1888 in the United States

1888 in the United States
Years:	1885 1886 1887 – 1888 – 1889 1890 1891
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Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1865–1918)

Events from the year 1888 in the United States.

Eisenhower Executive Office Building, built in 1888 in Washington, DC

Barthrop House in Port Townsend, Washington, built in 1888

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

Events

President Grover Cleveland, photo circa 1888 , lost his re-election campaign this year, but is re-elected in 1892.

• 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