This Year in History:
1890
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
President Benjamin Harrison welcomes Alice Sanger as the first female White House staffer on January 2, 1890. During an otherwise uneventful presidency remarkable only for allowing Congress a free‑for‑all in…
Idaho is admitted to the union on July 3, 1890. Exploration of the North American continent mostly proceeded inward from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and northward from Spanish Mexico. Therefore,…
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…
Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, is born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, England. Raised and educated at Ashfield, her parents’ comfortable home, Christie began…
On September 24, 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…
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)…
Future president Dwight D. Eisenhower is born in Denison, Texas on October 14, 1890. After graduating from West Point in 1915, Eisenhower embarked on a stellar military career–he would eventually become…
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…
On December 29, 1890, in one of the final chapters of America’s long Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in…
