December 29, 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre

December 29, 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre takes place near the creek and now town of the same name, in southwestern South Dakota. It is the last major action between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, and possibly the worst.

In 1876, the the Lakota Sioux fought the 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer (who'd held the temporary, or brevet, rank of Brigadier General in the American Civil War), at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana, and the Cavalry lost more than 1/3rd of its men, including Custer.

One of the chiefs leading the Lakota troops was Sitting Bull. For 5 more years, he managed to avoid capture by U.S. troops, until finally surrendering. He joined William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West Show, but returned to the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, which had gained Statehood along with North Dakota on November 2, 1889.

In response to the many degradations the Natives faced, the "Ghost Dance" movement began, a nationalist movement similar to the later Black Panther Party and the Reconquista movement of Mexican-Americans.

Faced with a nonwhite people expressing pride in themselves and their traditions, white America's government did what it had done so many times, and would continue to do: It overreacted. In the tradition of "Cut off the head, and the body will die," the rebuilt 7th Cavalry went to arrest Sitting Bull. They arrived on December 15, 1890, and he refused to accept arrest, and was shot and killed. Although Native record-keeping made establishing his exact birthdate impossible, he was believed to be 59 years old.

The Cavalry, under the command of Colonel James W. Forsyth, moved on to Wounded Knee, 275 miles to the southwest. Arriving on December 28, they surrounded the Lakota camp. On the morning of the 29th, they went in to take the Lakota men's guns away. A Ghost Dance ritual was being conducted at the time. A man named Black Coyote refused to give up his rifle, citing the large amount of money he'd paid for it. What happened next is in dispute: Either Black Coyote fired, and a soldier grabbed his rifle, they struggled over it, and it went off.

What is not in dispute is what happened after that first gunshot: The Cavalry opened fire, and those few Lakota who still had their weapons returned what fire they could. More than 250 men, women and children were killed. That was nearly as many men as the 7th Cavalry lost at the Little Bighorn, but those were all trained soldiers. To put that in a modern perspective, it's nearly half again as many people as died in the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995, and 1/8th as many as were killed on 9/11 -- and since the U.S. had about 1/4th as many people in 1890 as it had in 2001, it's proportionately about half as bad as 9/11.

The Cavalry lost 31 men. Twenty men were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. There was no honor in what they did.

At the time, the President of the United States was Benjamin Harrison. His grandfather, William Henry Harrison, had been President for one month in 1841, before dying of pneumonia. In 1811, William Henry Harrison defeated Native tribes at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana. In 1813, his troops killed the Native chief Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames near what's now Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Now, perhaps unwittingly, he had finished his grandfather's work. Of course, white men's attacks on the Native peoples of North America went all the way back to the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, so it's not like "Old Tip" Harrison started it.

Wounded Knee is far from any major city. It's 104 miles southeast of Mount Rushmore, 350 miles northeast of Denver and over 400 miles northwest of Omaha. In fact, the Little Bighorn Battlefield is about 350 miles to the northwest, so it's closer to that than to Denver, the closest major league city.

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December 29, 1890 was a Monday. Baseball and football seasons were over. Basketball wouldn't be invented for another year. There was a hockey league at the time, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, but no games were scheduled for this day. So, there were no scores on this historic day.

October 9, 1890: The End of the Players' League War

John Montgomery Ward

October 9, 1890: The National League, the American Association, and the insurgent Players' League, all hit hard financially by their 3-way "war" for players and fans, reach a truce. The PL folds, and their players are welcomed back to their former teams at their former salaries.

The PL was formed by the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in November 1889, after a dispute over pay with the NL and the AA. The NL had implemented a reserve clause in 1879, which limited the ability of players to negotiate across teams for their salaries. Both the AA and NL had passed a salary cap of $2,000 per player in 1885, equivalent to about $60,300 in 2022. The owners of the NL teams had agreed to remove the salary cap in 1887, but broke their word.

The Brotherhood included most of the best players of the NL. Brotherhood members, led by John Montgomery Ward -- who could play just about any position, including pitcher, and was also a practicing attorney -- left the NL and formed the PL after failing to change the NL's lopsided player–management relationship.

The PL had 8 teams. The New York Giants were named after their NL counterparts. The PL also directly challenged the NL with the Boston Reds, the Brooklyn Ward's Wonders ("Monte" Ward's team), the Philadelphia Athletics (no connection to the later American League team of that name), the Chicago Pirates, the Pittsburgh Burghers (the NL's Pittsburgh team was still called the Alleghenys, not the Pirates), and the Cleveland Infants.

The Cincinnati Reds were the only NL team that did not have a direct PL competitor, and the Buffalo Bisons were the only PL team not directly competing with an NL team. The AA had teams in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, and those were the 2 least-attended teams in their league -- directly leading to their being the 2 worst. The AA also had teams in Baltimore, Syracuse, Rochester, Columbus, Toledo, Louisville and St. Louis.

The Pennants were won by Brooklyn in the NL, by Louisville in the AA, and by Boston in the PL. The PL was well-attended, at least in some cities, but was underfunded, and its owners lacked the confidence to continue beyond the one season.

After the PL folded, the Boston and Philadelphia franchises joined the AA, and both folded together with the AA after the 1891 season. The PL franchises in Brooklyn, New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh each merged with their NL counterparts after the 1890 season, as the rebel players were welcomed back.

Although the league was started by the players themselves, essentially as an elaborate job-action to improve their lot, the venture proved to be a setback for them in the longer term. The hated reserve clause remained intact, and would remain thus for the next 85. The already-shaky AA had been further weakened by the presence of the PL.

One benefit of the league, from the management standpoint, was the construction of new facilities, several of which were used for a while by the established major league clubs. The most prominent of these was a new Polo Grounds, originally constructed as Brotherhood Park for the New York Giants of the PL. The NL's Giants moved in for the 1891 season, and stayed until a fire burned it down in 1911. A new Polo Grounds was built on the site, and the Giants stayed until moving to San Francisco after the 1957 season. This would be paralleled by one Federal League ballpark entering the remaining major leagues for 1916: The Chicago park that was later renamed Wrigley Field.

The NL survives to this day. The AA, however, was mortally wounded, and folded after one more season. That brought a vacuum that was filled by the American League in 1901. In 1902, a new American Association was formed, at the highest minor-league level.

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October 9, 1890 was a Thursday. There were 4 baseball games played that day, all in the American Association:

* The Rochester Broncos beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 10-4 at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Syracuse Stars, 6-3 at Oriole Park in Baltimore.

* The Toledo Maumees beat the Louisville Colonels, 7-0 at Eclipse Park in Louisville.

* And the Columbus Solons beat the St. Louis Browns, 7-5 at an early version of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

July 29, 1890: Vincent van Gogh Dies By Suicide

The only known photograph of him

July 29, 1890: Vincent van Gogh dies in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, 2 days after shooting himself in the chest. He was only 37 years old.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in Zundert, the Netherlands, near Breda, and only 2 miles from the border with Belgium. He began drawing at an early age, and briefly served as a Protestant missionary in Belgium. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he fell in with a group of artists rebelling against the Impressionist phase of art, including Paul Gauguin.

He had long suffered from depression, and began to have psychotic episodes. He seemed to subsist on alcohol, cigarettes and coffee. In 1888, he moved to Arles, in the south of France, about halfway between Montpellier and Marseille. It was there that he created his greatest works, including the flower paintings Irises and Sunflowers.

Jeanne Calment, the Frenchwoman born in 1875 and died in 1997, at age 122 the oldest authenticated person in human history, claimed to have met Vincent van Gogh in Arles in 1888. She said he was "ugly" and "disagreeable," and "reeked of alcohol."

On December 23, 1888, he and Gauguin, rooming together in Arles, had another in a series of arguments. Gauguin later claimed that van Gogh came at him with a straight razor. The next morning, a policeman came to the hotel, and found van Gogh unconscious, with blood everywhere. Most of his left ear had been cut off. He was taken to a hospital, and, since he had no memory of how he lost his ear, he was committed. He was released on January 7, 1889.

The traditional story is that he cut the ear off with a razor -- probably the same one Gauguin said van Gogh threatened him with -- in the middle of a psychotic attack. It has also been suggested that, also being a tempestuous personality, Gauguin challenged him to a duel with swords, and Gauguin himself cut the ear off. van Gogh painted at least 2 self-portraits with the ear bandaged, although both show the bandage on the right side, not the left. He may have been looking in a mirror while he painted.

His mental health remained precarious, and, on May 8, 1889, he was taken to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum, a former monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, 15 miles northeast of Arles. There, he painted many scenes of the interior of the hospital, scenes from its gardens including Lilacs, and, looking through his bedroom window, what became his best-known work, The Starry Night.

van Gogh did not think much of The Starry Night: In a letter to Émile Bernard, also a member of the "Post-Impressionist" group that included van Gogh and Gauguin, he wrote, "I allowed myself to be led astray into reaching for stars that are too big -- another failure -- and I have had my fill of that."

In March 1890, while he was at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, his painting The Red Vineyard was sold at an auction in Brussels, Belgium, for 400 francs -- in 2022 American money, about $2,646. It would be the only one of his paintings to sell while he lived. It is now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, along with some of his other paintings.

He left the monastery/asylum in May 1890, and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise, about 20 miles northwest of Paris, to be closer to his younger brother Theo, an art dealer who had long supported him financially, and Theo's family. But he couldn't escape his depression, and, on July 27, he took a 7-millimeter Lefaucheux pinfire revolver, and shot himself in the chest.

He was able to walk back to the Ravoux, and the doctors determined that they could not remove the bullet, but also that he did not seem to be in immediate danger. Theo arrived on the morning of the 28th, and, he later wrote to others, found him in good spirits. But while the bullet hadn't hit any major organs, the wound had become infected, and he died in the middle of the night on the 29th. Theo wrote that Vincent's last words were, "The sadness will live forever."

He was buried the next day, in the Auvers-sur-Oise cemetery. Theo suffered from a brain infection, and died only 6 months later, on January 25, 1891, at 33. He was buried in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 1914, Theo's coffin was exhumed, and buried next to Vincent's.

Theo had saved the letters that Vincent wrote him, and that's how we know of Vincent's feelings about things, including his own work and that of other painters. In 1914, the same year that Theo's widow Johanna had his body moved next to Vincent's, she had the letters published, and Vincent's posthumous reputation grew from this. She married again, was widowed again, and died in 1925.

Vincent never married, although he seemed to have fallen in love with a first cousin, with the family preventing the marriage, not because of the close relationship, but because he wouldn't be able to support her. Although he was accused (without proof) of forcing himself on one of his models and fathering her child, he is not known to have had any children.

Theo's line does continue. One of his grandsons, also named Theo, became a Dutch resistance fighter who was captured and executed by the Nazis. His brother named his son, the original Theo's great-grandson, after him, and this Theo van Gogh became a film director. After directing Submission: Part 1, which strongly criticized the treatment of women in Islam, in 2004, he was assassinated by a Muslim extremist.

In 1934, Irving Stone wrote Lust for Life, a novel imagining the relationship between Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. In 1956, director Vincente Minnelli (ex-husband of Judy Garland and father of Liza Minnelli) made a film version of it, starring Kirk Douglas as van Gogh and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin, the latter winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role. James Donald played Theo.

In 1990, on the 100th Anniversary of Vincent's death, the film Vincent & Theo premiered, with the brothers played by English actor Tim Roth and Welsh actor Paul Rhys, respectively. The same year, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa released Dreams, and cast another legendary director, Martin Scorcese, as van Gogh. In 1991, Jacques Dutronc played him in Vincent, and won the French equivalent of the Oscar, the César, for the role.

On a 2010 episode of Doctor Who, van Gogh was played by Scottish actor Tony Curran. In the 2018 film At Eternity's Gate, which suggests that his death was an accident, caused by a gunshot among children at play, he was played by Willem Dafoe.

In 1971, on his album American Pie, Don McLean included a song titled "Vincent," with each of 3 verses beginning with the words, "Starry, starry night." Regarding his treatment by others at the time, McLean wrote, "They did not listen. They did not know how. Perhaps they'll listen now." He wrote of the suicide in the bridge, and moved on to a last verse where people go to museums and look at the art, without thinking of the artist: "They would not listen. They're not listening still. Perhaps they never will."

Since 1941, The Starry Night has been on display at the Museum of Modern Art, at 11 W. 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan.

The author of this blog, with The Starry Night at MoMA, March 23, 2022.

This was 2 years after the COVID outbreak,

and the museum was still insisting on masks.

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July 29, 1890 was a Tuesday. It was the year of the Players' League revolt in baseball, 1 of only 4 seasons -- 1884, 1914 and 1915 being the others -- that what we now call Major League Baseball had 3 leagues.

In the National League:

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Cleveland Spiders, 12-3 at National League Park in Cleveland. This ballpark was replaced by a new League Park in 1891, which was replaced by another League Park in 1910, which became home of the team that became the Cleveland Indians until 1946. The Spiders folded after the 1899 season, by which point the Bridegrooms -- so named because several players got married in the 1887-88 off-season -- had become the Superbas. In 1911, they became the Dodgers.

* The Chicago Colts beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-6 at West Side Park in Chicago. The Colts became the Cubs in 1903.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Boston Beaneaters, 11-3 at League Park in Cincinnati. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* The New York Giants were supposed to play the Pittsburgh Pirates at Recreation Park in Pittsburgh, but the game was rained out. It was rescheduled for September 22, and for some reason was played 60 miles to the southwest, in Wheeling, West Virginia. The Giants won, 8-3.

In the American Association:

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Toledo Maumees, 7-0 at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia. Both of these teams folded with the AA after 1 more season. This Philadelphia team wasn't the 1st to be named the Athletics, and it wouldn't be the last. As you'll see in a moment, it wasn't even the only one at the time.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Syracuse Stars, 5-3 at Star Park in Syracuse, New York. The Stars were among the losers in the "Players' League War," and folded after the season. Syracuse previously had a team called the Stars in the NL in 1879. These are, to date, the only 2 seasons in MLB for the city.

* The Rochester Broncos beat the Louisville Colonels, 6-3 at Culver Field in Rochester, New York. This would be the only season in MLB for Rochester. The Colonels would join the NL in 1892, after the AA folded, but would fold themselves after the 1899 season.

* The Brooklyn Gladiators and the Columbus Solons appear not to have been scheduled. The Gladiators finished a distant last in the AA, and folded after the season. In contrast, the Solons finished 2nd in the AA, albeit 10 games behind the Colonels, but still lost money, and folded with the league after the 1891 season.

In the Players' League, none of those teams survived its folding after the season:

* The Brooklyn Ward's Wonders lost to the Chicago Pirates, 8-3 at South Side Park in Chicago. This is not the same South Side Park that would later be the 1st home of the American League's Chicago White Sox and the Negro Leagues' Chicago American Giants. The Brooklyn team was named after their star shortstop, the PL's founder, John Montgomery Ward.

* The PL's version of the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Buffalo Bisons, 9-3 at Olympic Park in Buffalo. Although the names of each of these teams would be applied to later teams, these teams died with the PL.

* The Cleveland Infants beat the Boston Reds, 17-6 at Brotherhood Park in Cleveland. I can find no record of why the Cleveland team was called the Infants. Maybe they wanted to emphasize that their league was new and unconnected to what they saw as the corruption in established baseball. Or maybe they once reacted poorly to a loss, and were called "crybabies," and "Infants" came from that.

* As with their NL counterparts, the PL's version of the New York Giants were supposed to play the PL's Steel City team, the Pittsburgh Burghers. I know: Not much imagination in these teams' names, the "Infants" aside. As with their NL counterparts, they were rained out. This game was rescheduled as part of a doubleheader the next day. The PL Giants swept, 10-2 and 12-9.

July 25, 1890: Annie Oakley, Little Sure Shot -- This Time, Too Sure

July 25, 1890: Annie Oakley was, and remains, America's most famous trick-shot artist with a rifle. The Sioux Chief Sitting Bull gave her the Native American name "Little Sure Shot." This time, she was a little too sure.

Phoebe Ann Mosey was born on August 13, 1860 in a log cabin near Willowdell, Ohio. Her father died when she was only 6 years old. To feed her family, she hunted wild animals, and became an expert with a rifle.

Legend has it that, on Thanksgiving Day 1875, only 15 years old, she defeated one of the top marksmen of the time, Frank Butler, a 28-year-old Irish immigrant, in a shooting contest in North Star, Ohio: Each of them made 24 straight shots, but Annie made her 25th, and Frank didn't make his. The legend is true, except for the year: It was 1881, so Annie was 21, and Frank 34. So it wasn't an egregious age difference when they got married the next year, and Annie began using the surname Oakley. They never had children.

In 1885, they joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. William F. Cody, then 39, was a Pony Express rider and then a U.S. Army scout during the American Civil War, rising to the rank of Colonel -- hence, in the musical Annie Get Your Gun, the song "Colonel Buffalo Bill." Nicknamed for his skill at hunting buffalo -- he was among those who had nearly rendered the once-plentiful species extinct -- he had been running a traveling show depicting stories from "The Wild West" since 1872, at a time when the Western U.S. was still at its wildest.

Among the people who participated in his show were James B. "Wild Bill" Hickock (until his death in 1876) and (until his assassination by the U.S. government in 1890) the Hunkpapa Lakota leader known to the white man as Sitting Bull . Being only 5 feet tall, Sitting Bull called Annie "Little Sure Shot."

Cody took his Wild West Show all over the world, and performed before Queen Victoria of Britain in 1887, as part of the celebration of her Golden Jubilee, the 50th Anniversary of her ascension to the throne.

In 1890, the Show toured Europe. A crowd of 20,000 cheered her in Paris, and President Sadi Carnot of France offered her a commission in his Army. On March 3, they performed in Rome, before a crowd that included Pope Leo XIII.

On July 25, they performed in Berlin. Among the 10,000 people in attendance were the Emperor of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II; and Princes Rupprecht of Bavaria, Maximilian of Baden and Leopold of Prussia. William W. Phelps, the U.S. Minister to Germany, and his family were also on hand. At one point, a bucking bull broke loose, and rushed toward the crowd. Cody handled it himself, lassoing the bull and bringing it to a halt, and got a standing ovation.

One of Annie's tricks was to have Frank stand absolutely still, smoking a cigarette, and she would shoot the ash off it. Having seen her accomplish this, despite the legend saying that she was hungover, the Kaiser stood up, and volunteered to be her next "target."

A grandson of Victoria, his mother was the British Queen's eldest daughter, Princess Victoria. Like his cousins, who eventually became King George V of Britain and Czar Nicholas II of Russia, he adored his grandmother. But he always resented his mother, who, as other witnesses were ready to report, mistreated him. Apparently, even to this day, it is a tradition for British royals to treat their grandchildren wonderfully; their own children, not so much.

Just 31 years old at the time, Wilhelm had ascended to the throne only 2 years earlier, as his grandfather, Wilhelm I, had died of old age, and then his father, Friedrich III, had died of cancer only 3 months later. A difficult birth left Wilhelm with a withered left arm and, it has been speculated, brain damage, which led to his later erratic behavior.

Kaiser Wilhelm II, circa 1890

Just 4 months before this show, he had fired Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the founder of the German Empire, the man who made his grandfather the last King of Prussia and the 1st Emperor of Germany. Bismarck was 75, and had frittered away much of his popularity with anti-worker policies, so it was far from unwarranted.

Now, Wilhelm was essentially Germany's dictator. But even if he had still been a mere constitutional monarch, Annie did not dare refuse his volunteering. Regardless of whether she was hungover, she wasn't stupid: She told the Kaiser to hold the lit cigarette in his hand, rather than his mouth. That's the part of the story that everybody forgets. He had enough sense to understand, and the stunt worked: She shot the ash off, and nobody got hurt, not even their pride.

On November 1, 1894, Annie demonstrated her skill in one of Thomas Edison's earliest films. In 1898, at the start of the Spanish-American War, she wrote to President William McKinley, "offering the government the services of a company of 50 'lady sharpshooters' who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain." McKinley declined her offer. She was badly injured in a train accident in 1901, and scaled back her touring.

Buffalo Bill Cody died in 1917. By that point, World War I was raging, and nearly everyone outside Germany blamed the Kaiser for starting it, and for the bloodshed and turmoil that resulted. Annie claimed to have written him a letter offering him a rematch on the lit-cigarette trick, but said he never responded. The following year, the Kaiser abdicated, and Germany surrendered, ending the war.

Annie Oakley was badly injured again in 1922, this time in a car crash, but recovered, and was still performing as late as 1924. She died of pernicious anemia on November 3, 1926. She was 66 years old. Frank Butler was so distraught that he refused to eat, and died only 18 days later.

Exiled to the Netherlands, Kaiser Wilhelm II died in 1941. If Annie Oakley had been less sure of a shot, she might have killed him in 1890. Most likely, due to the Kaiser's volunteering, it would have been considered an accident, and she wouldn't have been prosecuted. His brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, would have been regent to Wilhelm's son, Kronprinz Wilhelm, until he turned 18 in 1900, making this prospective Kaiser Wilhelm III 34 years old in 1914.

Would World War I have been avoided? Or was there enough "war fever" in the Imperial German military that a war with Britain, or France, or Russia, causing the other alliances to kick in, was inevitable? We'll never know.

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July 25, 1890 was a Friday. Baseball was the only professional team sport in America, and it was the year of the Players' League, so there were 3 major leagues.

In the National League:

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 10-6 at League Park in Cincinnati.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cleveland Spiders, 8-5 at an early version of League Park in Cleveland.

* The Boston Beaneaters beat the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, 7-3 at Recreation Park in Pittsburgh.

* The Chicago Colts beat the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, 5-3 at West Side Park in Chicago. The Colts became the Cubs, and the Bridegrooms became the Dodgers.

In the Players' League:

* The New York Giants beat the Cleveland Infants, 11-8 at Brotherhood Park in Cleveland. Although these Giants had several of the defecting Giants of the NL, they went back, so the PL Giants folded with the PL.

* The Brooklyn Ward's Wonders beat the Buffalo Bisons, 8-3 at Olympic Park in Buffalo.

* The Boston Reds beat the Pittsburgh Burghers, 10-2 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Stockings, 7-3 at South Side Park in Chicago. Both teams folded with the PL, and were not connected to the later A's and White Sox.

And 1 game was played in the American Association: The Toledo Maumees beat the Rochester Broncos, 7-6 at Culver Field in Rochester, New York.

July 10, 1890: Wyoming Is Admitted As the 44th State

July 10, 1890: Wyoming is admitted to the Union as the 44th State. It is known as the Equality State, because it was the 1st State, and before that the 1st Territory, in the Union to grant women the right to vote.

This concluded a run that started on November 2, 1889, where, in 8 months, 6 new States were added to the Union.

Wyoming is in the Rocky Mountains. It had been acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. It has become known for cattle ranches, mining, and Yellowstone National Park, the nation's 1st National Park.

Politically, Idaho has been Western conservative, with a libertarian bent: Pro-gun, pro-landowner. Its highest-ranking politician is Dick Cheney, who served as White House Chief of Staff under President Gerald Ford, Wyoming's only Congressman from 1979 to 1989, as Secretary of State under George Bush the father, and as Vice President to George Bush the son.

Among the 50 States, Wyoming is last in alphabetical order, and last in population, with 576,851 people according to the 2020 Census. The State is huge and sparsely-populated: While Cheyenne, the State Capitol and the largest city, with 65,000 people, is only 100 miles from the major league city of Denver, and Laramie, seat of the University of Wyoming, the only major sports-playing college in the State, is just 130 miles away, Yellowstone, at the opposite corner of the State, is over 530 miles away, and nearly 800 miles from Seattle.

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July 10, 1890 was a Thursday. Baseball was the only professional team sport in America, and it was the year of the Players' League, so there were 3 major leagues.

In the National League:

* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, 14-3 at Manhattan Field in Upper Manhattan. The NL Giants built that, while the Players' League team that stole the name built the 1890-1911 version of the Polo Grounds next-door. After the PL folded, the Giants moved into that Polo Grounds.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Cincinnati Reds, 5-3 at the original Washington Park in Brooklyn.

* The Boston Beaneaters beat the Chicago Colts, 5-3 at the 1888-94 version of the South End Grounds in Boston. The Beaneaters eventually became the Braves, and the Colts became the Cubs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cleveland Spiders, 14-9 at the Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds. It burned down in 1894, and the ballpark that became Baker Bowl was built on the site. The Spiders went out of business after the 1899 season.

In the American Association:

* The Brooklyn Gladiators beat the Toledo Maumees, 9-6 at Speranza Park in Toledo, Ohio. The Gladiators finished a distant last in the AA, and folded after the season. The Maumees folded with the AA after the 1891 season.

* The Rochester Broncos beat the Columbus Solons, 11-9 at Recreation Park in Columbus, Ohio. This would be the only season in MLB for Rochester. The Solons finished 2nd in the AA, albeit 10 games behind the Colonels, but still lost money, and folded with the league after the 1891 season.

* The Louisville Colonels beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 12-3 at Eclipse Park in Louisville, Kentucky. This version of the A's folded with the AA after the 1891 season. At that point, the Colonels joined the NL.

* The Syracuse Stars beat the St. Louis Browns, 5-3 at the 1881-98 version of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The Stars were among the losers in the "Players' League War," and folded after the season. Syracuse previously had a team called the Stars in the NL in 1879. These are, to date, the only 2 seasons in MLB for the city. The Browns joined the NL in 1892, and became the Cardinals.

In the Players' League:

* The PL's version of the New York Giants beat the PL's version of the Chicago White Stockings, 9-5 at the 1890-1911 version of the Polo Grounds.

* The Brooklyn Ward's Wonders beat the Buffalo Bisons, 8-5 at Eastern Park in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn team was named after their star shortstop, the PL's founder, John Montgomery Ward. Although the Buffalo Bisons name would be applied to later teams in multiple sports, this team died with the PL.

* The Boston Reds beat the Pittsburgh Burghers, 12-6 at the Congress Street Grounds in Boston.

* And the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cleveland Infants, 17-11 at Forepaugh Park in Philadelphia.

July 3, 1890: Idaho Is Admitted As the 43rd State

July 3, 1890: Idaho is admitted to the Union as the 43rd State.

Idaho is in the Rocky Mountains, although some people consider it part of the Northwest. It had been acquired as part of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, with the Idaho Territory being separated in 1863. It has become known for its production of potatoes.

Politically, Idaho has been Western conservative, with a libertarian bent: Pro-gun, pro-landowner. In the 1964 Presidential election, along with Nebraska (47.4 percent) and his home State of Arizona (50.4 percent), Idaho (49.1 percent) was 1 of only 3 States outside the South that gave Barry Goldwater more than 45.1 percent of the vote; and it hasn't voted for the Democratic nominee for President since that time with Lyndon Johnson.

Their highest-ranking politician has been Dirk Kempthorne: Mayor of the capital city of Boise from 1986 to 1993, then U.S. Senator until 1999, then Governor until May 26, 2006, when he resigned to accept George W. Bush's appointment as Secretary of the Interior, holding that post to the end of the Administration in 2009.

With 235,000 people, the capital city of Boise is easily the most populous city in the State. So there are no major league teams there. Due to distance, the most popular teams are the Seattle Seahawks (about 500 miles northwest of Boise) and the Denver Broncos (over 800 miles southeast).

The highest-ranking professional sports teams are the Boise Hawks and the Idaho Falls Chukars of the Pioneer League, an independent baseball league roughly equivalent to Class A (three steps below the major leagues); and a pair of minor-league hockey teams, the Boise-based Idaho Steelheads of the ECHL and the Idaho Falls Spud Kings of the USPHL.

The only college playing in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly named Division I-A) is Boise State University, where their Albertsons Stadium has the famous blue artificial field known as "the Smurf Turf." In the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS, formerly named Division I-AA), the University of Idaho play in Moscow, close to a State Line, so that the nearest school is actually Washington State University; and Idaho State University, in Pocatello. The State has several ski resorts.

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July 3, 1890 was a Thursday. It was the year of the Players' League revolt in baseball, 1 of only 4 seasons -- 1884, 1914 and 1915 being the others -- that what we now call Major League Baseball had 3 leagues.

In the National League:

* The New York Giants lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-0 at Recreation Park in Pittsburgh.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 9-6 at League Park in Cincinnati. In 1899, the Bridegrooms -- so named because several players got married in the 1887-88 off-season -- became the Superbas. In 1911, they became the Dodgers.

* The Boston Beaneaters beat the Cleveland Spiders, 8-0 at National League Park in Cleveland. This ballpark was replaced by a new League Park in 1891, which was replaced by another League Park in 1910, which became home of the team that became the Cleveland Indians until 1946. The Spiders folded after the 1899 season. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* The Chicago Colts beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-5 at West Side Park in Chicago. The Colts became the Cubs in 1903.

There were no games that day in the American Association. In the Players' League, none of whose teams survived its folding after the season, there were 3 games:

* The PL's version of the New York Giants beat the Cleveland Infants, 5-0 at Brotherhood Park in Cleveland. I can find no record of why the Cleveland team was called the Infants. Maybe they wanted to emphasize that their league was new and unconnected to what they saw as the corruption in established baseball. Or maybe they once reacted poorly to a loss, and were called "crybabies," and "Infants" came from that. There was not much imagination in the PL teams' names, the "Infants" aside.

* The Brooklyn Ward's Wonders beat the Buffalo Bisons, 9-3 at Olympic Park in Buffalo. The Brooklyn team was named after their star shortstop, the PL's founder, John Montgomery Ward. Although the Buffalo Bisons name would be applied to later teams in multiple sports, this team died with the PL.

* And the Chicago Pirates, beat the PL's version of the Philadelphia Athletics, 8-6 at South Side Park in Chicago. This is not the same South Side Park that would later be the 1st home of the American League's Chicago White Sox and the Negro Leagues' Chicago American Giants.

July 2, 1890: The Sherman Antitrust Act

Senator John Sherman.

His brother William was the General who burned Atlanta,

but John looks scarier to me.

July 2, 1890: The Sherman Antitrust Act is signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison. It was one of the most significant pieces of legislation between the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and the start of the New Deal in 1933.

It was proposed by Senator John Sherman, Republican of Ohio, who had been Secretary of the Treasury under President Rutherford B. Hayes, and would later be Secretary of State under President William McKinley. He was also the author of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, signed by Harrison on the same day. That Act was supposed to help the U.S. economy grow, but backfired, leading to a recession in 1890 and, ultimately, a depression in 1893. 

For all that he did, successful and not, he was still only the 2nd-most consequential person in his family: His older brother was General William Tecumseh Sherman. The brothers were close, and William supported John's unsuccessful runs for President in 1880, 1884 and 1888. Their closeness may have been the reason Williams, when asked to run himself in 1884, said, "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected."

Business monopolies had grown significantly after the Civil War, and what would now be called small businesses were being squeezed, or bought, out of existence. The Antitrust Act was designed to encourage business competition. As a Supreme Court ruling, Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan, said in 1993:

The purpose of the Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself.

The Sherman Act broadly prohibits anticompetitive agreements, and unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the relevant market. The Act authorizes the U.S. Department of Justice to bring lawsuits to enjoin, meaning to prohibit, conduct violating the Act, and additionally authorizes private parties injured by conduct violating the Act to bring suits for treble damages: Three times as much money in damages as the violation cost them.

Sherman's bill proved so popular that it passed the Senate on April 8, 1890, by a vote of 52 to 1; and the House on June 20, by a vote of 331-0. 

Over time, the federal courts have developed a body of law under the Sherman Act making certain types of anticompetitive conduct per se illegal, and subjecting other types of conduct to case-by-case analysis regarding whether the conduct unreasonably restrains trade.

Among the corporations sued under the Act, and how the Supreme Court decided:

* 1904, Northern Securities: The trust was dissolved.

* 1911, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey: Broke up the company based on geography.

* 1911, American Tobacco Company: Broke one company into four.

* 1922, baseball's National League: This one went the other way, as the Court ruled that baseball was not interstate commerce, and thus not subject to the law. This has become known as "baseball's special exemption."

* 1982, American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T): Settled before the Court could hear that case, and "The Bell System" was broken up into "Baby Bells." This was one of the few monopolies that the general public liked, although it's hard to imagine the modern mobile phone industry with AT&T running everything.

* 2001, Microsoft: Settled before it could get to the Court, with Microsoft making concessions sufficient for the government to decide to drop the case.

*

July 2, 1890 was a Wednesday. Baseball was the only professional sport in season at the time. But this was the year of the Players' League revolt, so there were 3 leagues playing at the time.

In the National League:

* The New York Giants lost to the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, 13-9 at Recreation Park in Pittsburgh. The next season, the Alleghenys became the Pittsburgh Pirates, after one of their actions as part of the settlement of the 3-league dispute was called "nothing but piratical."

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, 6-1 at League Park in Cincinnati. The Brooklyn team was called the Bridegrooms because several players had gotten married in the 1886-87 off-season. They became the Dodgers in 1911.

* The Boston Beaneaters swept a doubleheader from the Cleveland Spiders, winning each game by a 5-4 score, at National League Park in Cleveland. The Spiders folded after the 1899 season. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Colts, 7-4 at West Side Park in Chicago. The Colts became the Cubs.

In the American Association:

* The Brooklyn Gladiators lost to the Louisville Colonels, 5-3 at Eclipse Park in Louisville, Kentucky. With the folding of the AA after the 1891 season, the Gladiators folded, and the Colonels joined the NL, but folded themselves after the 1899 season.

* The Syracuse Stars beat the Columbus Solons, 7-2 at Recreation Park in Columbus, Ohio. Both teams folded with the AA.

* The Philadelphia Athletics and the Toledo Maumees played to a 5-5 tie at Speranza Park in Toledo, Ohio. There is no notation on Baseball-Reference.com as to why this game did not find a winner. There is no mention of bad weather, or of extra innings, which would suggest being called due to darkness.

* The St. Louis Browns beat the Rochester Broncos, 6-2 at an early version of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. With the folding of the AA, the Broncos folded, and the Browns joined the NL, becoming the Cardinals in 1900.

And in the Players' League, which didn't care that it was using team names already used elsewhere, as they saw themselves as the "real" versions of those teams, as they had the "real" players:

* The New York Giants beat the Cleveland Infants, 7-6 at Brotherhood Park in Cleveland.

* The Brooklyn Ward's Wonders lost to the Buffalo Bisons, 17-11 at Olympic Park in Buffalo.

* The Boston Reds beat the Pittsburgh Burghers, 4-2 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Exposition Park would later be adopted by the Pirates. It was also the site of the 1st professional football game, in 1892.

* And the Chicago White Stockings beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 10-3 at South Side Park in Chicago. Both names had been used by teams in previous leagues, including the team now known as the Cubs. And both names would be used by American League teams starting in 1901.

June 22, 1890: Oscar Wilde Publishes "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

The "before" painting from the 1945 film

June 22, 1890: Lippincott's Monthly Magazine is published. This issue includes a novella version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. A full-length novel version is published the next year.

The title is often incorrectly listed as "The Portrait of Dorian Gray," but "The Picture" is correct. Nevertheless, the story is about a man and a portrait of him. Dorian Gray is a young Londoner, and a friend of painter Basil Hallward, who is fascinated by Dorian's appearance -- a metaphor for the gay circles of "underground" Victorian Britain in which Wilde ran. It was an 1890 case of "If you know, you know."

Also among Basil's friends is Lord Henry Watton, a hedonist: He believes that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Knowing that he will lose his beauty with time, Dorian wishes for the portrait, rather than himself, to age and fade.

His wish is granted: He does what he wants, and never suffers the consequences, though those close to him do. It starts with him seducing Sybil Vane, the innocent young lady he had fancied, then dumping her for another woman, and Sybil commits suicide. But the painting is affected, beginning with "a hint of cruelty in the mouth."

Twenty years on, Dorian still looks like a handsome university student, but, in his attic, his image in the painting has become grotesquely ugly, and much older than his 40 years. He eventually murders Basil, and the painting gets even worse. Finally, he stabs the painting, and collapses. When the police break in, they discover the painting restored to its original appearance, and a horribly old man on the floor.

Ever since, when someone looks great for their age, they are said to have a nasty-looking painting of themselves in their attic.

The novel was adapted for the stage in 1913. Seven silent film versions were made, including a German and a Hungarian version. In 1945, it was filmed, with Hurd Hatfield as Dorian. American painter Ivan Lorraine Albright painted the portraits, before and after, for this film. Although it was filmed in black & white, the portraits were painted in color.

The "after" painting from the 1945 film.

Oddly, the cat statue seems unaffected.

The 1st color version came in 1970, an Italian version titled The Evils of Dorian Gray, starring German actor Helmut Berger. There have been several made-for-TV versions, including a 1961 version on British network ITV where Jeremy Brett played Dorian, and a 1976 version where Brett played Basil. Episodes of the spy spoof Get Smart and the British science fiction series Blake's 7 were based on the story.

In 1983, ABC aired The Sins of Dorian Gray, with Belinda Bauer playing a woman with the name, a model and actress, whose filmed screen test ages while she doesn't.

The 2003 film flop The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen took a lot of liberties with fictional characters of the late 19th Century. Stuart Townsend plays a version of Dorian, who, upon joining the team, is reunited with his (and Count Dracula's) ex-girlfriend Mina Harker, helps capture Mr. Hyde, and is revealed to be a mole in the group when he shoots Ishmael, the narrator of Moby Dick, who has become Captain Nemo's first mate aboard the submarine Nautilus. Mina ends up killing Dorian by finding the lost painting and stabbing it.

*

June 22, 1890 was a Sunday. This was the year of the Players' League, meaning baseball had 3 major leagues. However, the only games played on this day were in the American Association:

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Syracuse Stars, 8-4 at the Jefferson Street Grounds in Philadelphia. These Athletics would fold with the AA after the 1891 season. The A's that would be founded with the American League in 1901 had no connection to them other than name.

* The Brooklyn Gladiators beat the Rochester Broncos, 18-7 at Culver Field in Rochester, New York.

* A doubleheader was split at Recreation Park in Columbus, Ohio. The St. Louis Browns won the 1st game, 5-4. The Columbus Solons won the 2nd game, 7-1. In 1892, the Browns joined the NL. In 1900, they became the St. Louis Cardinals.

* And the Louisville Colonels beat the Toledo Maumees, 3-2 at Speranza Park in Toledo, Ohio. The Colonels would join the NL in 1892, but went out of business after the 1899 season.

March 18, 1890: The Kaiser Fires the Iron Chancellor

Otto von Bismarck

March 18, 1890: Kaiser Wilhelm II, the head of state for Germany, fires the head of government, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Effectively, this makes the Emperor the dictator of the largest and most powerful nation on the Continent of Europe.

Like the Russian term "Czar," the German term "Kaiser” is derived from the ancient Roman term "Caesar." We pronounce it "SEE-zer," but the Romans pronounced it "KIGH-zer."

Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck-Schönhausen was born on April 1, 1815 in Schönhausen, in Saxony-Anhalt, in eastern Germany, then considered part of Prussia. A Junker, a member of the landed nobility in Prussia, he rose rapidly in politics under King Wilhelm I. He served as the Prussian ambassador to Russia and France, and in both houses of the Prussian Parliament.

In 1862, the Kaiser named him Prussia's Minister President and Foreign Minister. Under Bismarck's leadership, Prussia provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria and France. After Austria's defeat in 1866, he replaced the German Confederation with the North German Confederation, which aligned the smaller North German states with Prussia while excluding Austria.

In 1870, Bismarck secured France's defeat in the Franco-Prussia War with support from the independent South German states, before overseeing the creation of a unified German Empire under Prussian rule.

Following Germany's unification, he was given the aristocratic title Prince of Bismarck (Fürst von Bismarck). From 1871 onwards, his balance-of-power approach to diplomacy helped maintain Germany's position in a peaceful Europe.

While averse to maritime colonialism, Bismarck acquiesced to elite and popular opinion by acquiring colonies. As part of his domestic political maneuvering, Bismarck created the first welfare state, with the goal of undermining his Socialist opponents.

In the 1870s, he allied himself with the low-tariff, anti-Catholic Liberals, and fought the Catholic Church in what was called the Kulturekampf: "Culture Struggle." He was unsuccessful, with the Catholics responding by forming the powerful Germany Centre Party, and using universal male suffrage to gain a bloc of seats. Bismarck responded by ending the Kulturekampf, breaking with the Liberals, and forming a political alliance with the Centre Party to fight the Socialists.

A staunch monarchist, Bismarck ruled autocratically through a strong bureaucracy with power concentrated in the hands of the Junker elite. But on March 9, 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm I died, just short of his 89th birthday. And his son, Kaiser Friedrich III, was already dying of cancer of the larynx, and reigned for just 99 days, dying on June 15, 1888, at 56.

This elevated his son to the throne, and Kaiser Wilhelm II was just 29 years old. Given that he was 73, and did not know Friedrich was dying, he expected to die during Friedrich's reign, and had no plan for dealing with young Wilhelm on the throne. The new Kaiser opposed Bismarck's careful foreign policy, preferring vigorous and rapid expansion to enlarge Germany's "place in the sun."

Kaiser Wilhelm II, circa 1890

The final break came as Bismarck searched for a new parliamentary majority, as his Kartell was voted from power as a consequence of a fiasco over an anti-socialist bill. The remaining forces in the Reichstag were the Catholic Centre Party and the Conservative Party. Bismarck wished to form a new bloc with the Centre Party and invited Ludwig Windthorst, the parliamentary leader, to discuss an alliance.

That would be Bismarck's last political maneuver: Upon hearing about Windthorst's visit, Wilhelm was furious. In a parliamentary state, the head of government depends on the confidence of the parliamentary majority, and has the right to form coalitions to ensure their policies have majority support. However, in Germany, the Chancellor depended on the confidence of the Kaiser alone, and Wilhelm believed that the Kaiser had the right to be informed before his minister's meeting.

After a heated argument in Bismarck's office, Wilhelm -- to whom Bismarck had shown a letter from Czar Alexander III of Russia, describing Wilhelm as a "badly brought-up boy" -- stormed out, after first ordering the rescinding of the Cabinet Order enacted in 1851 by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, which had forbidden Prussian Cabinet Ministers from reporting directly to the King of Prussia and required them instead to report via the Prussian Prime Minister.

Bismarck, forced for the first time into a situation that he could not use to his advantage, wrote a blistering letter of resignation, decrying Wilhelm's interference in foreign and domestic policy. The letter, however, was published only after Bismarck's death.

After his dismissal, he was promoted to the rank of "Colonel-General with the Dignity of Field Marshal," so-called because the German Army did not appoint full Field Marshals in peacetime. He was also given a new title, Duke of Lauenburg, which he joked would be useful when travelling incognito. He was soon elected to the Reichstag as a National Liberal in a and supposedly safe Hamburg seat, but he was so humiliated by being taken to a second ballot by a Social Democrat opponent that he never actually took up his seat.

Bismarck entered into resentful retirement, and waited in vain to be called upon for advice and counsel. After his wife Johanna's death on November 27, 1894, his health worsened. He died on July 30, 1898, at 83. At the Bismarck Mausoleum, near his final home in Friedrichsruh, Schleswig-Holstein, his own sarcophagus is inscribed with the words, "A loyal German servant of Emperor Wilhelm I." This was an intentional snub of Wilhelm II.

Thanks to the ambitions and incompetence of Wilhelm II, the Empire ended after only 48 years. Had Friedrich III still been alive in the Summer of 1914, he would have been 82 years old, so it would hardly have been impossible for him to still be on the throne. Would World War I have been avoided? Or was there enough "war fever" in the Imperial German military that a war with Britain, or France, or Russia, causing the other alliances to kick in, was inevitable? We'll never know.

The Iron Chancellor's son, Herbert von Bismarck, was Foreign Minister from 1886 until 1890, resigning shortly after his father in protest. His son, Otto, thought he could change the Nazi Party from within, managed to save thousands of Croatian Jews from the Holocaust, before serving in the postwar Bundestag (federal legislature). Otto's son, Ferdinand, was a lawyer and a real estate tycoon. And Ferdinand's son, the Iron Chancellor's great-great-grandson, Carl-Eduard, Prince of Bismarck, is an investor and a former member of the Bundestag.

The capital of North Dakota, a State with a large German-American community, is named Bismarck. So was the leading German battleship of World War II.

*

March 18, 1890 was a Tuesday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball was in Spring Training, football was out of season, hockey barely existed, and basketball was nearly 2 years away from being invented.

January 25, 1890: Nellie Bly, Around the World

January 25, 1890: Nellie Bly makes an honest man out of Jules Verne, and beats Phileas Fogg.

She was born Elizabeth Ann Cochran outside Pittsburgh in 1864. In 1885, she saw an article in the Pittsburgh Dispatch titled "What Girls Are Good For." The male author limited the subject to 2 things: Having babies and keeping house. Elizabeth wrote a letter of objection, and the paper's editor was so impressed by it, he hired her. To protect her identity, he gave her the nom de plume "Nellie Bly," after a Stephen Foster song. (The editor slightly goofed: The song was "Nelly Bly.")

She went to Mexico, to report on what life was like there. It was miserable, largely thanks to dictator Porfirio Díaz. She wrote so, and had to flee the country. But her writing got the attention of Joseph Pulitzer, and in 1887, he hired her for his newspaper, The New York World. She wrote Ten Days in a Mad-House, about how she feigned insanity to get into the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. (It was renamed Welfare Island in 1921, and Roosevelt Island for FDR in 1973.)

She became the first of the "stunt girls," women who would use sensational acts to get sensational news stories, and, in her case, not only made her famous -- but, with the inability of newspapers to really reproduce photographs, allowed her to go mostly unrecognized wherever she went -- but made the World the biggest-selling newspaper in the Western Hemisphere, at least until William Randolph Hearst bought the New York Journal, and started challenging Pulitzer, wild story for wild story.

In 1873, French author Jules Verne, already known for his tales of fantasy and science fiction, published the novel Around the World in Eighty Days. In it, he suggested that the recent building of new railroads across the United States and India, and of the Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, made it possible for a man to leave wherever he was in the world, go all the way around it, and return to his point of origin -- in the novel's case, a "gentlemen's club" in London -- in 80 days.

(In Victorian England, a gentlemen's club was a private social club for rich men, exclusive enough that you had to get recommended by a member to become a member. In 21st Century America, strip joints have taken to calling themselves "gentlemen's clubs." Who is kidding who?)

Going all the way around the world had first been proposed by Ferdinand Magellan, who was killed in mid-voyage, but his men completed the journey in 1522, in just under 3 years. In 1865, James Iredell Waddell did it in 13 months, or 394 days. But that was before the completion of the railroads and the canal in question.

The inspiration for the book came from an American railroad and shipping magnate, aptly named George Francis Train. In 1871, he decided to travel around the world. His actual travel time turned out to be 80 days, but was interrupted when he was arrested in Paris, for supporting the Paris Commune.

In the book, Phileas Fogg, an inventor, bets the other members of his club that he can do it. The amount: £20,000, which he estimates to be about half his fortune. It's about £2.52 million in 2022, or $3.4 million. Spoiler Alert for a story a century and a half old: He wins the bet.

In real life, by 1889, no one was known to have attempted it. So Nellie talked Pulitzer into letting her attempt it. Word got out, and Cosmopolitan magazine sent a rival reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, to beat Nellie. But while Nellie was going to go eastward, as Fogg did, Bisland headed west.

Both left on the same day: November 14, 1889. At 9:40 AM, Nellie boarded a ferry at Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, crossing the Hudson River to Manhattan, where she boarded the German cruise liner SS Augusta Victoria. It docked in England's main westward port, Southampton. It left for France, where she boarded a train to Amiens, and met Jules Verne.

She crossed France and Italy by rail, reaching the Italian port of Brindisi. From there, she boarded a steamer that went through the Suez Canal. She boarded ships that took her to Colombo, in the British colony of Ceylon (now the independent nation of Sri Lanka), Penang (in what's now Malaysia), Singapore (where she bought a monkey), and Hong Kong.

The World organized a "Nellie Bly Guessing Match" in which readers were asked to estimate her arrival time, to the second, with the Grand Prize consisting of a trip to Europe, and spending money for the trip. There was even a "Round the World with Nellie Bly" board game.

It wasn't under December 24, Christmas Eve, when she was in Hong Kong, that Nellie found out about Bisland. "I would not race," Nellie said. "If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern."

Nellie got to Japan, and on January 7, 1890, she boarded the British ship RMS Oceanic in Yokohama. But the Pacific weather was rough, and it took her until January 21 to get to San Francisco. Fortunately, word received Pulitzer in New York by telegram, and he chartered a private train to pick her up in Oakland once she crossed San Francisco Bay by ferry.

The Miss Nellie Bly Special roared across the continent, stopping in Chicago, and arriving back at Hoboken Terminal on January 25, 1890, at 3:51 PM. A big crowd cheered as she disembarked. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened in Hoboken. (The alleged first baseball game played there in 1846 had hardly any spectators.)

She had done it: Nellie Bly went around the world in 72 days, 6 hours and 6 minutes. Bisland missed a connection, had to take a slower ship, and was still on the Atlantic Ocean when Nellie completed her journey. She reached New York on January 30, after 77 days. She beat Phileas Fogg, but she didn't beat Nellie Bly.

Nellie was now the 2nd-most famous woman in the world, behind Britain's Queen Victoria. Her record didn't last long: George Francis Train was inspired to try again, and, before the year was out, had gone around the world in 67 days. In 1892, he cut the record to 60 days.

In 1931, Wiley Post became the 1st person to try it in an airplane, and he lowered the record to 8 days and 16 hours. In 1933, he tried again, and cut it to 7 days and 20 hours. In 1938, Howard Hughes tried it, taking 3 days and 19 hours. The current record is 31 hours, 27 minutes and 49 seconds, by Michael Dupont and Claude Hetru, flying an Air France Concorde with 98 passengers on August 15 and 16, 1995. That's 2 hours faster than it took Charles Lindbergh just to fly from New York to Paris in 1927.

Nellie Bly was 25 years old at the time of her achievement. The rest of her life couldn't help but be an anticlimax, but it was hardly wasted. She kept reporting for the World, and wrote novels. In 1895, she married for the 1st and only time, to a millionaire named Robert Seaman. She was 31, he was 73. Neither of them ever had children, together or with anyone else.

His health was already failing, and she took over his business, the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company, which made steel containers, such as milk cans and boilers. He died in 1904. Shortly thereafter, the company began making the model for the 55-gallon oil drum still in use in America today. Although the U.S. Patent Office registered Henry Wehrhahn as the inventor, it may have been Nellie herself. She did receive patents for inventing a new version of the milk can and a stacking garbage can. She was perhaps the most successful female industrialist in America.

Until she wasn't. Her husband's illness had left the company's financial affairs in disarray, and, even with her inventions, she was unable to fix it. The company went bankrupt, and she went back to reporting -- not for the New York World, whose owner Pulitzer had died in 1911, but for its rival, Hearst's New York Journal.

In 1913, she covered the Woman Suffrage Procession, titling her article "Suffragists Are Men's Superiors." She predicted that women would get the right to vote in America in 1920. She did not specify a date, but she got the year right. She also reported from the front lines in World War I.

Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, a.k.a. Nellie Bly, died on January 27, 1922, of pneumonia in New York. She was 57 years old. Her tombstone in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx bears both names, and the legend "In Honor of a Famous News Reporter."

She has been played by Anne Helm in a 1960 episode of the NBC Western Tales of Wells Fargo, Linda Purl in the 1981 NBC movie The Adventures of Nellie Bly, and Caroline Barry in the 2015 film 10 Days in a Madhouse.

She was also played by Julia Duffy on a 1983 episode of the NBC time-travel series Voyagers! The lead character, Phineas Bogg (played by Jon-Erik Hexum), was obviously named after Phileas Fogg, and he and his young companion, Jeffrey Jones (Meeno Peluce), arrive in 1889 London, and find Nellie early in her trip, wearing a deerstalker hat, which we now associate with Sherlock Holmes. They also meet Holmes' creator, Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, who's got writer's block.

Not buying Bogg's name, thinking it too close to Fogg's, she decides that Bogg is Jack the Ripper. And Jeffrey convinces Conan Doyle to use Holmes' methods to prove otherwise. They don't actually catch the Ripper, but they do catch a renegade time traveler who had attacked Nellie to mess with history. (The idea of a renegade time traveler pretending to be the Ripper would later be used in the short-lived TV version of Timecop. And, of course, the film Time After Time had already done it the other way: The Ripper is never caught because he becomes a renegade time traveler.)

*

January 25, 1890 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. Hockey was still all-amateur. And basketball wouldn't be invented for nearly another 2 years. So there were no scores on this historic day.