Herbert Billings (1877 - 1967)

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

In 1877, in the year that Herbert Billings was born, on March 2nd, the U.S. presidential election of 1876 was ended with the selection of Rutherford B. Hayes as the winner. Samuel J. Tilden had won the popular vote in November 1876 but 20 votes in the electoral college were in dispute. An informal agreement was made in which Hayes agreed to remove federal troops from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, ending Reconstruction in the South. So, on March 4th, Rutherford B. Hayes became the 19th President of the United States.

In 1899, by the time he was 22 years old, on February 14th, the first voting machines were approved by Congress for use in federal elections. Several states were already using voting machines in their elections and the Federal government was finally convinced of their safety and accuracy.

In 1928, he was 51 years old when aviatrix Amelia Earhart, age 31, became the first woman to fly solo across North America and back in August. In June, she had been part of a 3 man crew that flew the Atlantic Ocean but since she had no instrument training, she couldn't fly the plane - she kept the flight log. The North American flight became one of her many "firsts" as a female pilot.

In 1943, at the age of 66 years old, Herbert was alive when on September 3rd, the Armistice of Cassibile was signed in Sicily. Under the terms of the Armistice, Italy surrendered to the Allied Powers. After the Armistice was made public on September 8th, Germany attacked and occupied Italy. It took 20 months of fighting for the Allies to reach the northern borders of Italy.

In 1967, in the year of Herbert Billings's passing, 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".