Eleanor E Ribbe (1916 - 1989)

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

In 1916, in the year that Eleanor E Ribbe was born, suffragette Jeannette Pickering Rankin became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives as a Representative at large from Montana. She was the first woman to hold an elected Federal office. Holding the office for two years, she ran again in 1940 and served another two year term. Montana had granted women unrestricted voting rights in 1914, 6 years before women got the vote nationally.

In 1926, Eleanor was merely 10 years old 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 1934, she was 18 years old when on November 11th 1933, an extremely strong dust storm hit South Dakota, stripping topsoil. Other strong dust storms had occurred during 1933. Severe droughts continued to hit the Great Plains and the dust storms devastated agricultural production as well as people's' lives for several years. The Roosevelt administration and scientists eventually determined that farming practices had caused the conditions that led to the dust storms and the changes they implemented in farming stopped the Dust Bowl.

In 1979, she was 63 years old when on November 4th, Iranian militant students seized the US embassy in Teheran and held 52 American citizens and diplomats hostage for 444 days. They were released at the end of the inauguration speech of the newly elected Ronald Reagan.

In 1989, in the year of Eleanor E Ribbe's passing, on March 24th, the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker, struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and oil began spilling out of the hold. The oil would eventually contaminate more than a thousand miles of coastline. It is estimated that over 10.8 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Sound - killing 100,000 to 250,000 seabirds, over 2,800 sea otters, about 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas - as well as an unknown number of salmon and herring.