James Mclaughlin (1849 - 1960)

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

In 1849, in the year that James Mclaughlin was born, on February 14th, President James Polk had his photograph taken in New York City. He was the first President to have his photo taken.

In 1858, James was only 9 years old when on October 28th, Macy's department store opened in New York City. Founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, it was at first a dry goods store - essentially a store that sold textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and sundries

In 1888, by the time he was 39 years old, on July 25th, a court stenographer from Salt Lake City - Frank Edward McGurrin - decisively beat the competition in a typing contest in Ohio. He was supposedly the only person who used touch typing and is believed to have invented the method. Touch typing is ubiquitous now - but Frank's win is what convinced everyone that the method was good!

In 1899, he was 50 years old when the meaning of Chinese "oracle bones" was rediscovered. Farmers in China had been turning up the bones in their fields for generations but most often they were ground up and sold as medicine. The chancellor of the Imperial Academy and a friend noticed, before they ground the bones, that they had writing. The bones had been used around the second millennium BC for divination.

In 1960, in the year of James Mclaughlin's passing, on May 1st, an American CIA U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the Soviet Union. Powers ejected and survived but was captured. The U.S. claimed that the U-2 was a "weather plane" but Powers was convicted in the Soviet Union of espionage. He was released in 1962 after 1 year, 9 months and 10 days in prison.