Jennie I Carroll (1929 - 1998)

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

In 1929, in the year that Jennie I Carroll was born, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre happened on February 14th. In Chicago, seven men from the North Side Irish gang were gunned down by Al Capone's South Side Italian gang at the garage at 2122 North Clark Street. Al Capone was making a successful move to take over Chicago's organized crime. But the St. Valentine's Day massacre also resulted in a public outcry against all gangsters.

In 1933, at the age of just 4 years old, Jennie was alive when the day after being inaugurated, the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, declared a four-day bank holiday to stop people from withdrawing their money from shaky banks (the bank run). Within 5 days of his administration, the Emergency Banking Act was passed - reorganizing banks and closing insolvent ones. In his first 100 days, he asked Congress to repeal Prohibition (which they did), signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed legislation that paid commodity farmers to leave their fields fallow, thus ending surpluses and boosting prices, signed a bill that gave workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively for higher wages and better working conditions as well as suspending some antitrust laws and establishing a federally funded Public Works Administration, and won passage of 12 other major laws that helped the economy.

In 1946, Jennie was 17 years old when pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock's book "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care" was published. It sold half a million copies in the first six months. Aside from the Bible, it became the best selling book of the 20th century. A generation of Baby Boomers were raised by the advice of Dr. Spock.

In 1982, she was 53 years old when on June 30th, time ran out on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The Amendment had only received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. First sent to the states in 1972, the Amendment stated that "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex".

In 1998, in the year of Jennie I Carroll's passing, on December 19th, the movie Titanic - based on the 1912 sinking of the ship and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet - was released. Winning 11 Oscars, it was the first film to gross over a billion dollars and eventually grossed over $2 billion.