Sidney Rittenhouse (1886 - 1974)

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

In 1886, in the year that Sidney Rittenhouse was born, on February 14th, the first train left Los Angeles for the East -by the way of the transcontinental railroad - with a cargo of oranges. Due to irrigation and the import of water, Los Angeles was the ideal place to grow oranges - which became a popular addition to Christmas stockings.

In 1893, when he was only 7 years old, on March 4th, Grover Cleveland became the 24th President of the United States. On July 1st, President Cleveland was operated on for a non-cancerous tumor in his mouth. He chose to have the operation secretly because he didn't want to worsen the financial depression that was occurring at the time.

In 1907, at the age of 21 years old, Sidney was alive when radiometric dating, a recently discovered technology that could date rocks, found that the earth was 2.2 billion years old which was dramatically older than previously thought. Later refinements and advancements in science would date the age of the earth at over 4.5 billion years.

In 1947, by the time he was 61 years old, in June, the Marshall Plan was proposed to help European nations recover economically from World War II. It passed the conservative Republican Congress in March of 1948. After World War I, the economic devastation of Germany caused by burdensome reparations payments led to the rise of Hitler. The Allies didn't want this to happen again and the Marshall Plan was devised to make sure that those conditions didn't arise again.

In 1974, in the year of Sidney Rittenhouse's passing, on July 30th, the House Judiciary Committee adopted three articles of impeachment against President Nixon. He was charged with obstruction of justice, failure to uphold laws, and the refusal to produce material subpoenaed by the committee. In order to avoid impeachment, Richard M. Nixon announced that he would resign on August 8th, the first President to do so.