This Day…

1811-The steamboat New Orleans, built in Pittsburgh by Nicholas Roosevelt, is launched on the Ohio River: this is the first steamboat to appear on western waters; its maiden voyage will be memorable.

2013-A viewer in Flower Mound, Texas struggles to find out the ISBN number for The Plea.

1633-Massachusetts Bay Colony settler John Oldham leads a group inland to the Connecticut Valley; they spend the winter at Wethersfield, Connecticut.  Meanwhile, William Holmes of Plymouth Colony has been commissioned to erect a trading post on the river, above the Dutch post at Hartford.  The movement west underway.

1877-Crazy Horse, chief of the Oglala Sioux, is bayoneted by a soldier at Fort Robinson in Nebraska after pulling a knife upon learning he was to be imprisoned.  Crazy Horse dies of his wounds a few hours later.  He is about 35 years old.

1873-Tiburcio Vasquez and 6 others were robbing a store in Tre Pinos, CA. when violence erupted.  Three townspeople were killed and a child beaten unconscious.

1879-John Beckwith was killed by the rustler John Jones, in a dispute over the ownership of a herd of cows.

1892 – An early attempt at rain-making is successful in bringing rain to Midland, Texas, dry since 1888.

1877-McNelly’s Bulldog, John Barclay Armstrong, arrested John Wesley Hardin on a train in Pensacola.  The outlaw, Jim Mann, was killed in the fray.

1863-Approximately 450 irregular Confederate raiders under William Clarke Quantrill stage a dawn terrorist raid on the town of Lawrence, Kansas, leaving 150 civilians dead, 30 wounded, and much of the town a smoking ruin.

1856-Tom Bell Gang attempted to rop the Comptonville Stage outside of Marysville, California.  A passenger on the stage, Mrs. Tilghman, was killed in the ensuing gunplay.