Donald Paul Cottrell (1960 - 2010)

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

In 1960, in the year that Donald Paul Cottrell was born, on September 26th, the first televised debate for a Presidential campaign in the United States - Kennedy vs Nixon - was held. Seventy million people watched the debate on TV. The debate pre-empted the very popular Andy Griffith Show.

In 1971, when he was just 11 years old, in March, Congress passed the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age to 18 (from 21). It was a response to the criticism that men could fight at 18, but not vote for the policies and politicians who sent them to war. The states quickly ratified the Amendment and it was signed into law on July 1st by President Richard Nixon.

In 1985, at the age of 25 years old, Donald was alive when on March 15th, the first internet domain name was registered - Symbolics.com. Symbolics, Inc., a spinoff of the MIT AI Lab, was a computer manufacturer headquartered in Massachusetts. The company no longer exists and the domain name was sold 25 years later.

In 1996, by the time he was 36 years old, on April 3rd, Theodore Kaczynski (nicknamed the Unabomber) was arrested. His mailed or hand-delivered bombs, sent between 1978 and 1995, killed three people and injured 23 others. Diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Kaczynski is serving 8 life sentences without the possibility of parole.

In 1998, at the age of 38 years old, Donald was alive when on December 19th, the House of Representatives initiated impeachment charges against U.S. President Bill Clinton. He was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the Senate on February 12th.