Joseph Pleszewski (1887 - 1968)

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

In 1887, in the year that Joseph Pleszewski was born, on January 28th, the largest recorded snowflakes fell in a snowstorm in Fort Keogh, Montana. They were supposed to have been 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. A rancher in the area said that they were “larger than milk pans”. A Wild West tall tale? Not according to the Guinness World Records book.

In 1900, by the time he was only 13 years old, a massive hurricane, known as the Great Galveston hurricane, hit Galveston Texas. Winds hit up to 145 miles an hour (category 4) and it remains the single most deadly event in U.S. history. Between 6,000 and 12,000 died (most estimates are around 8,000 dead). The population of Galveston at the time was about 36,000 people in 1900.

In 1910, he was 23 years old when Thomas Edison introduced his kinetophone, which he hoped would make "talkies" a reality. But the sound wasn't synchronized to the pictures and only 45 Kinetophones were made.

In 1948, Joseph was 61 years old when on May 14th, the State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel's first Premier, and the U.S. officially recognized Israel. That evening, Egypt launched an air assault on Israel.

In 1968, in the year of Joseph Pleszewski's passing, on April 4th, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader, was shot and killed by an assassin in Memphis. James Earl Ray was apprehended and plead guilty to shooting Dr. King. Ray died in jail in 1998.