Bessie Brinker (1893 - 1964)

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

In 1893, in the year that Bessie Brinker was born, on February 1st, Thomas Edison's motion picture studio on his laboratory grounds in West Orange New Jersey was completed. The studio was called "Black Maria" and the first movie made and viewed in it was of 3 people pretending to be blacksmiths.

In 1900, by the time she was merely 7 years old, the German physicist Max Planck formulated an energy theory, postulating the existence of "quanta," which lays the groundwork for the quantum theory of modern physics. In December, he introduced a paper on the Planck postulate which stated that E=hv - the energy of a photon is proportional to its frequency times a constant. Planck won a Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work in theoretical Physics.

In 1947, Bessie was 54 years old when on April 15th, Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, playing first base. He was the first black man to play in the Major Leagues. Since the 1880's, professional baseball had been segregated and blacks played in the "Negro leagues". He went on to play for 10 years.

In 1952, at the age of 59 years old, Bessie was alive when on July 2, Dr. Jonas E. Salk tested the first dead-virus polio vaccine on 43 children. The worst epidemic of polio had broken out that year - in the U.S. there were 58,000 cases reported. Of these, 3,145 people had died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.

In 1964, in the year of Bessie Brinker's passing, 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.