Kelland Collins (1897 - 1973)

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

In 1897, in the year that Kelland Collins was born, on July 17th, the Klondike Gold Rush began when the first successful prospectors returned to Seattle after mining in the Yukon. They arrived on the ships Excelsior and Portland, bringing vast quantities of gold - over $32,000,000 in today's money - and everyone rushed to become rich in the Yukon.

In 1907, at the age of merely 10 years old, Kelland was alive when the showman Florenz Ziegfeld introduced his Ziegfeld Follies. Ziegfeld was inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris and the show was a step up from the then current vaudeville shows. The top entertainers of the time played in the Follies but the stars were the Ziegfeld girls - beautiful chorus girls in elaborate costumes. For almost a quarter of a century, the Ziegfeld follies were the toast of Broadway.

In 1919, by the time this person was 22 years old, in Norfolk Virginia, the first rotary dial telephones were introduced by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), making it easier to make a call without an operator.

In 1942, this person was 45 years old when on February 19th, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This authorized the Secretary of War to "prescribe certain areas as military zones." On March 21st, he signed Public Law 503 which was approved after an hour discussion in the Senate and 30 minutes in the House. The Law provided for enforcement of his Executive Order. This cleared the way for approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry to be evicted from the West Coast and to be held in concentration camps and other confinement sites across the country. In Hawaii, a few thousand were detained. German and Italian Americans in the U.S. were also confined.

In 1973, in the year of Kelland Collins's passing, in October, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned - President Nixon nominated Gerald Ford for Vice President. Nixon's tax returns came under investigation. Nixon offered the recently discovered Oval Office tapes be heard by one person and summarized - his offer was rejected by the Special Prosecutor. Nixon ordered the Attorney General, then the assistant Attorney General, to fire the Special Prosecutor. Both refused and were fired. The Solicitor General became the acting Attorney General and fired the Special Prosecutor (the Saturday Night Massacre). Nixon releases some of the tapes, under extreme pressure because of the firings.