May 21st...This Day in History (Now with links to other events)

American Red Cross founded 1881

 

In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.

Barton, born in Massachusetts in 1821, worked with the sick and wounded during the American Civil War and became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” for her tireless dedication. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commissioned her to search for lost prisoners of war, and with the extensive records she had compiled during the war she succeeded in identifying thousands of the Union dead at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp.

She was in Europe in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and she went behind the German lines to work for the International Red Cross. In 1873, she returned to the United States, and four years later she organized an American branch of the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912.

 (More Events on This Day in History)

• American Revolution

• 1758 Lenape Indians abduct Mary Campbell from western Pennsylvania

• Automotive

• 1901 Connecticut enacts first speed-limit law

• Civil War

• 1863 The Siege of Port Hudson begins

• Cold War

• 1988 Gorbachev consolidates power

• Crime

• 1924 Leopold and Loeb gain national attention
• 1992 Long Island Lolita is arrested
• 1996 A veteran’s flashback defense doesn’t hold up in court

• Disaster

• 1960 Huge earthquake hits Chile

• General Interest

• 1542 De Soto dies in the American wilderness
• 1927 Lindbergh lands in Paris
• 1932 Earhart completes transatlantic flight

• Hollywood

• 1999 Soap star Susan Lucci wins first Emmy after 19 nominations

• Literary

• 1910 Serialization of Colette’s The Vagabond begins

• Music

• 1955 Chuck Berry records “Maybellene”

• Old West

• 1539 Black Spanish explorer Estevan is reported killed

• Presidential

• 2000 Garfield’s spine on display at museum

• Sports

• 1978 Nancy Lopez wins her first Coca-Cola Classic

• Vietnam War

• 1969 Military spokesman defends “Hamburger Hill”

• World War I

• 1911 Second Moroccan Crisis

• World War II

• 1940 Nazis kill “unfit” people in East Prussia
• 1942 Thousands of Jews die in Nazi gas chambers; IG Farber sets up factory