Cyril Valcourt (1898 - 1967)

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

In 1898, in the year that Cyril Valcourt was born, magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company controlled 84% of the oil and pipelines in the United States. Rockefeller grew Standard Oil through the merger of several other small oil companies throughout the U.S., creating a monopoly.

In 1903, by the time he was just 5 years old, the United States Department of Commerce and Labor was created by President Theodore Roosevelt to control the excesses of big business. Renamed the Department of Commerce 10 years later, many departments concerned with workers were transferred to the Department of Labor at that time. Another spin-off, the Bureau of Corporations, became the Federal Trade Commission.

In 1914, he was 16 years old when in June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Yugoslavian national. Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to Serbia. Other major powers took sides - and World War I began: Austria declared war on Serbia; Germany on Russia and France; Britain on Germany . . . and on it went until most of the world was embroiled in the war.

In 1926, at the age of 28 years old, Cyril was alive when on November 15th, NBC was founded. It was the U.S.'s first major broadcast network. Ownership of the network was split between RCA (a majority partner at 50%), its founding corporate parent General Electric (which owned 30%), and Westinghouse (which owned the remaining 20%).

In 1967, in the year of Cyril Valcourt's passing, on October 2nd, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black US Supreme Court justice. Marshall was the great-grandson of a slave and graduated first in his class at Howard University Law School. His nomination to the Supreme Court was approved by the Senate, 69 to 11.