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Ulysses S. Grant / Presidential term
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A golden spike is driven into a railroad tie at Promontory Point, Utah
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John D. Rockefeller forms Standard Oil of Ohio
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), founder of the Standard Oil Company, became one of the world’s wealthiest men and a major philanthropist. Born into modest circumstances in upstate New York, he entered the then-fledgling oil business in 1863 by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio, refinery. In 1870, he established Standard Oil, which by the early 1880s controlled some 90 percent of U.S. refineries and pipelines. Critics accused Rockefeller of engaging in unethical practices, such as predatory pricing -
P.T. Barnum opens his three-ring circus, hailing it as the "Greatest Show on Earth."
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The Great Chicago Fire claims 250 lives and destroys 17,500 buildings
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Montgomery Ward begins to sell goods to rural customers by mail
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Women's Christian Temperance Union
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Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922), worked at a school for the deaf while attempting to invent a machine that would transmit sound by electricity. The telephone is an important invention that expanded and simplified communication. This invention sped and increased global communication, increasing the capacity for real-time interaction at a distance. The telephone also changed how people communicate with each other on a daily basis. -
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Rutherford B. Hayes / Presidential term
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Chester A. Arthur / Presidential term
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Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese immigration for ten years
In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities. -
Congress passes the Pendleton Act, establishing a Civil Service Commission and filling government positions by a merit system
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Joseph Pulitzer purchases the New York World from Jay Gould
The New York World newspaper was published in New York City from 1860 until 1931, unsuccessful until Pulitzer purchased it in 1883. Joseph Pulitzer has been called "the midwife to the birth of the modern mass media." His sensationalist approach to journalism, exposing fraud and political corruption as well as introducing comic strips to provide more entertaining reading for the public, has left a lasting imprint on the media. -
The Supreme Court rules that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 only forbids state- imposed discrimination, not that by individuals or corporations
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Railroads in the United States and Canada adopt a system of standard time.
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Construction begins in Chicago on the first building with a steel skeleton, William Jenney's ten-story Home Insurance Company
Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper. And this building is the skyscraper that started it all. The Home Insurance Building was born out of the building frenzy that followed the Great Chicago Fire. The city, formerly made largely from wood, was being re-built in stone, iron, and a new material called steel. The idea was revolutionary. Wiliiam's idea blueprint for hundreds of thousands of skyscrapers that would follow it. -
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Grover Cleveland / Presidential term 1
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Over 300,000 workers demonstrate in behalf of an eight-hour work day
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The Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago kills seven police officers and wounds sixty
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President Grover Cleveland unveils the Statue of Liberty
The statue’s full name was Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. It had been a gift from French citizens to their American friends in recognition of the two countries’ commitment to liberty and democracy and their alliance during the American Revolutionary War, which had begun 110 years earlier. The statue quickly became a symbol of America’s humanitarianism and willingness to take in the world’s “tired, poor and huddled masses”. -
Samuel Gompers forms his organization, the American Federation of Labor
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The Interstate Commerce Act is issued
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Thomas Edison invents the phonograph
The technology that made the modern music business possible came into existence in the New Jersey laboratory where Thomas Alva Edison created the first device to both record sound and play it back. Letter writing and dictation, phonographic books for blind people, a family record (recording family members in their own voices), music boxes and toys, clocks that announce the time, and a connection with the telephone so communications could also be recorded. -
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Benjamin Harrison / Presidential term
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Congress passes the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
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The Populist Party is founded
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James Naismith, a physical education instructor at the YMCA Training College, invents basketball.
Because of the College’s well-represented international student body, the game of basketball was introduced to many foreign nations in a relatively short period of time. High schools and colleges began to introduce the new game, and by 1905, basketball was officially recognized as a permanent winter sport. Today basketball is one of the most played sports around the world. -
Ellis Island opens to screen immigrants
Ellis Island was the first and largest federal immigrant processing station, receiving over 12 million future Americans between 1892 and 1954, when it was abandoned. Before Ellis Island opened, immigrants were required to be processed by the State, not the federal government. -
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Grover Cleveland / Presidential terms 2
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Homestead Steelworks strike
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Pullman Strike
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The Supreme Court strikes down an income tax
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William Jennings Bryan electrified the Democratic convention with his "Cross of Gold" speech and received the party's nomination
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William McKinley / Presidential term
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Andrew Carnegie sells Carnegie Steel Company to JP Morgan
Carnegie allows J.P. Morgan to buy him out for $480 million, a move which allows Morgan to create US Steel, and makes Carnegie the richest man in the world.
