Eugene Eberhart (1891 - 1987)

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

In 1891, in the year that Eugene Eberhart was born, on June 25th, in the July issue of The Strand Magazine in London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes appeared in a series of short stories for the first time. Doyle eventually wrote 4 novels and 56 short stories with Holmes as the main character.

In 1917, at the age of 26 years old, Eugene was alive when Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari was convicted and executed as a German spy. Since Mata Hari, born Margaretha Geertruida "Margreet" MacLeod, was a citizen of the Netherlands (which remained neutral in World War 1), she could travel freely in Europe. Her travels (and her romantic entanglements) raised suspicion and she was arrested by the French and found guilty. There is still controversy about her guilt although her name has become synonymous with a seductive female spy.

In 1927, when he was 36 years old, aviator and media darling Charles Lindbergh, age 25, made the first successful solo TransAtlantic flight. "Lucky Lindy" took off from Long Island in New York and flew to Paris, covering  3,600 statute miles and flying for 33 1⁄2-hours. His plane "The Spirit of St. Louis" was a fabric-covered, single-seat, single-engine "Ryan NYP" high-wing monoplane designed by both Lindbergh and the manufacturer's chief engineer.

In 1942, by the time he was 51 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 1987, in the year of Eugene Eberhart's passing, was the first time that a criminal in the United States - a serial rapist - was convicted through the use of DNA evidence.