On the very day Custer died at the Little Bighorn, Bell was showing off the telephone.
On 25 June 1876 Brazil's Emperor Pedro II tried it at the Philadelphia Centennial, while in Montana the Lakota and Cheyenne routed the cavalry.
The events
- Battle of the Little Bighorn1876 · Little Bighorn, Montana. On 25–26 June 1876 Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse routed the 7th Cavalry. Lt Col Custer and every man with him were killed; on the same day the telephone was being demonstrated in Philadelphia.
- Invention of the telephone1876 · Boston. In March 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for the telephone and days later spoke the first words over a wire to his assistant. Long-distance voice communication transformed business, daily life and government.
More amazing facts
- 1875 Mendeleev corrected the discoverer of an element he had never seen.
- 1876 · 1877 Bell wanted people to answer the telephone with a sailor's 'Ahoy!'. What stuck was 'Hello!', suggested by Thomas Edison in 1877.
- 1876 The telephone and the end of samurai swords arrived together: Bell patented the telephone in March 1876, and on 28 March Japan banned carrying swords in public.
- 1876 The telephone was invented twice on the same day. On 14 February 1876 both Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray filed papers for similar devices at the patent office, and who came first was fought over in court for years.
- 1877 · 1881 Samurai and cowboys were contemporaries: the samurai's last stand at Shiroyama came in September 1877, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral just four years later, in 1881.
- 1877 · 1894 An Arizona observatory was built to study Martian canals.