Just 16 years after Abraham Lincoln was shot to death, another U.S. President – James Garfield – met the same fate in 1881. Garfield was waiting for a train in Washington on July 2nd, not quite four months after his inauguration, when a disappointed office-seeker named Charles Guiteau shot him in the back. Doctors were unable to locate and remove the bullet, and the President’s condition worsened. After lingering for 79 days, he died on September 19th. Guiteau was hanged.

Happier events also took place in 1881:

• P.T. Barnum and James A. Bailey merged their circuses to form what truly was "The Greatest Show on Earth." It opened on March 18th in New York City’s newly built Madison Square Garden.
• “Cleopatra’s Needle,” an ancient Egyptian obelisk, was erected in New York’s Central Park.
• The American Red Cross was founded by social worker Clara Barton.
• The American Federation of Labor was founded in Pittsburgh.
• Levi P. Morton, U.S. ambassador to France, drove the first rivet into the Statue of Liberty, then being assembled as a gift to the American people.
• Booker T. Washington established the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
• Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.

Back ↵