Leila Benning (1906 - 2008)

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

In 1906, in the year that Leila Benning was born, President Theodore Roosevelt received the Nobel Prize for Peace. The award was considered controversial at the time because many thought that he was an imperialist. But he had brokered peace between Russia and Japan a year previous and had allowed a dispute between Mexico and the U.S. to go to arbitration, resolving the issue peacefully rather than resorting to military conflict. For these two reasons, the Nobel Prize committee chose him for the Peace Prize.

In 1940, Leila was 34 years old when on September 16th, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, was enacted - the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. Men between 21 and 36 were required to register with their draft boards. When World War II began, men between 18 and 45 were subject to service and men up to 65 were required to register.

In 1950, at the age of 44 years old, Leila was alive when on October 2, Charlie Brown appeared in the first Peanuts comic strip - created by Charles Schultz - and he was the only character in that strip. That year, Schultz said that Charlie was 4 years old, but Charlie aged a bit through the years.

In 1967, when she was 61 years old, on October 2nd, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black US Supreme Court justice. Marshall was the great-grandson of a slave and graduated first in his class at Howard University Law School. His nomination to the Supreme Court was approved by the Senate, 69 to 11.

In 1989, Leila was 83 years old when on November 9th, the Berlin Wall fell. The Wall was built by the East Germans to keep East Berliners from escaping into West Berlin, separating families and friends. When the head of the East German Communist Party announced that day that East Berliners could cross whenever they pleased, happy crowds surged across the border. People brought tools and took parts of the hated wall.