Ernest Picerno (1909 - 1910)

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

In 1909, in the year that Ernest Picerno was born, the New York Times published the first movie review. It was a report on D.W. Griffith's movie "Pippa Passes" also called "The Song of Conscience", a silent film. The review said that this work was moving away from "lurid material that attracted the wrath of censors and concerned citizens and toward more respectable ends. The movie was the story of a young female factory worker, on her day off, wandering and singing - thus changing the hearts of those around her towards good.

In 1910, in the year of Ernest Picerno's passing, the Mexican revolution began. Dictator Porfirio Díaz had ruled for 35 years and was nationally unpopular. When elections were held in 1910 and a rigged election kept Diaz in office. The uprising began - and lasted for another 10 years.

In 1916, by the time he was only 7 years old, visiting nurse Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. at 46 Amboy St. in Brooklyn New York. Ten days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested for "violating laws against giving out birth control information" which was defined as obscenity. The clinic was not handing out birth control - just information about sex and birth control methods. (The Comstock law categorized information about abortion, family planning, and contraception as “obscene”.) The clinics and organizations that Sanger established later evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.