Events
Great Blizzard of 1888: The Great White Hurricane
The Great Blizzard of 1888, also known as the Great White Hurricane, was one of the most severe recorded blizzards in American history. Snow fell from 10 to 58 inches and sustained winds reached more than 45 miles per hour producing snowdrifts more than 50 feet high. The storm paralyzed the East Coast from Chesapeake…
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Wyld’s Great Globe: A 1850s and 1860s London Attraction
Wyld’s Great Globe, also known as Wyld’s Globe or Wyld’s Monster Globe, was a world globe that served as an attraction in London’s Leicester Square between 1851 and 1862. It was constructed based on the ideas of James Wyld, a British geographer and map-seller, who was the oldest son of James Wyld the elder and…
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Midwinter Fair: California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894
The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, referred to as the “Midwinter Fair,” was a World’s Fair, like the U.K.’s Great Exhibition or Paris’ Exposition Universelle. The Midwinter Fair came about after U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, grandson to the ninth U.S. President, William Henry Harrison, appointed Californian Michael H. de Young as a national commissioner…
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Fourth of July: Celebrating Independence Day, 1777-1870
The Fourth of July, or Independence Day as it is sometimes called, did not become an official federal holiday anywhere in the United States until the U.S. Congress declared it as such on 28 June 1870 along with three other federal holidays, Christmas, New Years, and Thanksgiving. Part of the reason it took so long…
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Typhus in the Day of Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Typhus is an infectious disease caused by rickettsiae that can be transmitted by lice, ticks, mites, or rat fleas and is caused by certain types of bacterial infection. It usually causes flu-like symptoms that result in headache and fever, sometimes accompanied by delirium. The characteristics of the disease were further explained in a health column…
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