The Great Blizzard Buries New York

On March 12, 1888, a storm that started as rain flipped to snow and then refused to stop, burying New York under roughly 22 inches while temperatures crashed toward single digits. The elevated railroads and horse-cars stalled where they stood, stranding thousands of passengers on open trestles for hours, and the overhead telegraph and telephone wires snapped under the ice and cut the city off from Washington and Boston. The New York Stock Exchange shut its doors for two days, something that would not happen again until Hurricane Sandy. Former U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling, refusing to pay a hansom cab driver's storm-inflated fare, tried to walk the three miles home from Wall Street and collapsed in Union Square, a decision that would kill him within weeks.