January 25 » The London Corresponding Society is founded.
February 20 » The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by United States President George Washington.
April 2 » The Coinage Act is passed establishing the United States Mint.
April 20 » France declares war against the "King of Hungary and Bohemia", the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.
April 21 » Tiradentes, a revolutionary leading a movement for Brazil's independence, is hanged, drawn and quartered.
August 13 » King Louis XVI of France is formally arrested by the National Tribunal, and declared an enemy of the people.
Day of death February 20, 1878
The temperature on February 20, 1878 was about 1.4 °C. The air pressure was 3 kgf/m2 and came mainly from the south-southeast. The airpressure was 77 cm mercury. The atmospheric humidity was 96%. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from November 3, 1877 to August 20, 1879 the cabinet Kappeijne van de Coppello, with Mr. J. Kappeijne van de Coppello (liberaal) as prime minister.
January 16 » Russo-Turkish War (1877–78): Battle of Philippopolis: Captain Aleksandr Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule.
January 28 » Yale Daily News becomes the first independent daily college newspaper in the United States.
May 14 » The last witchcraft trial held in the United States begins in Salem, Massachusetts, after Lucretia Brown, an adherent of Christian Science, accused Daniel Spofford of attempting to harm her through his mental powers.
June 4 » Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
June 10 » League of Prizren is established, to oppose the decisions of the Congress of Berlin and the Treaty of San Stefano, as a consequence of which the Albanian lands in the Balkans were being partitioned and given to the neighbor states of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece.
December 31 » Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, filed for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine, and he was granted the patent in 1879.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Charles Olson, "Olson's Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/olsons-tree/P20919.php : accessed February 24, 2026), "Ezra Smith Barnum (1792-1878)".
Copy warning
Genealogical publications are copyright protected. Although data is often retrieved from public archives, the searching, interpreting, collecting, selecting and sorting of the data results in a unique product. Copyright protected work may not simply be copied or republished.
Please stick to the following rules
Request permission to copy data or at least inform the author, chances are that the author gives permission, often the contact also leads to more exchange of data.
Do not use this data until you have checked it, preferably at the source (the archives).
State from whom you have copied the data and ideally also his/her original source.