Merle Metcalf
(1905 - 1967)
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In 1905, in the year that Merle Metcalf was born, federal spending was $0.57 billion, unemployment was 4.3%, and the cost of a first-class stamp was $0.02. Current U.S. government spending is $4.268 trillion.
In 1914, Merle was merely 9 years old when in August, the world's first red and green traffic lights were installed at the corner of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland Ohio. The electric traffic light had been invented by a policeman in Salt Lake City Utah in 1912.
In 1924, he was 19 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 1944, when he was 39 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 1967, in the year of Merle Metcalf's passing, 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.
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