The outlaw Belle Starr is killed when an unknown assailant fatally wounds the famous “Bandit Queen” with two shotgun blasts from behind.

On March 18, 1889, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte becomes the first Native American woman to graduate from medical school. She was top of her class at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries and 200 construction workers.

On April 16, 1889, future Hollywood legend Charlie Chaplin is born Charles Spencer Chaplin in London, England.

At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land.

On May 31, 1889, Pennsylvania's South Fork Dam collapses, causing the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. More than 2,200 people die in the disaster.

On June 6, 1889, a fire ignites in a Seattle woodworking shop and sweeps through some 100 acres, destroying much of the city’s business district and waterfront. The Great Seattle Fire culminates in losses estimated at $20 million—and serves as a turning point in the city’s history.

In a drunken rage, “Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone sex worker Mollie Edwards, a.k.a. Blonde Mollie Williams.

Having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged.

On September 30, 1889, the Wyoming state convention approves a constitution that includes a provision granting women the right to vote. Formally admitted into the union the following year, Wyoming thus became the first state in the history of the nation to allow its female citizens to vote.