Gertrude Powers (1886 - 1975)

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

In 1886, in the year that Gertrude Powers was born, on June 13th, the "Great Vancouver Fire" destroyed most of Vancouver, British Columbia. A small brush fire got out of control and spread to the rest of the city. Dozens of people died and it was only after the fire that money was raised for a fire hall. The local Squamish tribe rescued people who had jumped into bodies of water to escape the conflagration.

In 1900, Gertrude was merely 14 years old when the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud published his book (written in 1899) "The Interpretation of Dreams". Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in May of 1856, is the "father of psychoanalysis". Although he was a medical doctor, he was fascinated with the psyche and hypothesized the existence of the id, the ego, the superego, the libido, the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, and more. These are concepts that are still used by modern psychology.

In 1944, she was 58 years old when on December 16th, The Battle of the Bulge began in the Ardennes forest on the Western Front. Lasting for a little over a month, the battle began with a surprise attack by Germany on the Allied forces The U.S. suffered their highest casualties of any operation in World War II - 89,000 were casualties, around 8,600 killed - but Germany also severely depleted their resources and they couldn't be replaced.

In 1965, by the time she was 79 years old, on March 8th, the first US combat troops arrived in Vietnam. The 3500 Marines joined 23,000 "advisors" already in South Vietnam. By the end of the year, 190,000 American soldiers were in the country.

In 1975, in the year of Gertrude Powers's passing, in January, Popular Mechanics featured the Altair 8800 on it's cover. The Altair home computer kit allowed consumers to build and program their own personal computers. Thousands were sold in the first month.