Edward Payson Weston sets out to walk from Portland, Maine to Chicago in thirty days.

At noon in the city center of Portland, Maine, twenty-eight year old Edward Payson Weston set out for Chicago on foot.  He had engaged in a wager for $10,000 with gambler T.F. Wilcox that he could walk from Portland to Chicago in thirty consecutive days, excluding Sundays.  The event was extensively covered in the regional and national press and when Weston reached Chicago city limits just after nine in the morning of November 28, 1867, one day earlier than the deadline, he was welcomed by 50,000 people and was already a household name.  The feat was crucial in the rise of the remarkable popularity in the following decades of what was called "pedestrianism." (By John Osborne)