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The events of July 26 · Read the full edition → · More from July 26 →
19081776 Club

Bonaparte quietly builds a federal police force Congress just told him he couldn't have

Barred from borrowing Secret Service men, the Attorney General hires his own investigators instead.

Seven years after an anarchist shot President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt wanted the federal government able to watch anarchists without waiting on local police or borrowed Treasury agents. Congress had other ideas: on May 27, 1908, it barred the Justice Department from using Secret Service employees for its investigations. On July 26, Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte answered by hiring thirty-four men of his own, using department expense funds, then putting them under a new Bureau of Investigation reporting directly to him. He told Congress about it that December, after the fact…

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More from July 26
1941

Washington cuts off Japan's oil; London and the Dutch follow within days

Tokyo's push into southern Indochina triggers an embargo that erases four-fifths of Japan's oil supply.
1775

Congress cuts the cord to London's mail: Franklin named postmaster general

A line of posts is ordered from Falmouth to Savannah, and the emerging nation gets its own way to talk to itself.
1861

Five days after Bull Run, Lincoln hands his broken army to McClellan

The thirty-four-year-old general inherits a demoralized force and calls the deference of Lincoln, the Cabinet, and Scott a 'strange operation of magic'.
19451776 Club
Stalin sits out the ultimatum since Moscow is not yet at war with Tokyo, but promises to sign on once it is.
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More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1910

Taft signs Glacier into law; a million Montana acres become a national park

George Bird Grinnell, who first rode into the region in 1885 and spent two decades lobbying Congress, calls it "the Crown of the Continent."
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1882

Guiteau hangs at the Washington jail; Garfield's killer takes nine months to follow him

The self-declared savior of the Republican Party had bought his ivory-gripped revolver with a museum in mind. The jury was not sympathetic.
1898

Roosevelt and the Buffalo Soldiers take Kettle Hill; San Juan Heights fall to the Fifth Corps

Outnumbered 16-to-1, Spanish defenders under Linares y Pombo inflict punishing losses before the heights are carried and the road to Santiago opens.
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