In the costliest maritime disaster seen yet on the Pacific Coast, the steamer Brother Jonathan, heading from San Francisco, California to Portland, Oregon, struck a rock near Crescent City and sank in a massive storm.  Only one boat got away in the heavy seas and of the 185 passengers and a sizeable crew, only ninteen people survived, eleven men, five women, and three children survived. Several important personages bound for Oregon and up to $2,000,000 in gold went down with the ship.  (By John Osborne) 

Three days after preaching on wasteground in Whitechapel, East London, former Methodist evangelist William Booth opened his first mission amongst the poor of the area.  Later called the Christian Mission, Booth's effort would grow to become the Salvation Army in 1878, and spread throughout the world to its strength of more than a million members today.  Booth became its first "General" and served till his death in August 1912.  Forty thousand people attended his funeral.  (By John Osborne)

William Butler Yeats, one of the most accomplished poets of modern times, was born in Dublin in Ireland, the son of a well-known portrait painter.  He grew up in County Sligo and began writing poetry at age fifteen. Achieving fame as a writer, he supported Irish independence, then served in the Irish Senate.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.  He lived in the south of France later in life and died there in 1939, aged seventy-three.  (By John Osborne)