Lucy P Crider (1897 - 1996)

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

In 1897, in the year that Lucy P Crider was born, on September 21st, editor and publisher Francis P. Church responded to a letter to the editor from Virginia O'Hanlon, 8 years old. Virginia's father had told her that "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." So she wrote to the Sun, asking if there was a Santa Claus. Church responded with the now famous editorial "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus".

In 1917, Lucy was 20 years old when the U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in January. While they are U.S. citizens, Virgin Islanders are ineligible to vote for the President of the United States.

In 1921, she was 24 years old when the silent film The Sheik, directed by George Melford and starring Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres (also featuring Adolphe Menjou) debuted on October 21st. Critics weren't enthusiastic but the public loved it - in the first few weeks 125,000 people had seen the movie - and it eventually exceeded $1 million in ticket sales. And Rudolph Valentino, an Italian American, became the heartthrob of a female generation.

In 1987, by the time she was 90 years old, was the first time that a criminal in the United States - a serial rapist - was convicted through the use of DNA evidence.

In 1996, in the year of Lucy P Crider's passing, on April 3rd, Theodore Kaczynski (nicknamed the Unabomber) was arrested. His mailed or hand-delivered bombs, sent between 1978 and 1995, killed three people and injured 23 others. Diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Kaczynski is serving 8 life sentences without the possibility of parole.