David L Pavkov (1923 - 2005)

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

In 1923, in the year that David L Pavkov was born, on August 2, President Warren G. Harding died in office, apparently of a heart attack. He was staying at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco after completing a nationwide tour. Suffering from cramps, indigestion, a fever and shortness of breath, his doctor thought he had food poisoning. After several days of being ill, he suddenly shuddered, slumped over, and died. There were rumors of foul play (some thought that his wife had poisoned him because of his affairs) but no evidence has ever been found.

In 1945, at the age of 22 years old, David was alive when on August 6th, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9th, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. At least 129,000 people were killed in the two bombings and they still remain the only use of atomic bombs in war. An invasion on mainland Japan had been planned but President Truman ordered the bombs dropped instead.

In 1950, David was 27 years old when on October 2, Charlie Brown appeared in the first Peanuts comic strip - created by Charles Schultz - and he was the only character in that strip. That year, Schultz said that Charlie was 4 years old, but Charlie aged a bit through the years.

In 1968, when he was 45 years old, on April 4th, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader, was shot and killed by an assassin in Memphis. James Earl Ray was apprehended and plead guilty to shooting Dr. King. Ray died in jail in 1998.

In 1995, by the time he was 72 years old, on May 19th, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil - before 9/11 - took place in Oklahoma City. A truck bomb went off outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown - killing 68 people, injuring more than 680 others, and destroying one-third of the building. The most disturbing images were of children - a daycare center was hit by the bomb. The deadliest incident of domestic terrorism ever, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Michael Fortier were convicted of the bombing.