1892 Archives | HISTORY

On New Year’s Day 1892, Annie Moore, a teenage girl from Ireland, becomes the very first immigrant to be processed on America’s Ellis Island. Annie, along with her two younger brothers, kick off an immigration era that, over the next 62 years, brings more than 12 million immigrants through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast.

A massive mine explosion leaves nearly 100 dead in Krebs, Oklahoma, on January 7, 1892. The disaster, the worst mining catastrophe in Oklahoma’s history, was mainly due to the mine owner’s emphasis on profits over safety.

On June 19, 1892, Francesca Rojas’ two young children—a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl—are stabbed to death in their home in the small town of Necochea, Argentina. Rojas tells police that a man named Velasquez had threatened her when she rejected his sexual advances earlier in the day. Upon returning home later, Rojas claimed to have seen Velasquez escaping out her open door. The case would become the first to be solved by fingerprint identification.

On August 4, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden are found hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Andrew was discovered in a pool of blood on the living room couch, his face nearly split in two. Abby was upstairs, her head smashed to pieces; it was later determined that she was killed first.

On October 5, 1892, the famous Dalton Gang attempts the daring daylight robbery of two Coffeyville, Kansas, banks at the same time. But if the gang members believed the sheer audacity of their plan would bring them success, they were sadly mistaken. Instead, they were nearly all killed by quick-acting townspeople.

On October 14, 1892, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is published. The book was the first collection of Holmes stories, which Conan Doyle had been publishing in magazines since 1887.

On December 17, 1892, Arthur Baldwin Turnure first publishes a new magazine, dedicated to “the ceremonial side of life” and targeted at “the sage as well as the debutante, men of affairs as well as the belle.” A product of the Gilded Age, Vogue has chronicled and influenced high society, fashion and culture ever since.