Charles Lay (1885 - 1916)

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

In 1885, in the year that Charles Lay was born, on January 24th, the Fenians - Irish Nationalists - set off dynamite bombs in the House of Commons chamber, Westminster Hall, and the Tower of London. Four civilians and two policemen were injured.

In 1891, by the time he was only 6 years old, on March 14th, a lynch mob stormed the Old Parish Prison. The mob lynched 11 of the 19 Italians who were arrested for - but found to be innocent of - the murder of New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy.

In 1898, by the time he was only 13 years old, on February 15th, the USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor. The reason for the explosion has never been found, but it killed 266 men. "Remember the Maine" became a rallying cry and precipitated the United States' declaration of war on Spain two months later - the beginning of the Spanish-American War. On December 10th, the war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The Treaty gave the U.S. Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam - for $20 million - and, temporarily, Cuba.

In 1908, at the age of 23 years old, Charles was alive when a mysterious Siberian explosion leveled over 770 square miles of forest. There were no human casualties. Explanations of the explosion have included a comet, meteorite, natural atomic explosion, or a crashed UFO. Although it is called an impact event - the largest one in recorded earth history - there is no crater and it is widely thought that the explosion was caused by a meteor exploding 3 to 6 miles above the earth.

In 1916, in the year of Charles Lay's passing, visiting nurse Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. at 46 Amboy St. in Brooklyn New York. Ten days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested for "violating laws against giving out birth control information" which was defined as obscenity. The clinic was not handing out birth control - just information about sex and birth control methods. (The Comstock law categorized information about abortion, family planning, and contraception as “obscene”.) The clinics and organizations that Sanger established later evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.