This Year in History:
1888
Discover what happened in this year with HISTORY’s summaries of major events, anniversaries, famous births and notable deaths.
On January 12, 1888, the so‑called “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” kills 235 people, many of whom were children on their way home from school, across the Northwest Plains region of the United…
The National Geographic Society was founded, the Soviet army freed the prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1…
On January 27, 1888, the National Geographic Society is incorporated in Washington, D.C., for “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.” The 33 men who originally met and formed the…
On March 11, 1888, one of the worst blizzards in American history strikes the Northeast, killing more than 400 people and dumping as much as 55 inches of snow in…
On April 11, 1888, 24‑year‑old Henry Ford marries Clara Jane Bryant on her 22nd birthday at her parent’s home in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Clara Ford would prove to be a…
On June 5, 1888, President Grover Cleveland vetoes a bill that would have given a pension to war widow Johanna Loewinger, whose husband died 14 years after being discharged from…
Prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, the first known victim of London serial killer “Jack the Ripper,” is found murdered and mutilated in the city’s Whitechapel district. London saw four more victims…
Poet T.S. Eliot is born in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 26, 1888. Eliot’s distinguished family tree included an ancestor who arrived in Boston in 1670 and another who founded…
On December 23, 1888, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, suffering from severe depression, cuts off the lower part of his left ear with a razor while staying in Arles, France. …
