Evelyn Hester (1908 - 1985)

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

In 1908, in the year that Evelyn Hester was born, 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 1925, she was 17 years old when gangster Al "Scarface" Capone took over the Chicago bootlegging racket at age 26. Previously right hand man to boss Johnny Torrio, Capone took over when Torrio was shot and severely injured and decided to resign. The bootlegging and brothel organization was massive and when asked what he did, Capone often replied "I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want".

In 1931, Evelyn was 23 years old when in March, “The Star Spangled Banner” officially became the national anthem by congressional resolution. Other songs had previously been used - among them, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", "God Bless America", and "America the Beautiful". There was fierce debate about making "The Star Spangled Banner" the national anthem - Southerners and veterans organizations supported it, pacifists and educators opposed it.

In 1961, at the age of 53 years old, Evelyn was alive when on May 5th, Navy Cmdr. Alan B. Shepard, Jr., made the first manned Project Mercury flight, MR-3, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. He was the second man to go into space, the first was Yuri Gagarin - a Soviet cosmonaut.

In 1985, in the year of Evelyn Hester's passing, in May, a paper published in Nature by three British scientists reported that a huge hole was discovered in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. It was much larger than expected and is due to the use of manmade chemicals.