Ethel Horr (1880 - 1968)

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

In 1880, in the year that Ethel Horr was born, on August 26th, P. T. Barnum and James A. Bailey signed a contract in Bridgeport, CT, creating the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Twenty-seven years later, the Barnum and Bailey would merge with another circus, Ringling Brothers.

In 1894, when she was only 14 years old, large reserves of oil were discovered on the Osage Indian reservation in Oklahoma. Previously thought to be "useless" land - not even good for farming - the tribe had bought the land themselves. The discovery of oil made the Osage the "richest group of people in the world" at the time.

In 1900, Ethel was 20 years old when the unemployment rate in the U.S. was 5.0% and the cost of a first-class stamp was $0.02. 31% of all workers were employed in the public service sector, 19% of women were employed (1 percent of all lawyers and 6 percent of physicians were women), 6% of the workforce were children, and 14% of the workforce was "non-white."

In 1942, when she was 62 years old, on February 19th, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This authorized the Secretary of War to "prescribe certain areas as military zones." On March 21st, he signed Public Law 503 which was approved after an hour discussion in the Senate and 30 minutes in the House. The Law provided for enforcement of his Executive Order. This cleared the way for approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry to be evicted from the West Coast and to be held in concentration camps and other confinement sites across the country. In Hawaii, a few thousand were detained. German and Italian Americans in the U.S. were also confined.

In 1968, in the year of Ethel Horr's passing, on June 5th, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles by Sirhan after celebrating his win in the California presidential primary. He died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital.