Idaho is admitted to the union on July 3, 1890.

At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe.

Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, is born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, England.

On September 25, 1890, faced with the imminent destruction of their church and way of life, religious leaders reluctantly issue the “Mormon Manifesto” in which they command all Latter-day Saints to uphold the anti-polygamy laws of the nation. The leaders had been given little choice: If they did not abandon polygamy they faced federal confiscation of their sacred temples and the revocation of basic civil rights for all members of the church.

On October 1, 1890, an act of Congress creates Yosemite National Park, home of such natural wonders as Half Dome and the giant sequoia trees. Environmental trailblazer John Muir (1838-1914) and his colleagues campaigned for the congressional action, which was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison and paved the way for generations of hikers, campers and nature lovers, along with countless “Don’t Feed the Bears” signs.

Future president Dwight D. Eisenhower is born in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890.

After many years of successfully resisting white efforts to destroy him and the Sioux people, the Sioux leader and holy man Sitting Bull is killed by Indian police at the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota.

On December 29, 1890, in one of the final chapters of America’s long Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.