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19151776 Club

Liberty Bell boards a westbound train; Philadelphia vows it will never leave home again

Souvenir hunters have already chipped away more than one percent of its weight; the bell is bound for San Francisco's Panama-Pacific Exposition, its first trip west of St. Louis.

By 1915, the Liberty Bell had survived six trips out of Philadelphia since 1885, and souvenir hunters had already chipped away more than one percent of its weight. In 1915, it left again anyway, loaded onto a special train bound for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The journey covered thousands of miles, with the bell traveling by train to the West Coast and back on a different route., with the city ultimately agreeing to let it travel since it had never been west of St. Louis. Philadelphia's custodians made clear this would be the last time the bell left home…

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More from July 5
1814

Scott's regulars break Riall's line at Chippawa; the British general had taken them for militia

After 25 minutes of volley fire on open ground near the Niagara, the Right Division's lines collapse and American regulars prove they can stand against British veterans.
1775

Congress sends King George a loyalty oath and a list of grievances; the delegates call it their olive branch

Hancock and the full Congress sign the petition in Philadelphia, and envoys Richard Penn and Arthur Lee are bound for London with the appeal.
1859

Captain Brooks claims a mid-Pacific atoll for the United States; he calls it the Middlebrook Islands

The sealing ship Gambia raised the flag under the Guano Islands Act, planting a U.S. claim a third of the way between Honolulu and Tokyo.
18521776 Club
Speaking the day after Independence Day at Corinthian Hall, he calls slavery "the great sin and shame of America" before a mostly white crowd invited by the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society.
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Read the full July 5 edition →Everything that happened on July 5 →
More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1881

Garrett fires in the dark, and Billy the Kid is dead at twenty-one

The outlaw walks into Pete Maxwell's bedroom at Fort Sumner asking "¿Quién es?"; Garrett's first shot strikes just above the heart.
1914

Congress creates an aviation section inside the Signal Corps; $250,000 to get it started

Public Law 143 gives the Army's handful of planes a formal home, but keeps aviation folded inside the Signal Corps rather than making it a branch of its own.
1893

A schoolteacher rides a mule to 14,000 feet and writes a poem called "Pikes Peak"

Katharine Lee Bates jots the first lines in a notebook, with a nation in economic depression spread out below her.
1898

The American flag rises over ʻIolani Palace; Hawaii's sovereignty ends in a ceremony

Queen Liliʻuokalani stays away, waiting out the hour at Washington Place instead.
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