
Eleonore Lay 1888 - 1978
Eleonore Lay's Biography
Introduction
Name & aliases
Last residence
Birth details
Ethnicity & Family History
Nationality & Locations
Education
Religion
Baptism date & location
Professions
Personal Life
Military Service
Death details
Gravesite & burial
Obituary
Average Age & Life Expectancy
Memories: Stories & Photos
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Family Tree & Friends
Eleonore's Family Tree
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1888 - 1978 World Events
Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Eleonore's lifetime.
In 1888, in the year that Eleonore Lay was born, on August 7th, the body of a prostitute was found in the Whitechapel section of London. Martha Tabram had been stabbed 39 times - a possible but not confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper. On August 31st, the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found - stabbed and mutilated. On September 8th, the body of Annie Chapman was found - throat slit and disemboweled. On September 30th, Elizabeth Stride, also a prostitute in Whitechapel, was found dead from a slit throat. Within an hour, another body was discovered - Catherine Eddowes'. She was far more savagely murdered and it is thought that the Ripper had more time with her. Then, on November 9th, the body of prostitute Mary Jane Kelly was found in a boarding room in Whitechapel. Considered to be the probable fifth, and last, of Jack the Ripper's victims, Kelly's was the most savage of his murders.
In 1920, by the time she was 32 years old, in September, a bomb exploded in the J.P. Morgan bank building in New York City, killing 30 people immediately - 8 later died due to their injuries - and injuring another 200. Killing more people than the 1910 bombing of the LA Times (the deadliest terrorist act up until then), no one took responsibility and the perpetrators were never found. Italian anarchists were suspected of the bombing.
In 1955, at the age of 67 years old, Eleonore was alive when on September 30th, movie star James Dean, 24, died in a car accident. He was headed in his new Porsche 550 to a race in Salinas California when, traveling at 85 mph, he collided with a 1950 Ford Tudor, also speeding, driven by a 23 year old college student. Dean died, his passenger and the other driver survived.
In 1960, Eleonore was 72 years old when on May 1st, an American CIA U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the Soviet Union. Powers ejected and survived but was captured. The U.S. claimed that the U-2 was a "weather plane" but Powers was convicted in the Soviet Union of espionage. He was released in 1962 after 1 year, 9 months and 10 days in prison.
In 1978, in the year of Eleonore Lay's passing, on November 18th, Jim Jones's Peoples Temple followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana - where they had moved, from San Francisco, as a group. Jones was the leader of the cult and ordered his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch, which they did. Whole families (women and children included) died - more than 900 people in all.
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