Barack Obama says that he did not know that his Kenyan aunt was living illegally in the United States. Reports say that Zeituni Onyango lost a bid for asylum in 2004. She lives in public housing in Boston. Obama's presidential campaign has issued a statement that: "Senator Obama has no knowledge of her status but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed."

Joseph F. Glidden began manufacturing his new invention of barbed wire, having filed for a patent a few days before, on 27 Oct 1873 which was issued on 24 Nov 1874. The barbs were cut from sheet metal and were inserted between two wires which were twisted considerably more than with today's common design. This product would transform the West. Before this innovation, settlers on the treeless plains had no easy way to fence livestock away from cropland, and ranchers had no way to prevent their herds from roaming far and wide. Glidden's barbed wire opened the plains to large-scale farming, and closed the open range, bringing the era of the cowboy and the round-up to an end.