James Briscoe Booth (1864 - 1930)

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

In 1864, in the year that James Briscoe Booth was born, on June 15th, Arlington National Cemetery was created in Arlington Virginia. 200 acres from the grounds of Robert E. Lee's home were set aside to be a military cemetery. The home and grounds had been in Lee's wife's family - she was a great-granddaughter of Martha Washington.

In 1891, at the age of 27 years old, James was alive when on June 25th, in the July issue of The Strand Magazine in London, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes appeared in a series of short stories for the first time. Doyle eventually wrote 4 novels and 56 short stories with Holmes as the main character.

In 1905, at the age of 41 years old, James was alive when the Industrial Workers of the World was founded. An international labor union founded in Chicago, it was most often referred to as the "Wobblies" and had ties to the socialist movement and the anarchist movement. At its peak, it had 150,000 members.

In 1911, he was 47 years old when British physicist Ernest Rutherford (born in New Zealand), along with German physicist Hans Geiger, discovered the structure of an atom. He found that atoms had nuclei (a nucleus) and were circled by electrons, much as planets orbit the sun.

In 1930, in the year of James Briscoe Booth's passing, as head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, William Hays established a code of decency that outlined what was acceptable in films. The public - and government - had felt that films in the '20's had become increasingly risque and that the behavior of its stars was becoming scandalous. Laws were being passed. In response, the heads of the movie studios adopted a voluntary "code", hoping to head off legislation. The first part of the code prohibited "lowering the moral standards of those who see it", called for depictions of the "correct standards of life", and forbade a picture from showing any sort of ridicule towards a law or "creating sympathy for its violation". The second part dealt with particular behavior in film such as homosexuality, the use of specific curse words, and miscegenation.