A terrible blaze occurred at the Iroquois Theater on December 30, 1903, as a fire broke out in the crowded theater during a performance of a vaudeville show starring the popular comedian Eddie Foy. The fire was believed to have been started by faulty wiring leading to a spotlight and claimed the lives of hundreds of people, including children, who were packed into the afternoon show for the holidays. The Iroquois Theater, the newest and most beautiful showplace in Chicago in 1903, was believed to be "absolutely fireproof". The Chicago Tribune called it a "virtual temple of beauty" but just five weeks after it opened its doors it became a blazing death trap. The horrific events began on a bitterly cold December 30 of 1903. A holiday crowd had packed into the theater on that Wednesday afternoon to see a matinee performance of the hit comedy Mr. Bluebeard. Officially, the Iroquois seated 1,600 people but with school out for Christmas break, it is believed there was an overflow crowd of nearly 2,000 people filling the seats and standing four-deep in the aisles. Another crowd filled the backstage area with 400 actors, dancers and stagehands hidden from those in the auditorium.
Around 3:20 p.m., at the beginning of the second act, stagehands noticed a spark descend from an overhead light, and then some scraps of burning paper that fell down onto the stage. In moments, flames began licking at the red-velvet curtain and while a collective gasp went up from the audience, no one rushed for the exits. It has been surmised that the audience merely thought the fire was part of the show. Although in his dressing room applying his final makeup for the act, Eddie Foy heard the commotion outside and rushed out onto the stage to see what was going on. He implored the audience to remain seated and calm, assuring them that the theater was fireproof and that everyone was safe. He signaled conductor Herbert Gillea to play and the music had a temporary soothing effect on the crowd, which was growing restless. A few moments later, a flaming set crashed down onto the stage and Foy signaled a stagehand to lower the asbestos curtain to protect the audience. Unfortunately though, the curtain snagged halfway down, leaving a 20-foot gap between the bottom of the curtain and the wooden stage. The other actors in the show remained composed until they too realized what was happening. Many of them panicked and several chorus girls fainted and had to be dragged off-stage. The audience began to scream and panic too and a mad rush was started for the Randolph Street exit from the theater. Foy made one last attempt to calm the audience and then he fled to a rear exit. With children in tow, the audience members immediately clogged the gallery and the upper balconies. The aisles had become impassable and as the lights went out, the crowd milled about in blind terror. The auditorium began to fill with heat and smoke and screams echoed off the walls and ceilings. Through it all, the mass continued to move forward but when the crowd reached the doors they could not open them as they had been designed to swing inward rather than outward. The crush of people prevented those in the front from opening the doors. To make matters worse, some of the side doors to the auditorium were reportedly locked. Many of those who died not only burned but suffocated from the smoke and the crush of bodies as well. Later, as the police removed the charred remains from the theater, they discovered that a number of victims had been trampled in the panic. Backstage, theater employees and cast members opened a rear set of double doors, which sucked the wind inside and caused flames to fan out under the asbestos curtain and into the auditorium. A second gust of wind created a fireball that shot out into the galleries and balconies that were filled with people. All of the stage drops were now on fire and as they burned, they engulfed the supposedly noncombustible asbestos curtain and when it collapsed it plunged into the seats of the theater. The scene outside of the theater was completely normal and most accounts say that the fire was burning for almost 15 minutes before any smoke was noticed by those passing by. Because there was no fire alarm box outside, someone ran around the corner to sound the alarm at Engine Co. 13. Things were so quiet in front of the Iroquois though that the first firefighters to arrive thought it was a false alarm. When it was all over, 572 people died in the fire and more died later, bringing the eventual death toll up to 602, including 212 children. For nearly five hours, police officers, firemen, and even newspaper reporters, carried out the dead. Anxious relatives sifted through the remains, searching for loved ones. Other bodies were taken away by police wagons and ambulances and transported to a temporary morgue at Marshall Field’s on State Street. Medical examiners and investigators worked all through the night. The Iroquois Theater Fire ranks as the nation’s fourth deadliest blaze and the deadliest single building fire in American history. Nevertheless, the building was repaired and re-opened briefly in 1904 as Hyde and Behmann’s Music Hall and then in 1905 as the Colonial Theater. In 1924, the building was razed to make room for a new theater, the Oriental, but the façade of the Iroquois was used in its construction. The Oriental operated at what is now 24 West Randolph Street until the middle part of 1981, when it fell into disrepair and was closed down. It opened again as the home to a wholesale electronics dealer for a time and then went dark again. The restored theater is now part of the Civic Tower Building and is next door to the restored Delaware Building. It reopened as the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in 1998.
One of the America's most unusual wars involved only one casualty - a pig - and yet it could have changed the course of history. The bizarre conflict took place on present-day San Juan Island in Washington State and involved American and British troops and even warships. The Pig War began on June 15, 1859, when an American settler named Lyman Cutlar shot and killed a trespassing pig belonging to Englishman Charles Griffin of the Hudson Bay Company. "It was eating my potatoes," said Cutlar, who had already warned Griffin to keep his pig out his potato patch. "It is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig," was Griffin's reply. Normally the shooting of a pig would be a small matter but American and British tempers were short in those days. Both the United States and England claimed the San Juan Islands; ill-defined boundary lines were to blame. When British authorities threatened to arrest pig-killer Cutlar, his fellow Americans called for U.S. military protection, which they got in the form of the 9th Infantry. The British responded by dispatching three warships under the command of Capt. Geoffrey Hornby. Forces on both sides grew but guns remained silent. A month passed without incident. British Rear Adm. Robert L. Bayes, commander of British Naval forces in the Pacific, did his best to avoid war. He would not, he said, "involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig." Yet the scene remained tense and potentially explosive. By August 10, American forces numbered 461; British forces numbered 2,140 with five warships. When word reached Washington, officials were shocked that the shooting of a pig could cause such an international incident. President James Buchanan dispatched General Winfield Scott, commanding general of the U.S. Army, to investigate and hopefully contain the potentially deadly affair. Scott got both sides to agree to restrain their guns while a solution was worked out. During this time, both countries kept token forces on hand. The paramount issue was who owned San Juan Island - the Americans or the British. For twelve years, including the Civil War period, the issue was debated. It wasn't until 1872 that the question was put to a third party for a decision. On October 21, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany declared the San Juan Islands American property; land north of the 49th parallel was Canadian, to the south it was American. A month later, British troops departed.
John Wesley Hardin was born in Bonham, Texas, in 1853. He was the son of James Hardin, a Methodist preacher, and was named after John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Hardin was only 12 years old when members of the Confederate Army returned home after the Civil War. The war had a powerful impact on Hardin and he developed a strong hatred of the freed slaves and killed his first black man when he was 15 years old. Hardin fled from home after the killing. In the next few weeks Hardin was to kill three more men, soldiers who had attempted to take him into custody. Hardin moved to Navarro County where he became a school teacher. This was followed by work as a cowboy. He then tried to make a living out of poker but this resulted in him killing Jim Bradley in a gambling row. Hardin's next killing took place in Kosse, Texas when a man tried to rob him. As he pointed out later: "I told him that I only had about $50 or $60 in my pocket but if he would go with me to the stable I would give him more, as I had the money in my saddle pocket ... He said, "Give me what you have first." I told him all right, and in so doing, dropped some of it on the floor. He stooped down to pick it up and as he was straightening up I pulled my pistol and fired. The ball struck him between the eyes and he fell over, a dead robber." In 1871 he was involved in taking cattle to Abilene where he met Wild Bill Hickok. Hardin later claimed he killed five men on the journey and three more at his destination. After killing four black men he was arrested by the sheriff of Cherokee County. He escaped from jail in October 1872 and was soon back in trouble with the law. On May 26, 1874, Hardin murdered Charles Webb, deputy sheriff of Brown County. Hardin fled to Florida and over the next few months killed six more men. With a $4,000 price on his head, Hardin was pursued by several bounty hunters. Eventually he was captured by Captain John Armstrong and a party of Texas Rangers at Pensacola on July 23, 1877. The following year he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was taken to Huntsville Prison in Texas and he spent his time studying law, theology, and mathematics. Hardin regained his religious faith and became superintendent of the Sunday School in prison. In 1894 Hardin was released from prison. He joined his children in Gonzales County (his wife Jane had died in November 1892) before moving to Karnes County where he married Callie Lewis on January 8, 1895. The marriage was not a success and Hardin moved to El Paso where he worked as a lawyer. Hardin also began writing his autobiography. He got in trouble in 1895 when he claimed that he paid Jeff Milton and George Scarborough to kill Martin McRose. Milton and Scarborough were arrested but Hardin later withdrew his comments and the men were released. His next dispute concerned John Selman. He began saying unpleasant things about Selman's son after he arrested Hardin's girlfriend for vagrancy. On 19th August, 1895, Selman shot John Wesley Hardin in the back of the head while he was standing at the Acme Saloon Bar.
The El Paso police found Hardin's unfinished autobiography in the house he rented in the town. It was handed over to his children and the book "Life of John Wesley Hardin as Written by Himself" was published in 1896.
The seeds of the hysteria that afflicted Salem Village, Massachusetts, were sown in January 1692 when a group of young girls began to display bizarre behavior. The tight-knit community was at a loss to explain the convulsive seizures, blasphemous screaming, and trance-like states that afflicted the youngsters. The physicians called in to examine the girls could find no natural cause of the disturbing behavior. If the source of the affliction was not attributable to a physical malady, the community reasoned that it must be the work of Satan. Witches had invaded Salem. In February the village began praying and fasting in order to rid itself of the devil's influence. The girls were pressured to reveal who in the community controlled their behavior. Three women were identified and examined. One, a slave named Tituba, confessed to seeing the devil who appeared to her "sometimes like a hog and sometimes like a great dog". Even more troubling, Tituba confessed that a conspiracy of witches permeated Salem Village. In March the afflicted girls accused Martha Corey. The three women previously denounced as colluding with the devil were marginal to the community. Martha Corey was different; she was an upstanding member of the Puritan congregation - her revelation as a witch demonstrated that Satan's influence reached to the very core of the community. Events snowballed as the accusatory atmosphere intensified and reached a fever pitch. During the period from March into the fall many were charged, examined, tried and condemned to death. The hangings started in June with the death of Bridget Bishop and continued through September. As winter approached, the hysteria played itself out as criticism of the procedures grew. In October, the colonial governor dissolved the local Court of Inquiry. The convictions and condemnations for witchery stopped. Nineteen victims of the witch-hunt had been hanged, one crushed to death under the weight of stones and at least four died in prison awaiting trial.
J. D. Tippit was born in Clarksville, Texas, in 1924. During the Second World War Tippit served in the Seventeenth Airborne Division of the United States Army from July 1944, to June 1946. Soon after leaving the army Tippit married Marie Frances Gasaway. The couple had three children. Over the next few years Tippit worked for Sears, Roebuck and Company (1948-1949) and as a farmer (1949-1950). The family eventually moved to Dallas and he joined the Dallas Police Department in July 1952. He was a successful officer and in 1956 he was cited for bravery for his role in disarming a criminal. On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy arrived in Dallas. It was decided that Kennedy and his party, including his wife, Jacqueline , Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Governor John Connally and Senator Ralph Yarborough, would travel in a procession of cars through the business district of Dallas. At about 12.30 p.m. the presidential limousine entered Elm Street. Soon afterward shots rang out. President Kennedy was hit by bullets that struck him in the head and the left shoulder. He had a massive wound to the head and at 1 p.m. the president was declared dead. Witnesses at the scene of the assassination claimed they had seen shots being fired from behind a wooden fence on the Grassy Knoll and from the Texas School Book Depository. The police investigated these claims and during a search of the Texas School Book Depository they discovered three empty cartridge cases on the floor by one of the sixth floor windows. They also found a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle hidden beneath some boxes. Employee Lee Harvey Oswald was seen in the Texas School Book Depository before and just after the shooting. At 12.33 Oswald was seen leaving the building and by 1.00 p.m arrived at his rooming house. His landlady, Earlene Roberts, later reported that soon afterward a police car drew up outside the house and sounded the horn twice and moved on. Roberts claimed that Oswald then left the house. Officer Tippit was one of the few officers in the Dallas Police Force not to be called to Dealey Plaza to help investigate the assassination. Instead, at 12.45 p.m. he was sent to the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.
At 1.16 p.m. Tippit approached a man, later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, walking along East 10th Street. Witness Domingo Benavides later testified that after a short conversation Oswald pulled out a hand gun and fired four shots point blank at Tippit. He died instantly.
The Hennepin Canal in north-central Illinois was first conceived in 1834 as a connection between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers but financial problems in the state delayed many public works projects. Pressure for transportation that was cheaper than rail convinced Congress to authorize preliminary surveys on the project in 1871. Construction began in 1892 and the first boat went through in 1907, reducing the distance from Chicago to Rock Island by 419 miles). While the canal was under construction, however, the Corps of Engineers undertook a widening of the locks on both the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. The new locks on those rivers were twenty and forty feet wider than the canal locks, making them obsolete before their initial use. In the 1930s the Hennepin Canal was used primarily for recreational traffic. The Hennepin Canal, which at one time was known as the Illinois and Mississippi Canal, was open to boat traffic until 1951 at no cost. Ice made from the canal's frozen waters was sold during the winters to help pay the canal's maintenance costs. The Hennepin was the first American canal built of concrete without stone cut facings. Although the Hennepin enjoyed only limited success as a waterway, engineering innovations used in its construction were a bonus to the construction industry. The canal was used as a training ground for engineers that later worked on the Panama Canal. Both the Hennepin and Panama Canals used concrete lock chambers and both used a feeder canal from a man made lake to water the canals because both needed water to flow uphill. There are 33 locks on the canal. All are now visible, but the first one, on the Illinois River, had been under water from the 1930s until recent times. Fourteen of the locks had Marshall gates, which are unique to the Hennepin Canal, and were raised and lowered on a horizontal axis. Five of the locks have been restored to working condition, although they are not used. One of these is a Marshall Gate lock. All of the gates from the remaining locks have been replaced with concrete walls, creating a series of waterfalls.
The Hennepin originally had nine aqueducts – concrete troughs which carried the canal and its traffic across larger rivers and streams. Six of the aqueducts remain while the other three were replaced by pipes that carry the flow under the creek or river which the canal crossed.
Born in Vermont, Lt. Lyman Kidder was a son of politician and judge Jefferson P. Kidder. On June 29, 1867, Kidder, with an Indian scout and ten enlisted men, were ordered to take dispatches from General William Sherman to Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer, camped on the Republican River in Nebraska. Lt. Kidder's party reached the encampment, but prior to their arrival, Custer had become restless and moved his force to the south, then to the northwest. When Lt. Kidder discovered Custer's force had departed he seemed to have thought Custer moved south to Fort Wallace. En route to Fort Wallace, Kidder and his troops were killed by a Sioux and Cheyenne war party. When Custer sent troopers to search for Lt. Kidder's party, they found a dead army horse on the trail, then signs of a running battle for a few miles along Beaver Creek. On July 12, Custer's scout Will Comstock found the mutilated bodies of the Kidder party north of Beaver Creek in northern Sherman County, Kansas, near present-day Goodland. The Army concluded the men were killed by a war party of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors led by Pawnee Killer. Kidder's body, identified by his shirt, was taken by his father, a judge in the Dakota territory, for burial in the family plot in St. Paul, Minnesota.The bodies of the other soldiers were taken to Fort Wallace and buried. When Fort Wallace was closed in the 1880s, the soldiers' remains were moved to Fort Leavenworth, where they were re-interred. In his book "My Life on the Plains", Custer described the massacrein these words: "Each body was pierced by from 20 to 50 arrows, and the arrows were found as the savage demons had left them, bristling in the bodies."
