This Year in History:
1889
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
The outlaw Belle Starr is killed when an unknown assailant fatally wounds the famous “Bandit Queen” with two shotgun blasts from behind. As with the lives of other famous outlaws like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, fanciful accounts printed in newspapers and dime novels made Belle Starr’s harsh and violent life appear far more […]
On March 18, 1889, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte becomes the first Native American woman to graduate from medical school. She was top of her class at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. As an eight-year-old on Nebraska’s Omaha Reservation, La Flesche experienced a formative moment: staying at the bedside of an elderly Omaha woman […]
On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries and 200 construction workers. In 1889, to honor of the centenary of the French Revolution, the French government planned an […]
On April 16, 1889, future Hollywood legend Charlie Chaplin is born Charles Spencer Chaplin in London, England. Chaplin, one of the most financially successful stars of early Hollywood, was introduced to the stage when he was five. The son of London music hall entertainers, young Chaplin was watching a show starring his mother when her […]
At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land. The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, […]
On May 31, 1889, Pennsylvania’s South Fork Dam collapses, causing the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. More than 2,200 people die in the disaster. Located 60 miles east of Pittsburgh in a valley near the Allegheny, Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek Rivers, Johnstown sits on a floodplain subject to frequent disasters. In 1840, officials constructed a dam […]
On June 6, 1889, a fire ignites in a Seattle woodworking shop and sweeps through some 100 acres, destroying much of the city’s business district and waterfront. The Great Seattle Fire culminates in losses estimated at $20 million—and serves as a turning point in the city’s history. The fire started shortly after 2:30 p.m. when […]
In a drunken rage, “Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone sex worker Blonde Mollie Williams. Leslie was an ill-tempered and violent man, especially when he drank. He told conflicting stories about his early life. At times, he said he was from Texas, at other times from Kentucky. He sometimes claimed he had been […]
Having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged. As the days of the open range cattle industry faded, conflicts between powerful western cattle barons and the homesteaders who were settling on “their” lands were inevitable. The […]
On September 30, 1889, the Wyoming state convention approves a constitution that includes a provision granting women the right to vote. Formally admitted into the union the following year, Wyoming thus became the first state in the history of the nation to allow its female citizens to vote. That the isolated western state of Wyoming […]
