This Year in History:
1888
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 12, 1888, the so‑called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 people, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United…
The National Geographic Society was founded, the Soviet army freed the prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1…
On January 27, 1888, the National Geographic Society is incorporated in Washington, D.C., for “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.” The 33 men who originally met and formed the…
On this day in 1888, Knute Rockne is born in Voss, Norway. He would go on to become one of the most successful coaches in the history of college football,…
On March 11, 1888, one of the worst blizzards in American history strikes the Northeast, killing more than 400 people and dumping as much as 55 inches of snow in…
The most severe winter storm ever to hit the New York City region reaches blizzard proportions, costing hundreds of lives and millions of dollars in property damage. Although the storm…
Agreeing to cooperate with a policy unilaterally adopted by Congress six years earlier, China approves a treaty forbidding Chinese laborers to enter the United States for 20 years. In the…
On April 11, 1888, 24‑year‑old Henry Ford marries Clara Jane Bryant on her 22nd birthday at her parent’s home in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Clara Ford would prove to be a…
On this day in 1888, Cecil Kimber, founder of the British sports car company MG, is born in England. In 1921, Kimber went to work for British auto tycoon William…
The novelist and screenwriter Anita Loos is born on this day in Mt. Shasta, California, in 1888. Loos began writing as a child and by age 13 was already contributing…
A hail storm devastates the farming town of Moradabad, India, killing 230 people and many more farm animals on this day in 1888. Sixteen others died in nearby Bareilly. In…
On June 5, 1888, President Grover Cleveland vetoes a bill that would have given a pension to war widow Johanna Loewinger, whose husband died 14 years after being discharged from…
Writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his family leave San Francisco for their first visit to the South Seas on this day in 1888. Stevenson, an adventurous traveler plagued by tuberculosis,…
The Bandai volcano erupts on the Japanese island of Honshu on this day in 1888, killing hundreds and burying many nearby villages in ash. Honshu, the main island of the…
Raymond Chandler, creator of detective Philip Marlowe, is born in Chicago on this day. Chandler was raised in England, where he went to college and worked as a freelance journalist…
Prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, the first known victim of London serial killer “Jack the Ripper,” is found murdered and mutilated in the city’s Whitechapel district. London saw four more victims…
Poet T.S. Eliot is born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. Eliot’s distinguished family tree included an ancestor who arrived in Boston in 1670 and another who founded…
While searching for stray cattle in the isolated canyons of southwest Colorado, Richard Wetherill and his brother‑in‑law stumble upon the magnificent ancient Indians ruins of Mesa Verde. The Wetherill family…
On December 23, 1888, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, suffering from severe depression, cuts off the lower part of his left ear with a razor while staying in Arles, France. …
