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18811776 Club

Guiteau shoots Garfield twice from behind; the president is carried from the Baltimore and Potomac station

An office seeker with a .44 revolver stalked the president for weeks; Garfield had no bodyguard when he entered the station this morning.

James Garfield had been president for less than four months and had no bodyguard when he walked into the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station on July 2, 1881, headed for a train to Williams College. Charles Guiteau, a delusional office seeker who believed he was owed a diplomatic post for campaign work Garfield barely remembered, had stalked him for weeks. At 9:30 that morning, Guiteau shot Garfield twice from behind with a .44 British Bulldog revolver. Garfield lingered for eleven weeks before dying that September in New Jersey…

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More from July 2
1776

Congress votes: these colonies are free and independent states

New York abstains, lacking instructions; twelve delegations say yes, and John Adams is certain the date will be remembered forever.
1964

Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act; King watches as a year's promise becomes law

The bill survived 72 days of Senate delay to pass 73 to 27, outlawing discrimination by race, sex, religion, and national origin in schools, workplaces, and public accommodations.
1863

Out of ammunition, Chamberlain orders the bayonet; the 20th Maine sweeps Little Round Top

The Union left had no plan to hold the hill; Oates's 15th Alabama breaks when the Maine men charge downhill, and a portion of the regiment is taken.
19371776 Club
At 7:58 a.m. she cannot hear the Itasca and asks for voice signals; a final transmission comes in, then silence over 2,556 miles of open Pacific.
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More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1881

Arthur takes the oath before dawn, in his own parlor

A New York judge administers the presidency at 2:15 in the morning, hours after Garfield dies of his wounds.
1908

First production Model T leaves the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit

Twenty horsepower, vanadium steel, and a price aimed square at the middle class.
1889

Gunmen behind a boulder hit Wham's paymaster convoy; eight Buffalo Soldiers wounded, $28,345 gone

A dozen riflemen firing from pre-built breastworks above an Arizona gorge stripped the Army payroll; Frankie Campbell's horse was still picking around the obstacle when the ambush opened.
1910

Taft signs Glacier into law; a million Montana acres become a national park

George Bird Grinnell, who first rode into the region in 1885 and spent two decades lobbying Congress, calls it "the Crown of the Continent."
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