The American bark Rover had sailed from Swatow three days before, carrying cargo along the Chinese coast to the northern port of Newchwang, present-day Yingkou.  Encountering bad weather, the vessel was driven onto rocks and sunk at the extreme southern tip of the island of Taiwan, then termed Formosa.  The captain, his wife, and his crew escaped by boat but on landing were immediately attacked and killed by the area's Paiwan aboriginal inhabitants who had had increasingly hostile encounters with westerners and Chinese travellers. An immediate British naval effort from H.M.S. Cormorant to come to the aid of the Rover survivors took place on March 26, 1867 but was too small to resist attacks from locals and withdrew.  A later and larger  U.S. Navy attempt in June 1867 to punish those responsible was similarly repulsed.  (By John Osborne) 

On February 14, 1867, in the north-eastern North Carolina hamlet of Harmon's Crossroads in Bertie County, a crowd of white male residents had dragged a young African-American woman in her twenties named Phillis Ruffin out of the school she was attending, took her into the woods, stripped her, and beat her unmercifully for some minutes.  Her offense was that she had resisted blows from a white girl during an argument several days before.  The case drew increasing notoriety across the United States and resulted in General David Sickles, the Second District's military commander, facilitating a military trial of ten of the men in the mob that resulted in sentences at hard labor for seven of them. On this day, Sickles upheld the sentences with only the complaint that they were too lenient, and ordered that incarceration be carried out immediately at the the military prison in Plymouth.  (By John Osborne)  

On February 14, 1867, in the north-eastern North Carolina hamlet of Harmon's Crossroads in Bertie County, a crowd of white male residents had dragged a young African-American woman in her twenties named Phillis Ruffin out of the school she was attending, took her into the woods, stripped her, and beat her unmercifully for some minutes.  Her offense was that she had resisted blows from a white girl during an argument several days before.  The case drew increasing notoriety across the United States and resulted in the Second District's military commander facilitating a military trial of ten of the men in the mob that began on this day and  resulted in sentences at hard labor for seven of them.  (By John Osborne)  

In the north-eastern North Carolina hamlet of Harmon's Crossroads in Bertie County, a crowd of white male residents dragged a young African-American woman in her twenties named Phillis Ruffin out of the school she was attending, took her into the woods, stripped her, and beat her unmercifully for some minutes.  Her offense leading to this punishment of more than a hundred lashes and the ten days of painful incapacitation that followed was that she had resisted blows from a white girl during an argument several days before.  The case drew increasing notoriety across the United States and resulted in the local Second District's military commander facilitating a trial in June 1867 of ten of the men in the mob that resulted in sentences at hard labor for seven of them.  (By John Osborne)  

Sir Frederick Bruce, the youngest son of the Earl of Elgin, was a career diplomat who had served in China, South America, and Egypt before being named to replace Lord Lyons as Britain's ambassador to the United States.  He arrived in Washington just before the death of Abraham Lincoln and served as a popular and effective diplomat until his sudden death in Boston, Massachusetts on this day. His body was returned to Scotland for burial.  He was fifty-three years old.  (By John Osborne)

West Point graduate Charles Griffin had risen from captain to major general during the Civil War and in 1865 had taken up the office of assistant commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau in Texas under General Philip Sheridan.  His strict efforts to exclude former Confederates from political and judicial offices had stoked controversy but when Sheridan left command of the Fifth District, Griffin was named as his replacement. Before he could travel to New Orleans to take up that post, he fell ill in the Yellow Fever epidemic ravaging Texas and died in Galveston.  He was forty-one years old.  (By John Osborne)

New York newspapers reported a merchant shipping disaster involving around 250 vessels suddenly trapped in heavy floating ice in the White Sea off Archangel, Russia.  Ice packed around many of the merchant ships, swiftly trapping and destroying dozens, according to reports from the British consul aboard one of the ships on the scene.  (By John Osborne)

The International Ocean Telegraph Company was incorporated in December 1865 with plans to lay extensive overland and submarine cable to connect the United States telegraphically with Central and South America, beginning with Cuba.  The company on this day less than two years later completed the Havana venture, connecting the Punta Rassa to Key West to Cuba submarine lines with their overland line to Lake City, Florida and then on to Washington D.C. over Western Union wires. Secretary of State William Seward was able on September 11, 1867 to exchange messages with the Spanish captain-general Joaquin del Manzano. By 1873, the Cuban line was handling more that fifty thousand messages a year between Punta Rassa and Havana. (By John Osborne)

The International Ocean Telegraph Company was incorporated on this day with plans to lay extensive overland and submarine cable to connect the United States telegraphically with Central and South America, beginning with Cuba.  Union Army Civil War general William "Baldy" Smith was named as president.  The company was successful in its Cuban venture and connected Washington D.C. with Havana in September 1867, via Punta Rassa and Key West in Florida.  By 1873, the Cuban line was handling more that fifty thousand messages a year and the company was booming. (By John Osborne)