On the death of James Garfield, he is succeeded as US president by vice-president Chester A. Arthur

The Chicago architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan set up a partnership

Jesse James allows into his home a new gang member, working secretly for the police, who shoots him in the back

Congress passes a Chinese Exclusion Act, in the USA's first retreat from the policy of welcoming all immigrants

Jumbo, the 'world's largest elephant', becomes the star attraction of Barnum and Bailey's touring circus

Harvard graduates J.A. Mitchell and E.S. Martin establish Life magazine as a new satirical weekly

The Supreme Court declares illegal the 1875 Civil Rights Act against segregation, thus enabling the southern states to pass racist laws

Joseph Pulitzer buys the New York World and builds circulation with sensational news and campaigns

Brooklyn Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world, is opened between Brooklyn and lower Manhattan

Mark Twain's autobiographical book Life on the Mississippi details his own personal involvement with the great river

William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, celebrates the world of the cowboy in his immensely successful Wild West Show

US entrepreneur James 'Buck' Duke wins exclusive rights in a machine that can manufacture 100,000 cigarettes a day

Huck Finn and his friend Tom Sawyer continue their exploits on the Mississippi in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

In his novel The Rise of Silas Lapham US author William Dean Howells follows the fortunes of a self-made man in Boston

The name Coca-Cola is registered by John S. Pemberton in America for a drink of cocaine, cola nuts and citrus juices

US author Frances Hodgson Burnett publishes Little Lord Fauntleroy, featuring an aristocratic child in a velvet suit

In the Haymarket Affair a demonstration in Chicago against police brutality results in deaths and subsequent executions

The Statue of Liberty, after crossing the Atlantic, is erected on Bedloe's island in the approach to New York harbour

The American Federation of Labor, with Samuel Gompers as its first president, is formed as an umbrella organization to represent all unions

The US Congress passes the Interstate Commerce Act, an early attempt to avoid the excesses of unrestrained capitalism

January blizzard and summer drought bring to an end ten years of agricultural boom in the US midwest, prompting a new slogan – 'In Kansas we busted'

The Dawes Severalty Act deprives American Indians of their tribal lands, giving each instead an allotment of up to 160 acres

Anne Sullivan works with the deaf and blind 7-year-old Helen Keller, in a relationship that will last nearly half a century

An American Indian visionary, Wovoka, launches a new religion that will bring the dead back to life, calling it the Ghost Dance

The first Land Run into Oklahoma has settlers galloping in from noon to claim territory previously reserved for American Indians