Charles Cheesman (1919 - 1974)

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

In 1919, in the year that Charles Cheesman was born, on January 6th, President Theodore Roosevelt died. Having gone to bed the previous night after being treated for breathing problems, the ex-President died in his sleep from a clot that had traveled to his lungs. He was 60. After a simple service, Roosevelt was buried on a hillside overlooking Oyster Bay.

In 1927, by the time he was merely 8 years old, aviator and media darling Charles Lindbergh, age 25, made the first successful solo TransAtlantic flight. "Lucky Lindy" took off from Long Island in New York and flew to Paris, covering  3,600 statute miles and flying for 33 1⁄2-hours. His plane "The Spirit of St. Louis" was a fabric-covered, single-seat, single-engine "Ryan NYP" high-wing monoplane designed by both Lindbergh and the manufacturer's chief engineer.

In 1935, he was 16 years old when the BOI's name (the Bureau of Investigation) was changed to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and it officially became a separate agency with the Department of Justice. J. Edgar Hoover, the Chief of the BOI, continued in his office and became the first Director of the FBI. The FBI's responsibility is to "detect and prosecute crimes against the United States".

In 1965, when he was 46 years old, on March 8th, the first US combat troops arrived in Vietnam. The 3500 Marines joined 23,000 "advisors" already in South Vietnam. By the end of the year, 190,000 American soldiers were in the country.

In 1974, in the year of Charles Cheesman's passing, on February 5th, Patty Hearst, age 19 - granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and daughter of publisher of the San Francisco Examiner Randolph Hearst - was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left wing terrorist group. She was found, alive, 19 months later.