November 27, 1896: Richard Strauss Premieres "Also Sprach Zarathustra"

November 27, 1896: Composer Richard Strauss premieres his "tone poem" Also sprach Zarathustra, inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's 1883 novel of the same title, translated into English as Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Born in Munich in 1864, Strauss was not related to the composing Strauss family of Vienna, Austria. He had previously composed tone poems about Don Juan and Macbeth, and would later do so for Don Quixote. He lived until 1949, and Also sprach Zarathustra remains easily his most familiar composition.

Strauss conducted the premiere himself, at the Saalbau der Museums-Gesellschaft in Frankfurt, Germany. A typical performance lasts 33 minutes. Its opening fanfare, titled "Sunrise," was used by director Stanley Kubrick as the theme song for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

That use led Elvis Presley to use it as the opening theme for his concerts from the start of his Las Vegas run in 1969 until his death in 1977. I'm guessing that Elvis wasn't aware of Nietzsche's statement in the novel, "God is dead," it, or else he probably would not have used the fanfare.

By the time Strauss' composition premiered, Nietzsche was too ill to attend, and no recording of it was made until 1935, when Serge Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in it. So it is likely that Nietzsche never expressed an opinion on it.

The Saalbau der Museums-Gesellschaft, site of the premiere, opened in 1861, and was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1944.

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November 27, 1896 was a Friday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, there were college football games played the day before (Thanksgiving) but not the day after, professional hockey did not yet exist, and basketball was still a brand-new sport.

November 3, 1896: McKinley vs. Bryan I

November 3, 1896: Governor William McKinley of Ohio is elected the 25th President of the United States, defeating Congressman William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. McKinley won 51.0 percent of the popular vote, and Bryan nearly 46.7. McKinley won 23 States to Bryan's 22. Those figures make the election sound close. But McKinley won bigger States than Bryan did, so he won the Electoral Vote 271-176.

The Panic of 1893, and the resulting depression, the nastiest the nation had yet suffered, doomed President Grover Cleveland's hopes of winning a 3rd term. But Bryan, at 36 the youngest major-party nominee ever, favored the free coinage of silver, as a means of ending the depression, rather than sticking to the gold standard.

At the Democratic Convention at the Chicago Coliseum, he said, "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." Effectively, he was the Bernie Sanders of his time.

But that scared a lot of people, including a lot of Democrats. Cleveland refused to use whatever political capital he had left to endorse him, and a lot of "Gold Democrats" supported McKinley, who promised "a return to the full dinner pail." (The expression "a chicken in every pot" had been in existence for about 300 years.)

In addition, in the inner cities, and in smaller mill and mining towns, where lots of Catholics, many of them the sons of immigrants, worked in factories, many of them were told by their bosses, "If Bryan wins on Tuesday, don't come in on Wednesday" -- not that they would be fired, but that the factory would have to close.

McKinley's running mate was Garret Hobart, who had led both houses of the New Jersey legislature: Speaker of the Assembly, and President of the Senate. He had gained more popularity among American conservatives as a corporate lawyer, and, while hardly qualified for the Presidency, he was nominated for the Vice Presidency. Arthur Sewall, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Maine, was nominated for Vice President.

Hobart died on November 21, 1899, of heart disease at age 55. So when McKinley ran for re-election in 1900, he needed a new running mate. He chose the Governor of New York, and a hero of the recent Spanish-American War: Theodore Roosevelt. McKinley defeated Bryan again, but was assassinated a few months into his 2nd term, and Roosevelt became President.

McKinley has a statue in front of the Ohio State Capitol in Columbus. The McKinley Monument in Buffalo is an obelisk in Niagara Square, in front of City Hall. The William McKinley Presidential Library opened in Canton on September 29, 1992.

The fictional high school on the TV show The Wonder Years was McKinley High School. In 1928 and 1934, gold certificates standing in for $500 bills with McKinley's portrait were issued. Ever since, the U.S. government has issued no bill with a value higher than $100.

State House, Columbus

McKinley has been played by Dell Henderson in A Message to Garcia in 1936, Frank Conroy in This Is My Affair in 1937, Douglas Wood in Teddy, the Rough Rider in 1940, Stephen Coit in Captains and the Kings in 1976, and Brian Keith in Rough Riders in 1997.

The last surviving member of McKinley's Cabinet was Elihu Root, who served as Secretary of War under McKinley and TR, and then as Secretary of State in TR's 2nd term. He lived until 1937.

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November 3, 1896 was a Tuesday. The baseball season was over. Saturday had been standardized as the day for college football. And basketball and hockey were still all-amateur. So there were no scores on this historic day.

October 30, 1896: The 1st Symphony By an American Woman

October 30, 1896: Symphony in E minor, Op. 32, known as the Gaelic Symphony, debuts at Boston Music Hall. (It would have been appropriate for Symphony Hall, but that building, Music Hall's successor, did not open until 1900.)

Its composer is Amy Beach. This makes her the 1st American woman to have composed a symphony that has been published and performed.

Amy Marcy Cheney was born on September 5, 1867 in Henniker, New Hampshire. Her mother was a pianist, and from her she inherited perfect musical memory, composing 3 waltzes in her head at the age of 4, and then reproducing them on the piano. She made her concert debut in 1883, at the same Music Hall, playing Frederic Chopin's Rondo in E flat.

In 1885, only 18 years old, she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, 42, a surgeon and amateur singer. For the rest of his life, her compositions would be published under the name "Mrs. H.H.A. Beach." In 1892, the Handel and Haydn Society orchestra performed her Mass in E-flat major, their 1st ever performance of a woman's composition. It received rave reviews in newspapers. Likewise, when her Gaelic Symphony was premiered, The Boston Globe's critic wrote that the Boston Symphony performed it "with exceptional success."

Composers George Whitefield Chadwick and Horatio Parker attended, and Chadwick wrote to her, "You will have to be counted in, whether you like it or not, one of the boys." "The boys" became known as "The Boston Six": Mrs. Beach, Chadwick, Parker, John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote and Edward MacDowell. Mrs. Beach was not only the only woman among them, but also the youngest: She was 29 at the time of the premiere, while Parker was 33, MacDowell was 36, Chadwick was 42, Foote was 43, and Paine was 57.

Dr. Beach died in 1910, and he and Amy had no children. Feeling unable to work, she sailed to Europe, staying for 2 years until she began giving performances there. She became the 1st American composer to become popular in Europe, particularly so in Germany. She had to leave when World War I broke out.

In the 1920s, she served as President of the Board of Councillors of the New England Conservatory of Music, using her position to promote young American composers. In 1928, she went to Rome, and in 1929 gave a concert there to raise money for the city's American Hospital. She continued to write and perform until stricken with heart disease in 1940, and died on December 27, 1944, in New York, at the age of 77.

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October 30, 1896 was a Friday. Actress Ruth Gordon was born. There were no scores on this day: Baseball season had recently ended, with the original version of the Baltimore Orioles winning the National League Pennant. There were no major college football games. Hockey was still all-amateur, and basketball barely existed. 

October 2, 1896: The Australian Football League Is Founded

October 2, 1896: The Victorian Football League is founded in Melbourne, in the Australian colony of Victoria. Australia gained independence (more or less) in 1901, making Victoria a State. It would take until 1990 for the League to expand enough to rename itself the Australian Football League (AFL).

The 1st Final was held on September 3, 1897, at the Lake Oval, now known as Lakeside Stadium, in Albert Park, a southern suburb of Melbourne. Essendon, of northwest Melbourne, defeated Melbourne Football Club, now nicknamed the Demons, 14-8.

Australian rules football -- a.k.a. Aussie rules, or footy -- is, like American football, a derivative of rugby, although the players are dressed more like basketball players, including shorts, with no pads. The ball isn't as pointed as an American football, and the field is oval, since most teams started out playing on cricket grounds. Sort of like basketball, the ball must periodically be bounced. Like American football prior to 1906, forward passing is illegal.

The average attendance for a game is usually over 60,000. The season lasts 22 games, from March to September, and ends with an AFL Grand Final, nearly always at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the League's hometown, usually on the last Saturday in September or the 1st Saturday in October.

The battle for most Grand Final wins, or "premiers," is very tight: Essendon have won 16, but none since 2000; Carlton, of north Melbourne, havealso won 16, but none since 1995; and Collingwood, formerly playing in the north Melbourne suburb of that name but now playing home games at the MCG, have won 15, most recently in 2010.

(UPDATE: Collingwood won in 2023, tying Essendon and Carlton with 16.)

The Melbourne area has so dominated the event that the only club from the Sydney area ever to have won the premier is Sydney Swans, with 5 -- but only 2 of those have come in Sydney, because they had moved, and were previously known as South Melbourne. The West Coast Eagles, based in Perth, have won 4, to lead the West of the country.

*

October 2, 1896 was a Friday. There were no scores on this day: The baseball season had ended, and while there were college football games the day before and the day after, none were played on this day.

August 27, 1896: The 44-Minute War

The Sultan's Palace, after 44 minutes

In 1965, the comedian Tom Lehrer, pointing out that World War I and World War II had great songs, but that World War III might end quickly, so someone should write a song for it now, wrote "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)." With satire that burned as hot as The Bomb, he sang:

Remember, Mommy:
I'm off to get a Commie!
So send me a salami
and try to smile somehow!
I'll look for you when the war is over
an hour and a half from now!

Thankfully, such a war hasn't happened yet. But there has been an even shorter war!

August 27, 1896: The Anglo-Zanzibar War is fought. And, by the time pretty much everybody who could have been called up to fight in it found out about it, it was over.

Zanzibar is an island off the coast of the modern nation of Tanzania. A Muslim Sultan had ruled over it starting in 1856. In 1893, Hamad bin Tuwaini became the Sultan, and was favorable to the British Empire. On August 25, 1896, he died. He was believed to be only 39 years old, and did not fall in battle. He was suspected of being poisoned by the new Sultan, Khalid bin Barghash, who was anti-British. 

An agreement made on June 14, 1890, instituting a British protectorate over Zanzibar, specified that a candidate for accession to the Sultanate should obtain the permission of the British consul. Khalid refused to fulfill this requirement. The British considered this a casus belli, and sent an ultimatum to Khalid, demanding that he order his forces to stand down and leave the Palace. In response, Khalid called up his Palace guard, and barricaded himself inside the Palace.

The ultimatum expired at 9:00 AM, local time on August 27 -- 6:00 AM in London, 1:00 AM on the U.S. East Coast. By that time, the British had gathered two cruisers, three gunboats, 150 marines and sailors, and 900 Zanzibaris in the harbor area.

The Royal Navy contingent were under the command of Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson, and the pro-Anglo Zanzibaris were commanded by the First Minister of Zanzibar, Brigadier-General Lloyd Mathews. Around 2,800 Zanzibaris defended the Palace: Most were recruited from the civilian population, but they also included the Sultan's Palace Guard and several hundred of his servants and slaves.

At 9:02, the British bombardment began. It set the Palace on fire, and disabled the defending artillery. A small naval action took place, with the British sinking the Zanzibari royal yacht HHS Glasgow and two smaller vessels. Some shots were also fired ineffectually at the pro-British Zanzibari troops as they approached the Palace. The flag at the Palace was shot down, and fire ceased at 9:46. The shortest war in history was over.

The British quickly placed Sultan Hamoud bin Mohamed in power at the head of a puppet government. He ended slavery in the Sultanate in 1900, but died in 1902. Unlike Hamad's death, Hamoud's was not considered suspicious.

Approximately 500 Zanzibari men and women were killed or wounded during the bombardment, most of the dead a result of the fire that engulfed the Palace. It is unknown how many of these casualties were combatants, but Khalid's gun crews were said to have been "decimated." British casualties amounted to one petty officer severely wounded aboard HMS Thrush, who later recovered.

General Mathews lived until 1901; Admiral Rawson, until 1910. The defeated Sultan Khalid escaped to the mainland, in what was then German East Africa, and received asylum in the German consulate. He lived in exile until 1927.

The war marked the end of the Sultanate of Zanzibar as a sovereign state, and the start of a period of heavy British influence. In 1964, Tanzania became independent, and the Zanzibar archipelago was annexed as a part of it. For most of its history, Tanzania has been a repressive one-party state.

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August 27, 1896 was a Thursday. The only professional sports league then operating in North America was baseball's National League, and these games were played:

* The New York Giants swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns, 7-3 and 10-6 at the Polo Grounds. This Browns team is not the one that was formed in the American League and became the new Baltimore Orioles in 1954. This one became the Cardinals in 1900.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms split a doubleheader with the Louisville Colonels at Washington Park in Brooklyn. The Colonels won the opener, 10-2. The Bridegrooms won the nightcap, 7-6. The Brooklyn team got the name when several of their players got married in a single off-season. In 1911, they became the Dodgers.

* The Boston Beaneaters beat the Chicago Colts, 7-3 at the South End Grounds in Boston. The Colts, named for the relative youth of their players, would, in 1903, adopt another youthful name: The Chicago Cubs. It would take 3 name changes and until 1912 for the Beaneaters to take the name by which the franchise has been known since: The Braves.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Cleveland Spiders, 9-4 at National League Park (later Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cincinnati Reds, 9-3 at Union Park in Baltimore.

* And the Washington Senators  beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-5 at Boundary Field in Washington.

The Orioles, the Senators, the Spiders and the Colonels would be dismissed from the NL after the 1899 season.

July 11, 1896: Canada's 1st Francophone Prime Minister

July 11, 1896: Wilfrid Laurier is sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada. After 29 years of a partial independence, 8 elections, and 6 previous Prime Ministers, this country founded by a coalition of British citizens and Frenchmen has elected a head of government of French ancestry, raised speaking French before he spoke English.

Sir John A. Macdonald, serving 1867 to 1873, and again from 1878 until his death in 1891, was born and raised in Scotland. So was Alexander Mackenzie, who served between Macdonald's defeat and his next victory. Sir John Abbott, who succeeded Macdonald and served for a year and a half, was from the Quebec side of the Ottawa area. Sir John Thompson, who served for 2 years until dying in office in 1894, was from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Mackenzie Bowell, who served for the next year and a half, was from Suffolk in England. And Sir Charles Tupper was also from Nova Scotia.

Tupper only served 3 months, the shortest tenure in the office's history, because his government failed over the Manitoba Schools Question, which was triggered by the government of the Province of Manitoba eliminating funding for Catholic schools. Although the Conservative Party, with Tupper as Leader, got more popular votes than Laurier's Liberal Party, and a larger share of the popular vote, the Liberals gained a net 29 seats in the House of Commons, enough to take control, and make Laurier the Prime Minister -- premier ministre.

Henri Charles Wilfrid Laurier was born on November 20, 1841 in Saint-Lin-Laurentides, Quebec, 30 miles north of Montreal. At age 11, he was sent by his father, a Justice of the Peace and a former Mayor, to a boarding school in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. "Nova Scotia" is Latin for "New Scotland," so it's not surprising that it has a city named New Glasgow. And it was populated largely by people of Scottish descent. Not only did young Wilfrid learn English there, but he developed an appreciation for the British way of doing things, which would serve him well in his dual-culture country.

He studied law at Montreal's Anglophone McGill University, and married Zoé Lafontaine. To his regret, they had no children. Stepping aside from the practice of law to run a newspaper, he opposed Confederation, Canada's original version of independence from Britain, because he felt it would favor Anglophones and hurt Francophones.

He was first elected to office in 1871, to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec. In 1874, he was elected to the national Parliament. He would serve in the House of Commons for 45 years, which remains a record. On June 2, 1887, he was elected Leader of the Liberal Party, and would hold that post for nearly 32 years, another record. Although he lost the 1891 election to Macdonald, he led his Party to gain 10 seats. Macdonald's death led to disarray in the Conservatives, and Laurier was able to lead the Liberals to victory on June 23, 1896, taking office 18 days later.

He solved the Manitoba Schools Question by allowing Catholic students to have a Catholic education on a school-by-school basis. Despite his controversial handling of the dispute and criticism from some French Canadians who believed that the resolution was insufficient, he was nicknamed "the Great Conciliator" for offering a compromise between French and English Canada.

Two issues, the United Kingdom demanding Canadian military support to fight in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), and the United Kingdom asking Canada to send money for the Royal Navy, divided the country: Canadians of English and Scottish descent supported Britain's requests; whereas those of Irish and French descent did not.

Laurier's government sought a middle ground between the two groups, deciding to send a volunteer force to fight in the Boer War, and passing the 1910 Naval Service Act, which created the Royal Canadian Navy, putting the country's sailors and naval officers under direct control from Ottawa, not London.

In addition, his government dramatically increased immigration, oversaw the dual entry of Alberta and Saskatchewan as Provinces in Confederation in 1905, constructed the Grand Trunk Pacific and National Transcontinental Railways, and took other efforts into establishing Canada as an autonomous country within the British Empire.

He wanted a reciprocity agreement with the United States, and the Conservatives went into the 1911 election saying that it would lead to an American takeover of Canada. The fearmongering worked, as the "Tories" ended the 4-election, 15-year winning streak of the "Grits." Robert Borden became the new Prime Minister, and would be the 1st Conservative one other than Macdonald to win more than 1 national election. Still, Laurier's 15-year unbroken governance remains a record, although, when their separate terms are counted, he served less total time than Macdonald, William Lyon Mackenzie King and Pierre Trudeau.

Britain's entry into World War I in 1914 meant that Canada had to enter as well. The need for more soldiers led to the Conscription Crisis of 1917, in which French-Canadians and Irish-Canadians did not want to be drafted to fight for the British Empire. Laurier, still Leader of the Liberal Party and thus Leader of the Opposition, stood opposed to the draft. Borden and the Conservatives appealed to patriotism, and, while the Liberals dominated in Quebec, they were nearly wiped out in the other Provinces. The war ended less than a year after the election: Over 650,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders served, more than 66,000 of them died, and more than 172,000 were wounded.

In spite of his resistance to British demands, he did his duty to the Mother Country. In 1897, he attended the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and she knighted him. He took part in the 1902 Colonial Conference and the 1907 and 1911 Imperial Conferences, and attended the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.

The election and the war took its toll on Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and he died of a stroke on February 17, 1919, in Ottawa, at the age of 77. He was buried in Notre-Dame Cemetery in Ottawa, in a tomb showing a coffin supported by 9 women, 1 for each Province then in Confederation. (Newfoundland and Labrador remained a British Dominion until it became the 10th Province in 1949.) Zoé, known as Lady Laurier, joined him in 1921.

Maclean's, the national newsmagazine of Canada, occasionally polls historians to rank the country's Prime Ministers. In 1997, Laurier was ranked 3rd, behind Mackenzie King and Macdonald. In 2011, he was ranked 1st. (Another poll that year backed up the 1997 rankings: Mackenzie King, then Macdonald, then Laurier.) In 2016, the Maclean's poll put Laurier 2nd behind Mackenzie King.

(Mackenzie King was clearly helped by the facts of not just his longevity, and his dramatic comebacks in 1926 and 1935 after losing the office, but by the fact that he was Prime Minister during World War II. In contrast, Borden doesn't get the same credit for serving during World War I, never getting above 7th.)

In 1973, Waterloo Lutheran University in Waterloo, Ontario, renamed itself Wilfrid Laurier University. Montreal erected a statue of him in Dorchester Square, and named a station on its subway system, the Metro, for him.

Since 1972, his portrait has appeared on Canada's $5 bill. At some point, someone decided that this portrait bore a resemblance to the Star Trek character Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy, and people began defacing the bills, using pen ink to make Laurier look like a Vulcan. The Bank of Canada issued an official objection in 2002, since it led to wear and tear on the bills and reduced their lifespans, and the practice declined. In 2013, a new series of bills was released, with a different, less Nimoy-resembling portrait. When Nimoy died in 2015, this practice of "Spocking" the previous series of bills picked up again. 

Up until the 1970s, the bills usually had the British monarch on them, but now, this is only true for the $20 bill. The $1 and $2 bills have been retired in favor of coins. The $10 had Macdonald from 1971 to 2018, when he was replaced by Viola Desmond, "the Rosa Parks of Canada." Since 1975, the $50 has had Mackenzie King, and the $100 has had Borden.

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July 11, 1896 was a Saturday. The only professional sports league then operating in North America was baseball's National League, and these games were played:

* The New York Giants lost to the Chicago Colts, 3-2 at West Side Park in Chicago. The Colts, named for the relative youth of their players, would, in 1903, adopt another youthful name: The Chicago Cubs.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-1 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. The Brooklyn team got the name when several of their players got married in a single off-season. In 1911, they became the Dodgers.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cleveland Spiders, 10-1 at League Park in Cleveland.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Washington Senators, 9-5 at League Park in Cincinnati.

* The Louisville Colonels beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-1 at Eclipse Park in Louisville.

* And a doubleheader was split at one of the earlier versions of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The Boston Beaneaters won the opener, 12-5. The St. Louis Browns won the nightcap, 12-7. This Browns team is not the one that was formed in the American League and became the new Baltimore Orioles in 1954. This one became the Cardinals in 1900. It would take 3 name changes and until 1912 for the Beaneaters to take the name by which the franchise has been known since: The Braves.

The Orioles, the Senators, the Spiders and the Colonels would be dismissed from the NL after the 1899 season.

July 9, 1896: The Cross of Gold Speech

July 9, 1896: William Jennings Bryan delivers the "Cross of Gold Speech." It becomes a landmark in the history of American politics.

The Coinage Act of 1873 eliminated the standard silver dollar from American money, and was one of the causes of the Panic of 1873, leading to the worst depression the country had yet seen, lasting 5 years. In 1890, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act led to the Panic of 1893, causing an even deeper depression, which in turn caused great labor strife as it bottomed out in 1894. As 1896, and that year's Presidential election, dawned, the depression was still going.

Some politicians suggested that coining silver in a ratio of 16 to 1 -- 16 silver coins for every 1 gold coin -- would put money back in the pockets of the poor and the middle class. The Democrats produced campaign buttons (still a novelty at the time) with clock faces showing the time as 12:44 -- 16 minutes to 1. (Hence, the time of this post.)

There was just one problem: America did not have a liberal party at the time. The Democratic Party had grown conservative following the Presidency of Andrew Jackson that ended in 1837. And the Republican Party had grown conservative when they saw how much money was being made in railroads, mines and munitions as a result of the Union effort in the American Civil War.

There were minor parties with liberal pretentions, including the Populist Party. In 1892, their candidate for President, James B. Weaver, had won 5 States with 22 Electoral Votes, all in the West: Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho and North Dakota.

As so often happens when a third party makes some inroads, one of the two major parties takes on its ideas. This time, it was the Democrats, particularly in the urban Northeast and the rural West, who liked the idea of "free silver" and "bimetallism" (coining money in both gold and silver).

And one of their leaders was William Jennings Bryan, age 36, just barely old enough according to the Constitution to serve as President of the United States. He had been elected to the House of Representatives from a seat in Nebraska in 1890 and re-elected in 1892. But with the Democrats holding the White House through President Grover Cleveland, they were blamed for the depression (which they hadn't caused: "Sherman" was Senator John Sherman of Ohio, a Republican, and the brother of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman), and they took the biggest loss in terms of numbers in Congressional history in 1894.

Bryan was one of the Congressmen who lost his seat. But with a strong voice, necessary in those days before sound recordings and microphones became common, the man known as the Boy Orator of the Platte remained one of the Democrats' most sought-after speakers. And he was named as a Delegate to the 1896 Democratic National Convention, at the Chicago Coliseum.

President Cleveland and the aforementioned President Jackson are the only men to win the popular vote in 3 Presidential elections. Jackson finished 1st in both the popular vote and the Electoral Vote in 1824, but didn't get a majority of the Electoral Vote, and ended up losing to John Quincy Adams. He then definitively defeated Adams in 1828, and was re-elected in 1832.

Cleveland ran 3 times, and never got a majority of the popular vote, but got a plurality all 3 times. He got a majority of the Electoral Vote in 1884, finished 2nd to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and regained the Presidency (the only ex-President ever to do so) by beating Harrison in 1892.

No President had ever served 3 terms. Cleveland believed he could get the Democratic nomination in 1896, but not that he could win the general election. While it wouldn't have been 3 consecutive terms, many people would have held his bid for a 3rd term, as well as his handling of the economy, against him. So he didn't run.

At the time, winning the Democratic nomination took a 2/3rds vote of the Convention delegates, meaning that "the Solid South" had a virtual veto on any candidate. So any candidate who didn't pander to Southern wishes on agriculture (must support it) and civil rights (must oppose it) had no chance. This rule wouldn't be changed for 40 years.

But the South did favor free silver. It was the Northeast, where most of the country's money was, that wanted to maintain the total gold standard. On July 9, the Convention's 3rd day, Senator William Vilas of Wisconsin gave a speech supporting the gold standard and defending President Cleveland, in the hopes of gaining the support of Cleveland's allies, and maybe of Cleveland himself, who was not in attendance. (That was normal for the time: Men wanted to be seen as being asked to be President, rather than asking for it themselves, so no candidate, not even a President running for re-election, attended a Convention.)

Vilas' speech was well-received. The next one was not: William E. Russell, a former Governor of Massachusetts, also spoke in favor of gold, but was ill, and couldn't make himself heard across the Coliseum hall. Just 7 days later, only 39 years old, he was dead from a bad heart. (A foreshadowing of what would happen to the much-older Bryan himself after the "Scopes Monkey Trial.")

Bryan followed him to the podium, and waited for the applause to fade. He said, "I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities. But this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty: The cause of humanity."

He spoke for 35 minutes -- hardly unusual for a Convention speech, then or now. He challenged the notion that the gold standard was good for "businessmen." He put common laborers in the class of "businessmen":

The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in Spring and toils all Summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain.

The miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. 

Bryan thus managed to link two previously separate wings of the Democratic Party together: The urban Northeast and Midwest, largely Catholic, made up of immigrants or the children of immigrants; and the rural South and West, struggling farmers. He united them as underdogs, making the Democratic Party the party of the underdog for the 1st time since the days of Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson. 

Moreover, in pointing out that their requests to the establishment had fallen on deaf ears, he invoked the Declaration of Independence, written by the man who would later found the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson:

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer. We entreat no more. We petition no more. We defy them!

Not since Jackson had a Democratic politician even tried to reach the people on this level. A fundamentalist Presbyterian, he closed with Biblical imagery:

Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

At the words "crown of thorns," he gestured as if he were placing such a crown on his head. At "cross of gold," he put his hands out, as if he, himself, were Christ on the Cross. As he lowered his hands, there was dead silence. He thought he had failed. He began to walk off the stage. Only then did the Delegates realize that the speech was over: They erupted in cheers, and launched a demonstration that lasted twice as long as the speech itself.

Two policemen rushed to Bryan to protect him. They need not have bothered: Delegates picked Bryan up, and paraded him around the hall as their new hero.

Still, the two-thirds rule made it impossible for such a hero to be nominated on the 1st ballot. On that ballot, 14 men got at least 1 Delegate. There were 2 with more than 100: Bryan had 137, but he trailed Richard P. Bland, with 235. Bland was a former Congressman from Missouri, who had also lost his seat in the 1894 wipeout. And he was also a silver man. So was former Governor Robert E. Pattison of Pennsylvania. (Pattison Avenue, location of the eventual South Philadelphia sports complex, was named for him.) It was clear that a silver man would win, but which one?

On the 2nd ballot, it became clear that only 6 men had a chance, but Bland and then Bryan still had the best chance. Both men gained on the 3rd ballot. But on the 4th, Bryan took the lead. Bland had peaked: On the 5th ballot, his support collapsed, nearly all of it going to Bryan, to the point where he had 2/3rds, and Pattison was now 2nd. Bryan was the nominee. Arthur Sewall, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Maine, was nominated for Vice President.

Bryan did what had been considered unacceptable for a Presidential candidate to do before: He took his message to the people, doing his own campaigning instead of letting others do it for him, criss-crossing America and its 45 States (including the newly-admitted Utah) by train.

In contrast, the Republicans nominated the Governor of Ohio, William McKinley, dedicated to conservative principles, including the gold standard. He campaigned the other way around: He made the people come to him. Or, rather, his campaign manager, Ohio Republican Party boss Mark Hanna, did.

Remembering that a previous nominee from Ohio, Representative James Garfield, had received visitors to his home in the Cleveland suburbs during the 1880 campaign, and given speeches there, Hanna worked with the railroads (which supported Republicans, anyway) to hire special trains to bring tourists to Canton, and visit McKinley at his home. It became known as "the front porch campaign." (A 3rd Ohioan, Senator Warren Harding, would do it in 1920.)

McKinley seemed as sound as the money he was supporting. And Bryan's rhetoric scared as many as it thrilled. Cleveland refused to use whatever political capital he had left to support him. It was even rumored that he was one of the "Gold Democrats" who ended up voting for McKinley.

Then there was a dirty trick. In the inner cities, and in smaller factory, mill and mining towns, many workers were told by their bosses in the last week, "If Bryan wins on Tuesday, don't come in on Wednesday" -- not that they would be fired, but that the factory would have to close.

On Election Day, November 3, 1896, McKinley was elected the 25th President of the United States. He won 51 percent of the popular vote, and Bryan nearly 47. McKinley won 23 States to Bryan's 22. Those figures make the election sound close. But McKinley won bigger States than Bryan did, so he won the Electoral Vote 271-176.

The election was a turning point for the Democrats, as it made them a national pro-labor party for the 1st time in 60 years. But the benefits were long in coming, and Bryan wouldn't receive them. By 1900, the depression was over, as McKinley's policies worked. In the wake of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Campaign and the Boxer Rebellion, anti-imperialism was the Democrats' issue, and Bryan was nominated on such a platform. McKinley rode the good economy to win by an even larger margin.

McKinley was assassinated in 1901, and his Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, became President. He was a progressive Republican, and when he ran for a full term in 1904, the Democrats turned away from Bryan, and nominated a conservative, federal Judge Alton Parker. Roosevelt won by the biggest popular-vote landslide yet.

In 1908, Roosevelt refused to run for what would have amounted to a 3rd term, and his handpicked successor, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, was nominated. Bryan made a 3rd try, and the Taft people made campaign buttons that said, "Vote for Taft this time. You can vote for Bryan anytime." Taft won by the largest margin ever, except for Roosevelt's 4 years earlier. Bryan was falling further and further behind.

In 1912, Roosevelt was unhappy that Taft had proven to be a conservative, and ran to regain the office. This split the Republican Party, and would have seemed to be Bryan's big chance. But he neither ran nor threw his support behind anyone. Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, a progressive, won, and appointed Bryan his Secretary of State.

Wilson enacted many of the reforms Bryan wanted, but they split over foreign policy, and Bryan resigned in 1915. Wilson was re-elected in 1916. Bryan passed up the chance to run in 1920 and 1924, knowing that the tide had turned back to the Republicans, but he was preparing to run again in 1928. But he died in 1925, shortly after participating in "the Scopes Monkey Trial." He was 65 years old.

At least he had gone into a recording studio, in 1923, and put the Cross of Gold speech on a record, so that we can hear it today, if not the Delegates' demonstration that followed.

As a uniter of the urban Democrats and the rural Democrats, Bryan was a precursor to Democratic Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. But as a populist, he was also a precursor to leftists masquerading as Democrats, such as Eugene McCarthy in 1968, Ralph Nader in 2000, and Bernie Sanders in 2016. Those men failed to get the nomination, and their supporters spoiled things for both the Democrats and themselves, resulting in Republican wins.

In 1896, the populists got what they wanted, in Bryan -- and while they still lost, they did something that McCarthy and Nader failed to do, and Sanders has also, thus far, failed to do: Convince the mainstream of the party to join them.

Bryan gave the Cross of Gold speech at the 2nd of 3 buildings to bear the name of the Chicago Coliseum, on 63rd Street at Stony Island Avenue on the South Side. It didn't last long: It had opened only weeks before, and burned down the next year. The site is now part of Jackson Park.

*

July 9, 1896 was a Thursday. Professional sports were in their infancy, except for baseball, and 10 of the 12 teams then in the National League, all but the Cincinnati Reds and the original version of the Washington Senators, were in action that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Chicago Colts, 9-1 at West Side Park in Chicago. The Colts, named for the relative youth of their players, would, in 1903, adopt another youthful name: The Chicago Cubs.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-5 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. The Dodgers-to-be got the name when several of their players got married in a single off-season.

* The Cleveland Spiders beat the Baltimore Orioles, 7-0 at League Park in Cleveland. Both of these teams were contracted out of existence after the 1899 season, as were the aforementioned Senators.

* The Louisville Colonels beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 10-3 at Eclipse Park in Louisville. The Colonels would also be dismissed from the NL after the 1899 season.

* And the St. Louis Browns beat the Boston Beaneaters, 9-7 at an early version of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. This Browns team is not the one that was formed in the American League and became the new Baltimore Orioles in 1954. This one became the Cardinals in 1900. It would take 3 name changes and until 1912 for the Beaneaters to take the name by which the franchise has been known since: The Braves. 

May 26, 1896: The Dow Jones Industrial Average Goes Into Effect

The New York Stock Exchange.

I don't know why there's a Brazilian flag out front.

May 26, 1896: The Dow Jones Industrial Average goes into effect. Its value: 33.43.

"The Dow" was created by Charles Dow (1851-1902), the editor of The Wall Street Journal and, with his business associate, statistician Edward Jones (1856-1920), the co-founder of Dow Jones & Company.

Having the word "Industrial" in the name initially emphasized the fact that most of the companies involved were in the sector of heavy industry. But that has not always been the case: Some companies have been removed from it, others have been added, and some that were formerly connected with heavy industry have diversified and moved away from it.

At the start, there were 12 companies. The only ones of these that are likely to be familiar to a 2022 audience are General Electric and the United States Rubber Company, now known as Uniroyal.

But even GE, as big as it still is, didn't stay part of the Dow forever, being dropped in 2018. As of August 30, 2020, these are the 30 companies on the Dow: 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing), American Express, Amgen, Apple, Boeing, Caterpillar (makers of construction equipment), Chevron, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola, Dow Inc. (the chemical company, with no other connection to Dow Jones & Company besides name), Goldman Sachs, Home Depot, Honeywell, Intel, IBM (International Business Machines), Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, McDonald's, Merck, Microsoft, Nike, Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, The Travelers, UnitedHealth, Verizon, Visa, Walgreens Boots Alliance (Boots is a British pharmacy chain, similar to America's Walgreens), and The Walt Disney Company.

On September 3, 1929, the Dow hit 381.17, then a record high. Then it started to drop. From October 24 to 29 of that year, it crashed to 230.07. On July 8, 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression, it was 41.22, the lowest it has been since its earliest days. On November 23, 1954, 25 years after the Crash, it finally got above its 1929 high in constant dollars. And it took until July 6, 1959, almost 30 years after, to surpass it in inflation-adjusted dollars.

On November 14, 1972, the Dow closed above 1,000 for the 1st time. After a brief period up there, it would not reach 1,000 again until 1980, as the 1973-81 period was a time of high inflation. On October 19, 1987, the Dow had its biggest value drop ever, over 22 percent, and 508 total points. That total has been topped (or bottomed) many times, but not the value.

The Dow first topped 10,000 on March 29, 1999; and reached 14,198.10 on October 11, 2007. Then it started going back down, for a period that included the Crash of 2008, bottoming out at 6,547.05 on March 9, 2009, its lowest straight-dollar close in 22 years. It topped the 2007 high on March 5, 2013; topped 20,000 on October 2, 2017; topped 25,000 on January 4, 2018; topped 30,000 on November 24, 2020.

On October 1, 1999, Washington Post columnist James K. Glassman and economist Kevin A. Hassett published a book titled Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. They predicted that the Dow would reach 36,000 by 2004. The "bursting of the dot-com bubble" and the 9/11 attacks, both in 2001, prevented this, and the Crash of 2008 prevented it from happening soon after that. The Dow finally closed over 36,000 on November 2, 2021.

Glassman and Hassett shouldn't feel too bad: They're not alone. In 1976, Paul Erdman, who had previously served time in prison for bank fraud, published The Crash of '79, which predicted a depression following an Islamic revolution in Iran jacking up oil prices. He almost got it right, as there was such a revolution there in 1979. But while there was a "bear market" from 1979 to 1982, there wasn't a crash; while there was a recession, there wasn't a depression.

He followed this in 1986 with The Panic of '89. There was a big downturn in October that year, but it wasn't as bad as the one in 1987, and the recession that began in 1990 and lasted until 1993 had little to do with either real-life drops, '87 or '89.

And in 1991, ABC aired the drama My Life and Times, in which an old man looks back on his life from the year 2035. The 5th episode was about the Crash of '87. The 6th was titled "The Collapse of '98," and showed the Miller family dealing with the depression that resulted. As it turned out, not only was this the last episode of the series, but 1998 was a "bull market" year, and neither the recession that followed the Crash of 2008 nor the one that followed the COVID lockdown of 2020 was as bad as what was shown in "The Collapse of '98," which seemed to be as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s.

*

May 26, 1896 was a Tuesday. Professional basketball and hockey did not exist. Professional football barely did. And there was only 1 major league in baseball, the National League. These games were played that day:

* The New York Giants beat the Cleveland Spiders, 5-4 at the 1890-1911 version of the Polo Grounds.

* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms -- often called the Dodgers, but still officially using the name they'd used since 1887, when several of their players got married in the off-season -- beat the Louisville Colonels, 4-3 at Eastern Park in Brooklyn.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Colts, 8-1 at National League Park in Philadelphia. The ballpark would later be renamed Baker Bowl, and the Colts would be renamed the Cubs.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the St. Louis Browns, 13-3 at Oriole Park in Baltimore. The Browns would become the Cardinals in 1900. In 1902, a new Browns team would begin in the American League, but moved for the 1954 season, becoming the new version of the Baltimore Orioles.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Washington Senators, 18-5 at Boundary Field in Washington.

* The Boston Beaneaters were supposed to host the Pittsburgh Pirates at the South End Grounds in Boston, but the game was rained out. It was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 22. The Pirates won both games, 8-4 and 6-3. The Beaneaters would go through additional odd names before becoming the Braves in 1912.

The Spiders, the Colonels, the Orioles and the Senators would be contracted out of existence after the 1899 season. This, and the subsequent availability of players, made it possible for the American League to declare itself a major league in 1901.

May 18, 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson: "Separate But Equal"

Homer Plessy

May 18, 1896: In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court of the United States rules that segregation in public facilities is within the Constitution of the United States. An incorrect interpretation.

In 1890, the State of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, which required separate accommodations for black people and white people on railroads, including separate railway cars. A citizens' group chose to challenge this law in court. They persuaded Homer Plessy to be their challenger.

Homer Plessy was born in 1863, a New Orleans native whose ancestry made him 1/8th black and 7/8ths white. In a Southern State like Louisiana, that made him "colored." By the time of the challenge, he was a shoemaker.

On June 7, 1892, he bought a first-class ticket at the Press Street Depot in New Orleans, heading for Covington, Louisiana, and boarded a car on the East Louisiana Railroad marked "Whites Only." The Railroad was willing to go along with this, because the Separate Car Act had forced them to buy extra cars for their trains. And the group that hired Plessy also hired a private detective, who would be permitted to arrest him specifically for violating the Separate Car Act, and not for some other charge like vagrancy.

Plessy took a seat in the whites-only car. The detective asked him to vacate the seat, and sit in the blacks-only car. He refused. He was arrested. As previously arranged, the train was stopped, and Plessy was taken off the train at the intersection of Press and Royal Streets.

In State of Louisiana v. Homer Adolph Plessy, he argued that the law requiring the railroad to segregate its trains violated his rights under the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which provided for equal treatment under the law. But since he had been arrested without the train having crossed a State Line, the presiding judge, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that the State had the right to pass the law.

Plessy petitioned the State Supreme Court, but, not surprisingly, that court ruled in the State's favor. So the case went to the federal Supreme Court. The vote was 8-1. And it didn't seem to matter where the Justices were from, or who appointed them:

* Melville W. Fuller, the Chief Justice, 63, was a New Englander, from Maine. He was appointed by President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, and remained Chief Justice until his death in 1910.

* Stephen J. Field, 79, was a New Englander by birth, from Connecticut, but had moved West, to California, where he served as that State's Chief Justice. He was appointed to the federal Supreme Court by President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican.

* Horace Gray, 68, was a New Englander, from Massachusetts. and had served as that State's Chief Justice. He was appointed to the federal Supreme Court by President Chester Arthur, a Republican.

* David J. Brewer, 58, was a New Englander by birth, from Connecticut, but had moved to the Midwest, to Kansas, where he served on that State's Supreme Court. He was appointed to the federal Supreme Court by President Benjamin Harrison, a Republican.

* Henry B. Brown, 60, was a New Englander by birth, from Massachusetts, but had moved to the Midwest, to Michigan, where he had served as a federal Judge. He was appointed to the federal Supreme Court by President Harrison.

* George Shiras, 64, was a Midwesterner, from Western Pennsylvania. When Harrison appointed him, he had been a lawyer for 37 years, but had never tried a case as a judge. He got the appointment because he was a loyal Republican. That was it.

* Edward D. White, 50, was a Southerner, from Louisiana, the State from which the case originated. He had previously been a Justice on that State's Supreme Court, and one of its U.S. Senators. He had been appointed by President Cleveland. In 1910, upon Fuller's death, though a Democrat, he was promoted to Chief Justice by President William Howard Taft, a Republican. He died in office in 1921, and was succeeded as Chief Justice by... Taft himself.

* Rufus W. Peckham, 57, was a Northeasterner, from Albany, New York. He had previously served on the New York State Court of Appeals, and was a friend of President Cleveland's going back to Cleveland's time as Governor.

All 8 of those Justices voted to uphold segregation, on the grounds that it could be carried out as long as the facilities were "separate, but equal." The one who did not was John Marshall Harlan, about to turn 63, and a Southerner, having previously been Attorney General of Kentucky. In spite of being a Democrat, he was appointed by a Republican President, Rutherford B. Hayes.

In his official dissent from the majority opinion, Harlan wrote, "The judgement this day rendered, will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case." Unlike the other 8 Justices, he accepted Plessy's argument that the segregation in public accommodations violated the equal protection clause of 14th Amendment.

White was the last of these Justices still serving on the Court, until 1921. Shiras was the last survivor of them, living until 1924.

Plessy's criminal trial for violating the Separate Car Act went ahead. He pleaded guilty, and paid a fine of $25 -- about $840 in 2022 money. He later became a clerk for the black-owned People's Life Insurance Company. He died in 1925, only 62 years old, but having outlived all 9 Justices on his Supreme Court case. He had also outlived Judge Ferguson, who died in 1915, at 77.

In practice, segregation meant only separate, never equal. In 1954, 58 years after this decision, the Supreme Court reversed Plessy v. Ferguson. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, it ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This time, it was a 9-0 vote. And one of the Justices was John Marshall Harlan II, the grandson of "the Great Dissenter." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 completely prohibited racial segregation in public places.

In 2009, the Plessy & Ferguson Foundation was founded in New Orleans. Its mission is "to teach the history of civil rights through film, art, and public programs designed to create understanding of this historic case and its legacy on the American conscience." Its founders were Keith Plessy, a great-grandson of Homer's first cousin; and Phoebe Ferguson, a great-great-granddaughter of Judge Ferguson. They continue to run the foundation together. (They are business partners, but not a couple.)

On January 5, 2022, Governor John Bel Edwards of Louisiana awarded Homer Plessy a posthumous pardon.

*

May 18, 1896 was a Monday. These games were played in the National League that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Chicago Colts, 15-3 at West Side Park in Chicago. 

* The Cleveland Spiders beat the Baltimore Orioles, 4-3 at League Park in Cleveland. The most familiar version of League Park would be built on the same site in 1910.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-5 at League Park in Cincinnati. Crosley Field would be built on the same site in 1912.

* The Washington Senators beat the Louisville Colonels, 5-3 at Eclipse Park in Louisville.

* The Boston Beaneaters beat the St. Louis Browns, 3-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The most familiar version of Sportsman's Park would be built on the same site in 1909.

* And the Brooklyn Bridegrooms and the Pittsburgh Pirates were rained out at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. The game would be made up as part of a doubleheader on July 10. The Bridegrooms won the 1st game, 4-2. The Pirates won the 2nd game, 11-6.

The Spiders, the Orioles, the Senators and the Colonels all went out of business after the 1899 season. The Orioles, the Senators and the Browns would have later American League teams named after them. The NL Browns became the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900. The Colts became the Chicago Cubs in 1903. The Bridegrooms became the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1911. The Beaneaters became the Boston Braves in 1912.

April 11, 1896: "New York: Broadway At Union Square" Is Filmed

April 11, 1896: New York: Broadway At Union Square is filmed. It is the earliest known film footage of any American city.

French film pioneer Louis Lumière produced it, and Jean Alexandre Louis Promio was behind the camera. That camera appears to have been set up on the southwest corner of Union Square West and East 15th Street. Above 17th Street, a.k.a. Union Square North, Broadway, which previously terminated at Union Square South (14th Street), takes up the street that had been Union Square West. In the background, a building is visible that, in the 21st Century, contains a Barnes & Noble Bookstore on its 1st 3 floors.

The film is just 30 seconds long, and shows pedestrian and vehicle traffic, with policemen guiding the pedestrians.

Later in the year, Promio would make a film of trains at one end of the Brooklyn Bridge, titled New York, Brooklyn Bridge. In 1899, a camera would be mounted on the front of a train, and a film titled Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge would be made.

*

April 11, 1896 was a Saturday. Baseball season was about to begin. Football was out of season. Basketball barely existed. And hockey was all-amateur. There were soccer games in England, and Woolwich Arsenal (later Arsenal F.C.) and Millwall played to a 2-2 draw, at the Manor Ground in Plumsted, South-East London.