Lorn Ballinger (1901 - 1937)

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

In 1901, in the year that Lorn Ballinger was born, John Pierpont "J. P." Morgan created U.S. Steel. J.P. Morgan was an American banker and financier who dominated U.S. business at this time. He had previously overseen the creation of General Electric, as well as International Harvester and AT&T. He has been referred to as America's greatest banker. U.S. Steel was the first billion dollar company in the world, worth $1.4 billion in 1901.

In 1911, by the time he was merely 10 years old, British physicist Ernest Rutherford (born in New Zealand), along with German physicist Hans Geiger, discovered the structure of an atom. He found that atoms had nuclei (a nucleus) and were circled by electrons, much as planets orbit the sun.

In 1912, at the age of only 11 years old, Lorn was alive when New Mexico became the 47th state of the Union in January. Previously a province of Mexico, then a territory of the United States and mostly populated by Native Americans and Mexicans, once it became a U.S. territory it was increasingly colonized by European-American settlers. Its population was over 327,000 when it became a state.

In 1924, Lorn was 23 years old when J. Edgar Hoover, at the age of 29, was appointed the sixth director of the Bureau of Investigation by Calvin Coolidge (which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation). The Bureau had approximately 650 employees, including 441 Special Agents. A former employee of the Justice Department, Hoover accepted his new position on the proviso that the bureau was to be completely divorced from politics and that the director report only to the attorney general.

In 1937, in the year of Lorn Ballinger's passing, on May 6th, the German zeppelin the Hindenburg caught fire and blew up. The Hindenburg was a passenger ship traveling to Frankfurt Germany. It tried to dock in New Jersey, one of the stops, and something went wrong - it blew up. Thirty-six people were killed out of the 97 on board - 13 passengers, 22 crewmen, and one ground worker. The reasons for the explosion are still disputed.