Elsa Becker (1889 - 1970)

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

In 1889, in the year that Elsa Becker was born, on May 31st, the South Fork Dam collapsed. Located in western Pennsylvania, the dam failed - sending more than 20 million tons of water into the towns below it. The flood killed more than 2,200 people in and around Johnstown. The newly formed Red Cross responded to the disaster.

In 1908, at the age of 19 years old, Elsa was alive when unemployment in the U.S. was at 8.0% and the cost of a first-class stamp was 2 cents while the population in the United States was 88,710,000. The world population was almost 4.4 billion.

In 1933, by the time she was 44 years old, the day after being inaugurated, the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, declared a four-day bank holiday to stop people from withdrawing their money from shaky banks (the bank run). Within 5 days of his administration, the Emergency Banking Act was passed - reorganizing banks and closing insolvent ones. In his first 100 days, he asked Congress to repeal Prohibition (which they did), signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed legislation that paid commodity farmers to leave their fields fallow, thus ending surpluses and boosting prices, signed a bill that gave workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively for higher wages and better working conditions as well as suspending some antitrust laws and establishing a federally funded Public Works Administration, and won passage of 12 other major laws that helped the economy.

In 1945, Elsa was 56 years old 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 1970, in the year of Elsa Becker's passing, on April 10th, Paul McCartney announced that he was leaving the Beatles. (John Lennon had previously told the band that he was leaving but hadn't publicly announced it.) By the end of the year, each Beatle had his own album.