Amelia Conant (1897 - 1985)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Amelia's lifetime.

In 1897, in the year that Amelia Conant was born, in the January 22nd issue of "Engineering", the word "computer" was first used to refer to a mechanical calculation device. Previously - since the 17th century - the term computer meant "one who computes" and referred to human beings who worked with numbers.

In 1912, she was merely 15 years old when Arizona was admitted to the United States in February (on Valentine's Day). It became the 48th state in the Union. Previously a Spanish - then Mexican - territory, the U.S. paid $15 million dollars for the area in 1848. Arizona was the last of the contiguous states to be admitted to the United States.

In 1933, at the age of 36 years old, Amelia was alive when the day after being inaugurated, the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, declared a four-day bank holiday to stop people from withdrawing their money from shaky banks (the bank run). Within 5 days of his administration, the Emergency Banking Act was passed - reorganizing banks and closing insolvent ones. In his first 100 days, he asked Congress to repeal Prohibition (which they did), signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed legislation that paid commodity farmers to leave their fields fallow, thus ending surpluses and boosting prices, signed a bill that gave workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively for higher wages and better working conditions as well as suspending some antitrust laws and establishing a federally funded Public Works Administration, and won passage of 12 other major laws that helped the economy.

In 1964, at the age of 67 years old, Amelia was alive when on February 9th, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. 73 million people watched - although the Beatles couldn't be heard because of the loud screaming of the female teenage audience.

In 1985, in the year of Amelia Conant's passing, in May, a paper published in Nature by three British scientists reported that a huge hole was discovered in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. It was much larger than expected and is due to the use of manmade chemicals.