Erected in June 1892 on a nine-story building near Broadway and Twenty-third Street, the first electric sign in New York measured 60 by 68 feet and read: Buy Homes On Long Island Swept By Ocean Breezes Manhattan Beach Oriental Hotel Manhattan Hotel Gilmore’s Band Brock’s Fireworks
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton or “Mother Seton” (1774-1821) was the first native-born American to become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Born into a wealthy Episcopalian family in New York City, Seton converted to Roman Catholicism after her husband died. She founded the American Sisters of Charity, an order dedicated to helping the poor…
The New Orleans Opera, which made eight tours to New York and other cities between 1827 and 1845, was America’s first resident opera company. Specializing in French opera, the company’s reputation made New Orleans as synonymous with opera in the 19th century as it was with jazz in the 20th.
The grandfather and namesake of 1950s Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson served as vice-president from 1893 to 1897 under Grover Cleveland.
Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia Denton Grant are buried in Grant’s Tomb on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
James Naismith was teaching at The YMCA Training College, now Springfield College, in Springfield, Massachusetts when he invented basketball. Naismith invented the game for his students in the winter of 1891-92 to provide indoor exercise between the football and baseball seasons.