Nebraska becomes the 36th state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing prohibition in the United States. The ban on alcohol would go into effect a year later, on January 20, 1920.
Union General Henry Halleck is born in Westernville, New York. Halleck, nicknamed "Old Brains", served as general-in-chief of the Union Army for two years but frequently quarreled with other generals such as George McClellan. Halleck oversaw the total war campaigns waged by Generals Grant and Sherman in the last years of the Civil War.
President Chester A. Arthur signs the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law, instituting the largest civil service reform in American history. Following the assassination of President Garfield in 1881, Arthur became a major proponent of a merit-based bureaucracy.
