Bessie South (1899 - 2000)

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

In 1899, in the year that Bessie South was born, the meaning of Chinese "oracle bones" was rediscovered. Farmers in China had been turning up the bones in their fields for generations but most often they were ground up and sold as medicine. The chancellor of the Imperial Academy and a friend noticed, before they ground the bones, that they had writing. The bones had been used around the second millennium BC for divination.

In 1905, when she was only 6 years old, the first movie theater opened in the United States in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was the first theater to show nothing but movies - silent films. Two men, John P. Harris and his brother-in-law Harry Davis, opened the Nickelodeon on Smithfield Street - charging 5 cents for admission. The first day, 450 people watched movies at the new theater - on the second day, more than 1500 people stood in line to get in.

In 1918, Bessie was 19 years old when in July, Russian revolutionaries executed the former Tzar Nicholas II and his immediate family. While it was rumored that two of the children had survived, it was later proven through DNA analysis - when their bodies were found - that the entire family had been killed.

In 1935, Bessie was 36 years old when on August 14, the Social Security Act was signed into law. The purpose was to "provide federal assistance to those unable to work". The law established the Social Security Administration whose primary focus was to "provide aid for the elderly, the unemployed, and children". The Act survived many Supreme Court challenges and the Administration continues until today.

In 1972, by the time she was 73 years old, on September 5th, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, with the assistance of German neo-nazis, kidnapped and killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. The attackers crept into the Olympic Village and abducted the athletes while they were sleeping. A German policeman was also killed.