Catherine D Tousseau (1922 - 2002)

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

In 1922, in the year that Catherine D Tousseau was born, from October 22nd - 29th, 3,000 men of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party marched on Rome. (Mussolini waited in Milan, he did not participate in the March.) The day after the March Mussolini went to Rome and the King of Italy handed over power to Mussolini, in part because he was supported by the military, the business class, and the right-wing factions of Italy.

In 1933, when she was just 11 years old, Frances Perkins became the first woman to hold a cabinet-level position, appointed by President Roosevelt to serve as Secretary of Labor. She told him that her priorities would be a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, worker’s compensation, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance. President Roosevelt approved of all of them and most them were implemented during his terms as President. She served until his death in 1945.

In 1960, Catherine was 38 years old when on May 1st, an American CIA U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the Soviet Union. Powers ejected and survived but was captured. The U.S. claimed that the U-2 was a "weather plane" but Powers was convicted in the Soviet Union of espionage. He was released in 1962 after 1 year, 9 months and 10 days in prison.

In 1980, Catherine was 58 years old when on December 8th, ex-Beatle John Lennon was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman in front of his home - the Dakota - in New York City. Chapman was found guilty of murder and still remains in jail.

In 1991, she was 69 years old when on January 16th, Allied forces began the first phase of Operation Desert Storm. Saddam Hussein's forces had previously invaded the sovereign state of Kuwait and the focus of the operation was to remove his Iraqi troops from Kuwait. On February 24th, the ground war began. Within 100 hours, American ground troops declared Kuwait liberated.