Robert J Noeldechen (1919 - 2004)

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

In 1919, in the year that Robert J Noeldechen was born, on January 6th, President Theodore Roosevelt died. Having gone to bed the previous night after being treated for breathing problems, the ex-President died in his sleep from a clot that had traveled to his lungs. He was 60. After a simple service, Roosevelt was buried on a hillside overlooking Oyster Bay.

In 1925, he was only 6 years old when in July, the Scopes Trial - often called the Scopes Monkey Trial - took place, prosecuting a substitute teacher for teaching evolution in school. Tennessee had enacted a law that said it was "unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school". William Jennings Bryan headed the prosecution and Clarence Darrow headed the defense. The teacher was found guilty and fined $100. An appeal to the Supreme Court of Tennessee upheld the law but overturned the guilty verdict.

In 1942, by the time he was 23 years old, on June 17th, Roosevelt approved the Manhattan Project, which lead to the development of the first atomic bomb. With the support of Canada and the United Kingdom, the Project came to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $2 billion. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a nuclear physicist born in New York, led the Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the actual bomb. The first artificial nuclear explosion took place near Alamogordo New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

In 1981, at the age of 62 years old, Robert was alive when on January 20th, Ronald Reagan became the 40th President of the United States. He ran against the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, and won 50.7% of the popular vote to Carter's 41.0%.

In 1997, when he was 78 years old, on June 26th, the first Harry Potter book by J. K. Rowling was released. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was an immediate success and spawned not only sequels but also movies, video games, plays, and amusement park attractions. J.K. Rowling, at the time of the first book a poor single mother, has become a multi-billionaire.