Charles Schermerhorn (1867 - 1958)

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

In 1867, in the year that Charles Schermerhorn was born, on January 8th, African-American men were given the right to vote in the District of Columbia when Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson's veto. This was the first place in the U.S. to give African Americans the right to vote.

In 1890, by the time he was 23 years old, on January 2nd, Alice Sanger became the first female staffer to work in the White House. She was hired as a stenographer and, as such, took dictation.

In 1907, he was 40 years old when the showman Florenz Ziegfeld introduced his Ziegfeld Follies. Ziegfeld was inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris and the show was a step up from the then current vaudeville shows. The top entertainers of the time played in the Follies but the stars were the Ziegfeld girls - beautiful chorus girls in elaborate costumes. For almost a quarter of a century, the Ziegfeld follies were the toast of Broadway.

In 1943, by the time he was 76 years old, on March 31st, the Broadway musical Oklahoma! opened. Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (the first of their string of successful collaborations), audiences loved it. The musical ran for 2,212 performances originally and was made into a movie in 1954.

In 1958, in the year of Charles Schermerhorn's passing, on January 31st, Explorer I, the United States' answer to Sputnik I (and 2,) was launched. America had entered the Space Race. The first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt, it remained in orbit until 1970.