Warren Barbour, U.S. Senator from New Jersey from 1931 to 1937 (died 1943)
- August 19 – Sam G. Bratton, U.S. Senator from New Mexico from 1925 to 1933 (died 1963)
- September 2 – Charles C. Gossett, U.S. Senator from Idaho from 1945 to 1946 (died 1974)
- September 6 – Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., politician (died 1969)
- September 26
- J. Frank Dobie, folklorist and journalist (died 1964)
- T. S. Eliot, American-born poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 (died 1965 in the United Kingdom)
- October 7 – Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the United States from 1941 to 1945 (died 1965)
- October 16
- Eugene O'Neill, dramatist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 (died 1953)
- Paul Popenoe, eugenicist (died 1979)
- October 30 – Alan Goodrich Kirk, admiral (died 1963)
- November 17 – J. Melville Broughton, U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1948 to 1949 (died 1949)
- November 23 – Harpo Marx, comedian (died 1964)
- December 18 – Robert Moses, public works director (died 1981)
Deaths
- March 4 – Amos Bronson Alcott, educator and writer (born 1799)
- March 6 – Louisa May Alcott, author (born 1832)
- March 7 – Christopher Memminger, German-born American politician, 1st Confederate States Secretary of the Treasury (born 1803)
- March 19 – John Pendleton King, U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1833 to 1837 (born 1799)
- August 22 – Charles W. Cathcart, U.S. Senator from Indiana from 1845 to 1853 (born 1809)
- November 20 – Nathaniel Currier, illustrator (born 1813)
External links
Media related to 1888 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons
