﻿ February 19 | This day in history
This Day In History
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
On This Day


in 1847

The first group of rescuers reaches the Donner Party. The Donner Party was an 87-member group of American pioneers who set out in a wagon train going westward, until getting bound in by snow in the Sierra Nevada. Casualties were extremely high and many of the survivors cannibalized members of the party who had already died. The wagons left Missouri for California in May of 1846. Encouraged to try a new, faster route across Utah and Nevada, they opted to take the Hastings Cutoff, proposed by Lansford Hastings who had never taken the journey with wagons. The Cutoff required the wagons to traverse Utah's Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert, and slowed the party considerably, leading to the loss of wagons, horses, and cattle. It also forced them to engage in heavy labor by clearing the path ahead of them, and created deep divisions between members of the party. They had planned to be in California by September, but found themselves trapped in the Sierra Nevada by early November.
Donner Party, American pioneers

in 1878

Thomas Edison patents the...
Edison, phonograph

in 1986

Space station «Mir»
Space station «Mir»
Mir, space station, space


in 1473
Nicolaus Copernicus

in 1743
Luigi Boccherini



in 197
Clodius Albinus

in 1997
Deng Xiaoping
