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Today is September13, 2026 Sunday.

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The World in 1872 the year the horses fell ill

Yellowstone was set aside at over two million acres, which is a bigger patch of ground than the whole state of Delaware.

Life back then

Almost everything in a town moved because a horse pulled it: streetcars, fire engines, beer wagons, the mail. That autumn a sickness now called equine influenza ran through the stables of North America. Horses stood coughing in their stalls and cities slowed to a walk. Men pushed streetcars by hand, freight piled up on the docks, and when fire broke out in Boston in November the engines had to be dragged to it.

The year in 8 events

• 🖼️Feb 20 The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens to the public in a rented house in New York.
• 🏞️Mar 1 President Grant signs Yellowstone into law, the first national park anywhere.
• 🕯️Jul 18 Benito Juarez dies at his desk in Mexico City. He had led Mexico since 1858.
• 💷Sep 14 A panel in Geneva orders Britain to pay the United States 15.5 million dollars for warships it built for the Confederacy.
• 🚂Oct 14 Japan opens its first railway, 18 miles from Tokyo to Yokohama. The emperor rides the first train.
• 🗳️Nov 5 Susan B. Anthony votes in Rochester, New York. She is arrested two weeks later.
• ⚽Nov 30 Scotland and England play the first official football international, in Glasgow. It ends 0-0.
• ⛵Dec 5 The Mary Celeste is found sailing the Atlantic with nobody aboard and her cargo untouched.

Who Was in Charge?

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