Sarah Rutherford (1914 - 1985)

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

In 1914, in the year that Sarah Rutherford was born, in June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by a Yugoslavian national. Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to Serbia. Other major powers took sides - and World War I began: Austria declared war on Serbia; Germany on Russia and France; Britain on Germany . . . and on it went until most of the world was embroiled in the war.

In 1920, by the time she was just 6 years old, the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote, passed both Houses of Congress and was sent to the States to ratify. In August, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Amendment and it became law eight days later. Mississippi ratified it in 1984.

In 1948, when she was 34 years old, on January 30th, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi by a member of a Hindu nationalist party who thought that Gandhi was too accommodating to Muslims. The man, Nathuram Godse, shot Gandhi 3 times. He died immediately. The shooter was tried, convicted, and hung in November 1949.

In 1969, when she was 55 years old, on July 20th, the first men walked on the moon. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. both walked on the moon but it was Armstrong who first stepped on the moon. They fulfilled the promise of President Kennedy's commitment in 1961 to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.

In 1985, in the year of Sarah Rutherford's passing, in May, a paper published in Nature by three British scientists reported that a huge hole was discovered in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. It was much larger than expected and is due to the use of manmade chemicals.