Romeo A Mari (1907 - 1994)

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

In 1907, in the year that Romeo A Mari was born, the showman Florenz Ziegfeld introduced his Ziegfeld Follies. Ziegfeld was inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris and the show was a step up from the then current vaudeville shows. The top entertainers of the time played in the Follies but the stars were the Ziegfeld girls - beautiful chorus girls in elaborate costumes. For almost a quarter of a century, the Ziegfeld follies were the toast of Broadway.

In 1925, he was 18 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 1936, Romeo was 29 years old when on November 3rd, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was reelected to a second term. He ran against Republican Governor Alf Landon (Kansas), defeating Landon in the popular vote by 60.8% to 36.5%. Vermont and Maine were the only two states in which Landon won. John Nance Garner IV became the Vice-President in this election.

In 1979, he was 72 years old when on March 28th, a partial nuclear meltdown occurred at the power plant at Three Mile Island Pennsylvania. Radiation leaked into the environment, resulting in a rating of 5 on a scale of 7 ("Accident With Wider Consequences") . It ended up costing $1 billion to clean up the site.

In 1994, in the year of Romeo A Mari's passing, on May 6th, the Channel Tunnel or "Chunnel" was officially opened. The Chunnel is a railway tunnel beneath the English Channel that connects Great Britain to mainland France. Original plans for such a tunnel were developed in 1802 and approved by Napoleon Bonaparte but the British rejected the plan fearing that Napoleon would use the railway to invade.