Images in History

Edward S. "Ned Stokes (1841-1901) (top left, standing at top of stairs), fatally shoots James "Big Jim" Fisk, Jr. (1835-1872) on January 6, 1872 at New York's Grand Hotel. Fisk was a stockbroker and a colossal stock swindler, who gleaned millions in the late 1860s by flooding the market with bogus stock certificates. He and fellow entrepreneur, Jay Gould (1836-1892) (top right) attempted to corner the gold market, aided by collusion of members of President U.S. Grant's administration (Fisk is shown entertaining President Grant on his yacht at bottom left) on September 29, 1869, which resulted in a Wall Street collapse (Black Friday). Stokes shot Fisk out of revenge, after a grand jury indicted him for blackmailing Fisk. Stokes, with Fisk's estranged mistress, Josie Mansfield (1849-1931) (bottom right), had threatened to expose Fisk's love letters to Mansfield unless Fisk paid them off. Stokes, identified by Fisk in a dying declaration as his killer, was sent to prison for four to six years on a conviction of manslaughter.

England's Henry VIII (1491-1547), shown at left, marries his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves (1515-1557), shown at right, on January 6, 1540. The marriage was later annulled by Henry.

Calvin Coolidge (John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.; 1872-1933), Republican Governor of Massachusetts (1919-1921), leaves the governorship on January 6, 1921, to become the twenty-ninth Vice President of the U.S. (1921-1923). With the untimely death of President Warren G. Harding, Coolidge became the thirtieth President of the U.S. (1923-1929).

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) celebrates his eighty-fifth birthday and his newest book of seventy-seven poems in Honey and Salt at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on January 6, 1963.

Cowboy star Tom Mix
Born January 6, 1880
Died October 12, 1940
In advertisement for
My Pal, The King (1932)

Actress Loretta Young
Born January 6, 1913
Died August 12, 2000
Shown in 1961 starring
in The Loretta Young
Show (1953-61)

Radio star Alice Frost
Born August 1, 1905
Died January 6, 1998
Shown with radio actor
Joseph Curtin as the
sleuthing Mr. and Mrs. North

Film director Victor Fleming
Born February 23, 1889
Died January 6, 1949
Shown with Jean Harlow
directing Blonde Bombshell (1933)

American mountain-climber, geologist and Yale University graduate, Clarence King (January 6, 1842 - December 24, 1901), shown top left on a mountain climb. King, shown top right (center foreground on horseback with the 1875 Hayden Survey of Colorado) was first director of the U.S. Geological Survey (1879-1881). King was noted for his exploration of Utah, shown bottom left with his climbing party at the Wasatch Range in an 1869 painting, and the Sierra Nevada, shown bottom right, standing left at a U.S. Army camp outside Carson City, Nevada. King led a strange, double life, becoming obsessed with Ada Copeland, a black nursemaid and former slave living in New York City. King somehow convinced Copeland that he was also black (despite his having bright blue eyes) and was a Pullman porter working on the railroads (which explained his long absences). He hid his common-law marriage to Copeland because of the widespread condemnation for mixed marriages at the time (miscegenation) and did not disclose his true race to her until writing a letter to Copeland from his deathbed in far off Arizona.