Historical milestones and significant events which occurred during Edith (1885-1968) and Orville’s (1885-1973) lifetime.
1885: The first gasoline-powered internal-combustion engine was invented by German engineer Gottlieb Daimler.
1887: The telephone switchboard is introduced.
1889: Designed by Gustav Eiffel, the Eiffel Tower (984 feet) was completed in Paris. Standing 300 meters tall, it was the highest man-made structure on earth at the time.
1890: The first electrified section of London’s subway system, called the London Underground, began operation in 1890.
1900: Known as “The 1900 Storm” this Texas hurricane killed 8,000 people (September 8)
1901: President William McKinley is assassinated (September 6) and at the age of 42, his vice president Theodore Roosevelt is inaugurated as the youngest U.S. president ever.
1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first successful powered, controlled flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. (December 17)
1904: Panama Canal construction begins
1905: Albert Einstein proposes his Theory of Relativity explaining the behavior of objects in space and time.
1906: The San Francisco earthquake devastates the city. Estimated at a 7.9 magnitude, the quake kills up to 3,000 people and destroys as much as 80% of the city. (April 18)
1908: The first production of the Model-T automobile is released by the Ford Motor Company at Henry Ford's Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, Michigan. (September 27)
1909: Orville Wright goes to College Park, Maryland, where he taught the first three U.S. Army officers to fly.
1912: After striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage, the Titanic sank, losing 1,635 passengers and crew. (April 14-15)
1913: The U.S. federal government begins to collect a federal income tax from all individuals and businesses with the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, thus replacing tariffs with a graduated income tax as a main source of revenue for the federal government.
1915: The first transcontinental telephone call was made for a distance of 3600 miles. (January 25)
1915: The Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado was established. (January 16)
1916: The National Park Service was officially created by President Woodrow Wilson. (August 25)
1917: The United States Congress declares war on Germany and joins the allies of World War I. (April 6)
1918: Airmail service was begun by the United States Post Office Department with service between New York, Philadelphia and Washington. (May 15)
1918: The influenza epidemic Spanish Flu spans the world, killing over 20 million worldwide and 500,480 people in the U.S.
1919: Prohibition becomes the law of the land until 1933 (January 16)
1919: The Treaty of Versailles is signed, the peace settlement between Germany and the Allied Powers officially ending World War I (June 28)
1920: Adoption of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. (August 18)
1922: King Tut’s tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings by British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter. (November 4)
1923: Adolf Hitler jailed 3 days after a failed coup in Germany. (November 8) Following a short trial, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, where he wrote his infamous book, Mein Kampf.
1926: Gertrude Ederle at the age of twenty, swam the English Channel. Ederle not only made it across, she beat all of the previous men’s times by swimming 35 miles in 14 and a half hours. (August 6)
1926: A.A. Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh" was published, bringing the adventures of Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Christopher Robin to generations of children.
1927: Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean in the Spirit of St. Louis. And the first talkie, a movie with dialogue, "The Jazz Singer," was released.
1928: Sliced bread was invented, along with bubble gum. And the first Mickey Mouse cartoon was shown.
1929: The Stock Market crashes on what became known as Black Tuesday (October 29) causing economic devastation and marked the beginning of the Great Depression.
1931: The Empire State Building was completed and opened on May 1, 1931; making it the tallest building in the world - standing at 1,250 feet tall (101 stories).
1932: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
1939: World War II began when Hitler's Nazis invaded Poland on Sept. 1, and Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.
1942: Pearl Harbor attacked, and the United States formally declares war on Germany and Italy (December 11)
1942: Anne Frank and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in an attic apartment behind her father's pectin-trading business in Amsterdam. (July 6)
1945: World War II ended in Europe and the Pacific, and those two events dominated this year. Japan surrenders to the Allies of World War II. (August 15)
1950: The first organ transplant, a kidney, is successfully performed. (June 17)
1952: Britain's Princess Elizabeth took over the responsibility of ruling England at age 25 after the death of her father, King George VI. (February 6)
1952: Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was given to 1.8 million children in a massive field trial. Afterward Salk and colleagues at the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh began testing for a successful polio vaccine. (July 2)
1954: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation was illegal in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. (May 17)
1955: The civil rights movement began with the August 28 murder of Emmett Till, the refusal on December 1 by Rosa Parks to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, and the subsequent Montgomery Bus Boycott lasting 382 days.
1957: Space Race begins when The Soviet Union surprised the world when it launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. (October 4)
1960: Four college black students from North Carolina staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter, protesting their denial of service. (February 1) This launched a national campaign, waged by 70,000 students, both black and white, over the next 8 months, in sit-ins across the nation for civil rights.
1961: Construction was completed on the Berlin Wall, sealing off East from West Berlin. (August 13)
1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas while visiting on a campaign trip. (November 22)
1964: The landmark Civil Rights Act became law, ending segregation in public places and banning employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. (July 2)
1965: U.S. Military presence escalated in the Vietnam with the first wave of troops in what would become a source of division in the U.S. in the decades to come.
1968: The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated (April 4) in Memphis, Tennessee on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. He had arrived in Memphis the previous day to prepare for a march on behalf of the striking Memphis sanitation workers.
1969: Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. (July 20, 1969)
1973: The Supreme Court made abortion legal in the United States with its landmark Roe v. Wade decision. (January 22); Skylab, America's first space station, was launched. (May 14); the U.S. pulled its last troops out of Vietnam (March 29); Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned under a cloud of scandal. (October 10)