Emma Valcourt (1870 - 1968)

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

In 1870, in the year that Emma Valcourt was born, on January 26th, the state of Virginia rejoined the Union. On February 23rd, Mississippi was readmitted to the Union. On March 30th, Texas was readmitted to the Union. And on July 15th, Georgia became the last Confederate state to be readmitted to the Union.

In 1905, when she was 35 years old, the German born physicist, Albert Einstein, proposed the Special Theory of Relativity: 1) that observers can never detect uniform motion except relative to other objects and that 2) unlike the velocity of massive objects, the speed of light is a constant and is the same for all observers independent of their constant velocity toward or away from the light source. Not such simple concepts that lead to the equation everyone now knows: E = mc2.

In 1918, she was 48 years old when in July, Russian revolutionaries executed the former Tzar Nicholas II and his immediate family. While it was rumored that two of the children had survived, it was later proven through DNA analysis - when their bodies were found - that the entire family had been killed.

In 1920, she was 50 years old when on November 2, radio station KDKA began broadcasting in Pittsburgh, PA. This was the first commercial radio broadcast in the United States. Westinghouse, a leading manufacturer of radios and the backer of the station, chose the date because of the Presidential election. People liked it because they could hear about the results of the election between Harding and Cox before the morning papers arrived. Four years later, there were 600 commercial stations broadcasting in the U.S.

In 1968, in the year of Emma Valcourt's passing, 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.