Joseph Henry Miller (born 1854)

In 1854, in the year that Joseph Henry Miller was born, on May 30th, the Kansas–Nebraska Act became law. The act created both the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory, which would determine for themselves if they would be pro-slavery or free. Both territories allowed slavery but it caused contention within the territories.

In 1865, on July 5th, the U.S. Secret Service was created. The first duty of the Secret Service was investigating counterfeit money. Duties soon expanded to murder, bank robbery, and illegal gambling - and, after the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, presidential protection.

In 1906, author Upton Sinclair exposed the public-health threat of the meat-packing industry in his book The Jungle. While his intent was to show the lives of exploited lives of immigrants in Chicago and other industrialized cities, most people were horrified by how the meat that ended up on their tables was handled. There was such an outcry that legislation was passed to regulate meat packing. Sinclair said " "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

In 1914, in August, the world's first red and green traffic lights were installed at the corner of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland Ohio. The electric traffic light had been invented by a policeman in Salt Lake City Utah in 1912.

In 1929, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre happened on February 14th. In Chicago, seven men from the North Side Irish gang were gunned down by Al Capone's South Side Italian gang at the garage at 2122 North Clark Street. Al Capone was making a successful move to take over Chicago's organized crime. But the St. Valentine's Day massacre also resulted in a public outcry against all gangsters.