Harold P. W. Collett (died 1942)

In 1810, in October, King George III of the United Kingdom - King of England during the American Revolutionary War - was recognized as insane. Although he reigned until his death in 1820, he was mentally ill - the cause is unknown - and in 1810 regency was established to oversee his rule. His eldest son was recognized as Prince Regent.

In 1827, on May 25th, Romanian inventor Petrache Poenaru received a French patent for the invention of the first fountain pen with a replaceable ink cartridge. The fountain pen would make inkwells obsolete. Poenaru's patent used a barrel made from a large swan quill (part of the feather).

In 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. NAWSA was created by Anthony in 1890 in order to fight for the right of women to vote in the United States. Membership in NAWSA began at 7,000 and in the decades of the struggle - women didn't get the right to vote until 1920 - membership rose to 2 million.

In 1911, the United States Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil in May. John D. Rockefeller established Standard Oil in 1870 and it was the largest oil refinery at the time. The Supreme Court found that Standard Oil of New Jersey (one of the many iterations of Standard Oil) was guilty of "monopolizing the petroleum industry through a series of abusive and anticompetitive actions". The Court broke up the several entities that comprised Standard Oil and they eventually became competing firms.

In 1942, in the year of Harold P. W. Collett's passing, on November 28th at 10:15p, a nightclub in Boston, the Cocoanut Grove, caught fire. The origins of the fire are unknown but it killed 492 people - the deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. Hundreds more were injured. The disaster was so shocking that it replaced World War II in the headlines and lead to reforms in safety standards and codes.