Samuel Parker (1893 - 1978)

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

In 1893, in the year that Samuel Parker was born, on May 5th, a crash on the New York Stock Exchange started a depression that lasted 4 years. It was the beginning of the Panic of 1893.

In 1901, Samuel was merely 8 years old when Teddy Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States. TR, as he was known, had been Vice-President for 6 months when President William McKinley was assassinated. At age 42, he became the youngest President to serve although John Kennedy, at age 43, was the youngest President elected. He was a popular progressive and was elected to a second term in 1904 as a Republican, winning 56.4% of the popular vote and 336 electoral votes.

In 1918, at the age of 25 years old, Samuel was alive when federal spending was $12.68 billion, unemployment was 1.4% and the cost of a first-class stamp was 3 cents.

In 1931, he was 38 years old when on May 1st, the Empire State Building opened in New York City. At 1,454 feet (including the roof and antenna), it was the tallest building in the world until the World Trade Center's North Tower was built in 1970. (It is now the 34th tallest.) Opening at the beginning of the Great Depression, most of the offices in the Empire State Building remained unoccupied for years and the observation deck was an equal source of revenue and kept the building profitable.

In 1978, in the year of Samuel Parker's passing, on November 18th, Jim Jones's Peoples Temple followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana - where they had moved, from San Francisco, as a group. Jones was the leader of the cult and ordered his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch, which they did. Whole families (women and children included) died - more than 900 people in all.