January 7: Anna Case, lyric soprano with the Metropolitan Opera, who married Clarence Hungerford Mackay (one of the wealthiest men in America) in 1931, died on this date in 1984.

January 6: In the culmination of a lovers’ quarrel over the affections of Josie Mansfield, Edward Stokes guns down Colonel Jim Fisk on the steps of Broadway’s Grand Central Hotel on this date in 1872.

January 5: Peter F. Dailey, burlesque comedian whose epitaph reads, “He Laughed And The World Laughed With Him” (what more could any comedian want?), was born on this date in 1861.

January 4: Co-founder with his brothers of what would become one of the largest private banks in America, now Brown Brothers Harriman, James Brown was born on this date in 1794.

January 3: James Merritt Ives, partner in the famous print-making firm of Currier and Ives, died on this date in 1894.

January 2: Elected to Congress and the developer of the Potter Building at 38 Park Row in Manhattan 1882-1886, the latest in fireproof construction (and now a New York City Landmark), Orlando Bronson Potter also co-founded the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Company to build other fireproof buildings. He died on this date in 1894.

January 1: Tom Hyer was born on this date in 1819; he would win the bare-knuckle boxing championship of America in 1841, triumphing in 101 rounds.

December 31: On this date in 1862, the the pioneering ironclad ship, USS Monitor, sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras despite the heroic efforts of Acting Master Louis Napoleon Stodder.

December 30: William Hallock Park, who established the first municipal bacteriological diagnostics laboratory in the United States, was born on this date in 1863; he died in 1939.

December 29: Louis Michel Eilshemius, eccentric artist, died on this date in 1941.