Ray Howe (1889 - 1968)

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

In 1889, in the year that Ray Howe was born, on January 15th, the Coca-Cola Company was incorporated - originally as the "Pemberton Medicine Company". The Coca-Cola drink was originally created by John Stith Pemberton, first as a patent medicine and then as a soda fountain drink. Pemberton had sold the company in 1888, shortly before he died.

In 1890, Ray was just 1 year old when on January 2nd, Alice Sanger became the first female staffer to work in the White House. She was hired as a stenographer and, as such, took dictation.

In 1904, when he was only 15 years old, the United States acquired the Panama Canal Zone. Now an unincorporated territory of the U.S., the Canal Zone had been previously held by the French, who were constructing a canal. The U.S. took over the construction of the Panama Canal and it was finally finished in 1914, when it was opened to commercial shipping. The United States held the Canal Zone until 1979.

In 1933, when he was 44 years old, the day after being inaugurated, the new President, Franklin Roosevelt, declared a four-day bank holiday to stop people from withdrawing their money from shaky banks (the bank run). Within 5 days of his administration, the Emergency Banking Act was passed - reorganizing banks and closing insolvent ones. In his first 100 days, he asked Congress to repeal Prohibition (which they did), signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act, signed legislation that paid commodity farmers to leave their fields fallow, thus ending surpluses and boosting prices, signed a bill that gave workers the right to unionize and bargain collectively for higher wages and better working conditions as well as suspending some antitrust laws and establishing a federally funded Public Works Administration, and won passage of 12 other major laws that helped the economy.

In 1968, in the year of Ray Howe'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.