Colonel William S. Harney was commander of the Department of Oregon and was involved in the 1859 so-called "Pig War" with Britain over the possession of various islands between Vancouver Island and the United States. Diplomacy had settled the problem but Harney continued to act vigorously.  When the British warned of ramifications, he was relieved of command and ordered to report to Washington D.C. on June 8, 1860.  He was reprimanded but soon after given command of the Department of the West.  (By John Osborne)

Robert Bacon was born in Massachusetts and attended Harvard University, where he befriended Theodore Roosevelt.  He worked in business, becoming a partner at J.P. Morgan, before entering the foreign service.  He was Assistant-Secretary of State from 1905 and in 1909 was appointed Secretary of State for the last months of his old friend Theodore Roosevelt's presidency.  He was later ambassador to Paris and served with the AEF in France in 1917.  He died in 1919.  (By John Osborne)   

Emperor Norton I, troubled by the turmoil of the upcoming presidential election, declared the United States republic dissolved and announced an absolute monarchy.   Joshua Norton was born to a Jewish family in England and arrived in San Francisco in the 1850s where he became a wealthy businessman.  He was bankrupt, however, by 1853, and became mentally deranged.  He declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859 and, later, Protector of Mexico. San Franciscans adopted Norton as a popular figure in the city.  He died "in office" in 1880. (By John Osborne)

The ten acre Nevai Shalom Cemetery was dedicated as the second Jewish Cemetery in San Francisco, California on grounds in what is now Mission Dolores Park.  The Hebrew Cemetery, the first, had opened in 1850 in Pacific Heights but had moved in April, 1860, also to the Dolores Park.   The Nevai Shalom held around three hundred graves when it closed in 1888 and relocated to Colma, in San Mateo County.  (By John Osborne)

The San Francisco Market Street Railway Company had been founded by Thomas Hayes in 1857.  It laid tracks on city streets during 1859 and in July 1860 opened its first service, running down Market Street and out to Seventeenth Street. It used horse-drawn cars but also steam engines housed in a normal railroad carriage.  The track became the nucleus of the Market Street Cable Railway Company in 1873.  (By John Osborne)  

Fernando Wood, the Democratic mayor of New York City proposed in a letter to the press that the splintered Democrats vote strategically in the upcoming presidential election in order to defeat Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans.  In states where Douglas was most popular, he posited, Democrats should vote Douglas, while where Breckinridge was favored they should vote Breckinridge.  The result then would be worked out in the Electoral College.  (By John Osborne) 

Around nine in the evening, the steam tugboat A.S. Field suffered a sudden boiler explosion while sitting dockside in Detroit, Michigan. Wooden remnants of the tug showered down in houses near the lakeside, five of the seven people aboard the vessel were killed, and engine parts were found up to three hundred feet away.  (By John Osborne)