Stella Fridman (1874 - 1974)

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

In 1874, in the year that Stella Fridman was born, on September 14th, the Battle of Liberty Place occurred in New Orleans - the capital of Louisiana. Some members of the previous Confederate Army assembled for the purpose of "driving the usurpers from power" and the Republican Governor - William P. Kellogg - was physically driven from his office. The former Confederates temporarily replaced him with (the former) Democratic Governor John McEnery. Federal forces arrived, put down the insurrection, and five days later the legally elected government was restored.

In 1895, she was 21 years old when on September 3rd, in Latrobe, PA, the first professional football game was played. The game was between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeannette Athletic Club. Latrobe won 12 - 0.

In 1903, when she was 29 years old, the silent film, The Great Train Robbery opened. Although it was filmed in Milltown, New Jersey, it was a Western. Twelve minutes long, the film used a lot of innovative techniques - some scenes were hand colored and composite editing, on-location shooting, and frequent camera movement were used. Its budget was $150 (about $4000 currently) and was the most popular film until 1915 when Birth of a Nation was released.

In 1942, at the age of 68 years old, Stella was alive when on June 17th, Roosevelt approved the Manhattan Project, which lead to the development of the first atomic bomb. With the support of Canada and the United Kingdom, the Project came to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $2 billion. Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a nuclear physicist born in New York, led the Los Alamos Laboratory that developed the actual bomb. The first artificial nuclear explosion took place near Alamogordo New Mexico on July 16, 1945.

In 1974, in the year of Stella Fridman'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.