Lillian Valcourt (1900 - 1974)

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

In 1900, in the year that Lillian Valcourt was born, the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud published his book (written in 1899) "The Interpretation of Dreams". Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud in May of 1856, is the "father of psychoanalysis". Although he was a medical doctor, he was fascinated with the psyche and hypothesized the existence of the id, the ego, the superego, the libido, the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, and more. These are concepts that are still used by modern psychology.

In 1915, at the age of merely 15 years old, Lillian was alive when the Superior Court in Fulton County Georgia accepted the charter for the establishment of the new Ku Klux Klan, succeeding the Klan that flourished in the South in the late 1800's. This iteration of the Klan adopted white clothing and used many of the code words from the first Klan, adding cross burnings and mass marches in an attempt to intimidate others.

In 1928, Lillian was 28 years old when Mickie Mouse was born! He first appeared in Disney's Steamboat Willie, along with Minnie. Although they were in two previous shorts, this was the first to be distributed. Steamboat Willie took advantage of the new technology and was a "talkie" - music was coordinated with the animation. It became the most popular cartoon of its day.

In 1938, when she was 38 years old, on June 25th (a Saturday) the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt (along with 120 other bills). The Act banned oppressive child labor, set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and established the maximum workweek at 44 hours. It faced a lot of opposition and in fighting for it, Roosevelt said "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, ...tell you...that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry."

In 1974, in the year of Lillian Valcourt's passing, on February 5th, Patty Hearst, age 19 - granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and daughter of publisher of the San Francisco Examiner Randolph Hearst - was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left wing terrorist group. She was found, alive, 19 months later.