Joseph Joshua Rivera (1988 - 2011)

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

In 1988, in the year that Joseph Joshua Rivera was born, on December 21st, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie Scotland. The explosion killed all 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground. The flight had left Heathrow Airport in London less than an hour before, on its way to New York. After an exhaustive (and long) investigation it came to be believed that two individuals from Libya had planted the bomb.

In 1990, Joseph was just 2 years old when on April 24th, the Hubble telescope was launched into space after long delays due to the Challenger explosion. An optical flaw was found within weeks of launch but was fixed within three years. The discoveries made possible by the Hubble have contributed to scientists' understanding of the universe.

In 1991, Joseph was just 3 years old when on January 16th, Allied forces began the first phase of Operation Desert Storm. Saddam Hussein's forces had previously invaded the sovereign state of Kuwait and the focus of the operation was to remove his Iraqi troops from Kuwait. On February 24th, the ground war began. Within 100 hours, American ground troops declared Kuwait liberated.

In 1994, he was merely 6 years old when on May 6th, former political prisoner, lawyer, and activist Nelson Mandela was elected the first black President of South Africa. He was 75 when he was elected and he served one five-year term.

In 1996, at the age of only 8 years old, Joseph was alive when on April 3rd, Theodore Kaczynski (nicknamed the Unabomber) was arrested. His mailed or hand-delivered bombs, sent between 1978 and 1995, killed three people and injured 23 others. Diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Kaczynski is serving 8 life sentences without the possibility of parole.