Samuel D Stiles (1927 - 2004)

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

In 1927, in the year that Samuel D Stiles was born, aviator and media darling Charles Lindbergh, age 25, made the first successful solo TransAtlantic flight. "Lucky Lindy" took off from Long Island in New York and flew to Paris, covering  3,600 statute miles and flying for 33 1⁄2-hours. His plane "The Spirit of St. Louis" was a fabric-covered, single-seat, single-engine "Ryan NYP" high-wing monoplane designed by both Lindbergh and the manufacturer's chief engineer.

In 1934, at the age of just 7 years old, Samuel was alive when on November 11th 1933, an extremely strong dust storm hit South Dakota, stripping topsoil. Other strong dust storms had occurred during 1933. Severe droughts continued to hit the Great Plains and the dust storms devastated agricultural production as well as people's' lives for several years. The Roosevelt administration and scientists eventually determined that farming practices had caused the conditions that led to the dust storms and the changes they implemented in farming stopped the Dust Bowl.

In 1976, when he was 49 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 1987, Samuel was 60 years old when was the first time that a criminal in the United States - a serial rapist - was convicted through the use of DNA evidence.

In 1990, when he was 63 years old, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela, the leader of the movement to end South African apartheid was released on February 11th 1990.