John Pearson (1887 - 1970)

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

In 1887, in the year that John Pearson was born, on January 20th, the US Senate gave the US Navy the right to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base. Pearl Harbor is on the island of Oahu, a part of the Hawaiian Islands. The Navy was given direction to maintain "a coaling and repair station" at the harbor.

In 1899, when he was merely 12 years old, 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 1900, he was merely 13 years old when the U.S. population exceeded 75 million, rising about 13 million from the 1890 census. 87.9% of the population was white, 11.6% was African-American, 0.7% was Hispanic, and 0.5% was Native American, Asian, and other minorities.

In 1944, at the age of 57 years old, John was alive when on November 7th, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was reelected to a fourth term as President of the United States. Running against Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York, Roosevelt won 53.4 of the popular vote, Dewey got 45.9%.

In 1970, in the year of John Pearson's passing, on May 4th, four students at Kent State University in Ohio were shot and killed by National Guardsmen. The students were at a peaceful demonstration protesting the invasion of Cambodia by US forces. There had been precedent for the killing of American college students. The previous year, on May 15th, Alameda County Sheriffs used shotguns against U.C. Berkeley students at a protest for People's Park. One student died, one was blinded, 128 were injured.