John Joseph Barron (1888 - 1940)

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

In 1888, in the year that John Joseph Barron was born, on August 7th, the body of a prostitute was found in the Whitechapel section of London. Martha Tabram had been stabbed 39 times - a possible but not confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper. On August 31st, the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found - stabbed and mutilated. On September 8th, the body of Annie Chapman was found - throat slit and disemboweled. On September 30th, Elizabeth Stride, also a prostitute in Whitechapel, was found dead from a slit throat. Within an hour, another body was discovered - Catherine Eddowes'. She was far more savagely murdered and it is thought that the Ripper had more time with her. Then, on November 9th, the body of prostitute Mary Jane Kelly was found in a boarding room in Whitechapel. Considered to be the probable fifth, and last, of Jack the Ripper's victims, Kelly's was the most savage of his murders.

In 1896, at the age of merely 8 years old, John was alive when in April, the first study on global warming due to CO2 - carbon dioxide - in the atmosphere was published by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius. Arrhenius concluded that human activity due to the Industrial Revolution would amplify CO2 in the atmosphere, causing a greenhouse effect. His conclusions have been extensively tested in the ensuing 100+ years and are still seen to hold true.

In 1913, when he was 25 years old, the Philippine–American War ended for good in June. While the official end of the war was in 1902, fighting continued for several years. An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 total Filipino civilians died and although the U.S. viewed its role as a colonial presence as one of preparing the Philippines for independence, American colonization drastically changed the character off the culture. The Catholic Church was no longer the state religion and English became the primary language of the government.

In 1922, John was 34 years old when on James Joyce's 40th birthday, his book Ulysses was published in France. The book covers the experiences of an Irishman in Dublin on an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Now considered a classic, it was controversial at the time. Due to some sexual content, the book was banned in the U.S. during the 1920's and the U.S. Post Office destroyed 500 copies of the novel.

In 1940, in the year of John Joseph Barron's passing, in July, Billboard published its first Music Popularity Chart. Top recordings of the year were Tommy Dorsey's "I'll Never Smile Again" (vocal Frank Sinatra) - 12 weeks at the top, Bing Crosby's "Only Forever" - 9 weeks at the top, and Artie Shaw's "Frenesi" - 12 weeks at the top.