Olive Mae Williams (1919 - 2004)

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

In 1919, in the year that Olive Mae Williams was born, Indian lawyer Mahatma Gandhi initiated the Satyagraha campaigns, beginning the nonviolent resistance movement against British rule of India. Satyagraha means "holding onto truth" and the campaign for India independence, which was eventually obtained, called for "self-suffering" rather than inflicting suffering (i.e., violence) on others.

In 1938, when she was 19 years old, on October 30th, a Sunday, The Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast Orson Welles' special Halloween show The War of the World's. A clever take on H.G. Wells' novel, the show began with simulated "breaking news" of an invasion by Martians. Because of the realistic nature of the "news," there was a public outcry the next day, calling for regulation by the FCC. Although the current story is that many were fooled and panicked, in reality very few people were fooled. But the show made Orson Welles' career.

In 1955, when she was 36 years old, on September 30th, movie star James Dean, 24, died in a car accident. He was headed in his new Porsche 550 to a race in Salinas California when, traveling at 85 mph, he collided with a 1950 Ford Tudor, also speeding, driven by a 23 year old college student. Dean died, his passenger and the other driver survived.

In 1976, by the time she was 57 years old, on August 4th, a mysterious illness struck an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. Within a week, 25 people had died and 130 people had been hospitalized. It was the first known instance of what came to be called "Legionnaires Disease."

In 1996, Olive was 77 years old when 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.