This Day…

1884-At the toll bridge over the Arkansas River in Dodge City, Kansas, Marshall Bill Tilghman emptied his revolver and started up with his Winchester in order to encourage some rowdy cowboys to return to their camp.  They stood their ground and fired a few shots in return but nobody was hit.

On this day in 1866, the Reno gang carries out the first robbery of a moving train in the U.S., making off with over $10,000 from an Ohio & Mississippi train in Jackson County, Indiana. Prior to this innovation in crime, holdups had taken place only on trains sitting at stations or freight yards.

1876-A patrol led by Texas Ranger Sergeant John Armstrong closed in on an outlaw camp in Espinoza Lake near Carrizo, Texas.  When the smoke cleared the rangers had killed three of the four outlaws in that camp and the fourth was hit four times, in separate shootouts that night Armstrong’s detachment killed two other outlaws.

Oct 1st – Yosemite National Park forms.  Thanks to the Mrs. Fremont for helping to make it all possible.

On this day in 1829, Dr. Sarah R. Adamson Dolley was born in Schuylkill Meeting, Pennsylvania. Aspiring to become a doctor, she sought an apprenticeship with her physician uncle, Hiram Corson, but he initially would not accept her, believing the practice of medicine to be an unsuitable profession for women. After seeing that she was determined and relentless, he finally agreed.

1967 – President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 prohibiting sex discrimination in employment by the federal government and by federal contractors

1824: Adeline Train Whitney born (writer)

1866: Anne Sullivan Macy born (educator – Helen Keller‘s “Teacher”)

1868: Lida Shaw King born (educator, classicist)

1945: Jessye Norman born (opera singer)

1963: Four girls killed in the bombing of 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama (story)

1846 – Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning.

1953 – Jacqueline Lee Bouvier marries U.S. Representative John Fitzgerald Kennedy at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island.

1992 – Dr. Mae Carol Jemison becomes the first African-American woman in space on board the Space Shuttle Endeavour

1921 – 16-year-old Margaret Gorman wins the Atlantic City Pageant’s Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dubbed her the first Miss America.