Frank P Laraway (1915 - 1992)

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

In 1915, in the year that Frank P Laraway was born, Audrey Munson, playing a model for a sculptor in the film "Inspiration", became the first actress to shed her clothes on screen. Fearing that banning the film would mean that censors would also have to "ban Renaissance art" the film was released, with Munson in the nude scenes and a stand-in doing the acting. (Munson had previously been "America's First Supermodel" and posed nude as the model for many famous artworks.) The film was a hit with audiences.

In 1937, Frank was 22 years old when on May 28th, the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge opened to cars. Taking 5 years to build, the 4,200-foot-long suspension bridge was an engineering marvel of its time - 11 men died during construction. The "international orange" color was chosen because it resisted rust and fading. To the present, it is the symbol of the City that is known throughout the world.

In 1967, he was 52 years old when on November 7th, President Johnson signed legislation passed by Congress that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which would later become PBS and NPR. The legislation required CPB to operate with a "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature".

In 1976, Frank was 61 years old when on August 4th, a mysterious illness struck an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. Within a week, 25 people had died and 130 people had been hospitalized. It was the first known instance of what came to be called "Legionnaires Disease."

In 1992, in the year of Frank P Laraway's passing, in April, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia. The newly created Bosnian Serb army then began a campaign against Muslim Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats - killing, raping, torturing, beating and robbing - and resulting in the deaths of over 100,000.