Ruth Matheny
(1899 - 1974)
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In 1899, in the year that Ruth Matheny was born, the meaning of Chinese "oracle bones" was rediscovered. Farmers in China had been turning up the bones in their fields for generations but most often they were ground up and sold as medicine. The chancellor of the Imperial Academy and a friend noticed, before they ground the bones, that they had writing. The bones had been used around the second millennium BC for divination.
In 1900, she was merely 1 year old when a massive hurricane, known as the Great Galveston hurricane, hit Galveston Texas. Winds hit up to 145 miles an hour (category 4) and it remains the single most deadly event in U.S. history. Between 6,000 and 12,000 died (most estimates are around 8,000 dead). The population of Galveston at the time was about 36,000 people in 1900.
In 1919, at the age of 20 years old, Ruth was alive when in Norfolk Virginia, the first rotary dial telephones were introduced by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), making it easier to make a call without an operator.
In 1959, at the age of 60 years old, Ruth was alive when on January 3rd, Alaska became the 49th state of the United States and the first state not a part of the contiguous United States. The flag was changed to display 49 stars.
In 1974, in the year of Ruth Matheny's passing, on February 5th, Patty Hearst, age 19 - granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and daughter of publisher of the San Francisco Examiner Randolph Hearst - was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left wing terrorist group. She was found, alive, 19 months later.
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