What Happened in March 1855

Historical Events

Event of Interest

Mar 11 Bowery Boys gang leader William Poole aka "Bill the Butcher" is buried in Brooklyn with 155 carriages and 6,000 mourners

Gang Leader Bill the Butcher — Gang Leader
Bill the Butcher

Mar 15 Louisiana establishes 1st health board to regulate quarantine
Mar 24 Manhattan Kansas founded as New Boston Kansas

Historic Invention

Mar 27 Abraham Gesner patents kerosene

Physician and Geologist Abraham Gesner — Physician and Geologist
Abraham Gesner

Famous Birthdays

Mar 1 Paul Hines, American MLB outfielder (Triple Crown 1878, Providence Grays), born in Virginia (d. 1935)
Mar 12 John White, American composer (d. 1902)
Mar 13 Percival "Percy" Lowell, American astronomer (predicted discovery of Pluto), born in Boston, Massachusetts (d. 1916)

Andrew Mellon

Mar 24 Andrew Mellon, American banker (Mellon Bank), industrialist and Secretary of the Treasury (1921-32), born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (d. 1947)

Mar 24 Olive Schreiner, South African writer (Portrait of a South African Woman)
Mar 27 Alfred Ewing, Scottish Physicist (magnetic properties of metals, hysteresis), born in Dundee, Angus, Scotland (d. 1935)
Mar 31 Alfred E. Hunt, founder of Alcoa (d. 1899)

Famous Deaths

Mar 2 Nicholas I Pavlovitch, tsar of Russia (1825-55), dies at 58

Bill the Butcher

Mar 8 William Poole, Infamous member of New York City's Bowery Boys gang, dies of a gunshot wound at 33

Mar 17 Ramon Carnicer y Batlle, Spanish composer, dies at 65
Mar 20 Joseph Aspdin, English mason and inventor (b. 1788)
Mar 29 Henri Druey, Swiss politician and a founding father of constitutional democracy in Switzerland, dies at 55

Charlotte Brontë

Mar 31 Charlotte Brontë, English novelist (Jane Eyre), dies at 38

On This Day