John Philip Ryan (1889 - 1915)

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

In 1889, in the year that John Philip Ryan was born, on May 31st, the South Fork Dam collapsed. Located in western Pennsylvania, the dam failed - sending more than 20 million tons of water into the towns below it. The flood killed more than 2,200 people in and around Johnstown. The newly formed Red Cross responded to the disaster.

In 1891, by the time he was only 2 years old, from March 9th through the 12th, a blizzard hit the south and west of England. Called the Great Blizzard of 1891, it led to snow drifts of up to 15 feet and killed 200 people and 6,000 animals. Fourteen ships sank.

In 1900, at the age of just 11 years old, John was alive when artist Henri Matisse, born in 1869 in France, began the fauvist movement. Only lasting a few years in popularity (ending around 1904), fauvism was in many ways the beginning of modern art. Matisse was fond of bright, vibrant colors and used them in his paintings - contrary to the muted use of color previously. While the fauvist movement declined in popularity, Matisse did not and he went on to create many more works of art and even a museum for his work, 2 years before his death in 1954. (In French, les Fauves means "the wild beasts". Matisse and those who followed his example were called "beasts" because of the bold colors that they used in their artwork.)

In 1902, he was just 13 years old when the modern air conditioner was invented by Willis H. Carrier. The company that he worked for needed to find a way to control humidity and by solving this problem, Carrier created a system that could be used for cooling the rooms of a house. The Sun Belt thanks him!

In 1915, in the year of John Philip Ryan's passing, Audrey Munson, playing a model for a sculptor in the film "Inspiration", became the first actress to shed her clothes on screen. Fearing that banning the film would mean that censors would also have to "ban Renaissance art" the film was released, with Munson in the nude scenes and a stand-in doing the acting. (Munson had previously been "America's First Supermodel" and posed nude as the model for many famous artworks.) The film was a hit with audiences.