The well-known clipper-ship Hornet had sailed from New York for San Francisco in January but with its voyage almost complete caught fire in the Pacific.  The fire burned all day giving Captain Josiah Mitchell time to get his thirty crew and passengers into three boats.  The boats were seperated but Mitchell's boat, with fourteen men aboard, embarked on an epic 4000 mile voyage, making land safely on June 15, 1866 on the island of Hawaii.  The other boats, with 17 men, were never heard from again.  (By John Osborne)

A heavy storm struck the harbor at Ancona, Italy where Italian naval units were sheltering after the hard fought battle with an Austrian fleet off the island of Lissa on July 20, 1866.  The British-built, 4000 ton ironclad Affondatore had been hit with a score of shells at Lissa and either this damage or her low freeboard caused her to ship water and slowly sink on this day.  She was later refloated and continued in the Italian naval service.  (By John Osborne)

As early as 1862, Governor Marcus Ward of New Jersey had taken an interest in the welfare of the state's Civil War soldiers and had helped institute a military hospital at Newark that became the New Jersey Home for Disabled Soldiers following the war.  Built at state expense, it held more than fifty injured veterans when it was formally dedicated on this day at an impressive ceremony.  (By John Osborne).  

In the morning hours, a massive explosion on a schooner loaded with crude oil, set off a remarkable conflagration at the Petroleum Dock in Jersey City that burned all day.  Other vessels moored at the dock, many of them also loaded, along with a train of railroad cars delivering crude oil to the pier were set afire and almost all destroyed.  Fire crews were helpless but managed, with the help of a wind in the right direction, to limit the blaze to the docks.  No serious casualties were reported but the damages was estimated at the time at two million dollars.  (By John Osborne)

The cornerstone of the monument to former Democratic senator and presidential candidate Stephen Arnold Douglas, who died of typhoid in June 1861,  was laid and dedicated at an impressive ceremony in Chicago, Illinois.  General John Adams Dix was the main speaker and President Andrew Johnson and his party, on his "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour, was also in attendance. The monument, completed in 1881, was built over the statesman's grave and measured 96 feet in all, including a ten foot statue of Douglas.  (By John Osborne)

In an effort to garner electoral support for President Andrew Johnson's policies towards the defeated South in the upcoming mid-term elections, Democrats and invited "moderates" assembled in Philadelphia in the "National Union Convention."  In a specially constructed building on Girard Street, the convention opened dramatically when Massachusetts governor Darius Crouch and South Carolina governor James Lawrence Ord entering the chamber arm-in-arm.  The "Arm-in Arm Convention" built morale for the restoration of the Democratic Party but did little to blunt Republican success in the November elections.  (By John Osborne)

A late hurricane had caught a number of ships off the coast of South Carolina and the Star Line steamship Evening Star on its regular run from New Orleans to New York City foundered with a heavy loss of the lives of most aboard, which included among them a New Orleans female opera company and a circus troupe. Of the 270 people aboard only twenty-two were reported to have survived, floating on upturned lifeboats in three small groups for days before being rescued or reaching land.  (By John Osborne)