Recently arrived in China after a year long journey from home waters, the 1032 ton steam sloop U.S.S. Wachusett had begun operations to deter Chinese bandits then harassing American diplomats, businessmen, and missionaries. At Yingtze on the Gulf of Chichii, the U.S. Consul had appealed for help where fearful local authorities were refusing to take action against a large bandit group. Wachusett's captain, Commander Robert Townsend, ran out of patience, and landed more than a hundred sailors and marines under Lieutenant J.W. Philip who surrounded the bandit's village in a night operation that captured their chieftain and other ringleaders.  (By John Osborne)

In present-day Powder River County, Wyoming, the strongly resisted U.S. Army incursion into Sioux and Cheyenne Territory had escalated into what later was called Red Cloud's War. Around the new Fort Phil Kearny, army wood cutting details were becoming routinely attacked.  Sent to the relief of such an attack, eighty-one men in a combined force of Second Cavalry troopers and Eighteenth Infantry, under the command of Captain William J. Fetterman, were decoyed into an ambush led by the Oglala Sioux war chief Crazy Horse. Every man in the detachment was killed giving the U.S. Army its heaviest defeat against Plains Indians up to that point. Native Americans called the victory the Battle of the Hundred Slain. (By John Osborne) 

The United States Navy's most prominent Civil War leader, David Glasgow Farragut, was promoted to the rank of Admiral, newly created in the United States Congress and effective this day. (By John Osborne)