Mary Gamboa (1892 - 1968)

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

In 1892, in the year that Mary Gamboa was born, on August 4th, the father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden were found murdered. Lizzie was accused of the crime and on June 20th of the next year, she was acquitted of murder by a jury. But she was never acquitted in the public mind.

In 1909, at the age of 17 years old, Mary was alive when explorer Robert Peary, a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy, claimed to have been the first to have reached the geographic North Pole. His claim has been disputed for over a century - some say that he ended up 60 miles from the North Pole. Peary was the only navigator on his team and he didn't submit his records for public review.

In 1911, Mary was 19 years old when the Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. 146 workers (123 women and 23 men, many of them recent Jewish and Italian immigrants) died from the fire or by jumping to escape the fire and smoke. The garment factory was on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of a building in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Doors to stairwells and exits had been locked in order to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to prevent theft, so they couldn't escape by normal means when the fire broke out. Due to the disaster, legislation was passed to protect sweatshop workers.

In 1944, when she was 52 years old, on June 22nd, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, called the G.I. Bill, was signed into law, pushed through by the veteran's organizations. Benefits provided for veterans to return to school (high school, vocational school, or college), obtain low interest home mortgages and low interest business loans, and (if needed) one year of unemployment insurance. Since most returning vets immediately found work, less than 20% of the unemployment benefits were distributed.

In 1968, in the year of Mary Gamboa's passing, on April 4th, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader, was shot and killed by an assassin in Memphis. James Earl Ray was apprehended and plead guilty to shooting Dr. King. Ray died in jail in 1998.