Stella Manuel (1907 - 1985)

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

In 1907, in the year that Stella Manuel was born, in October, over a 3 week period, the New York stock exchange fell almost 50% from the previous year's high mark. Public panic ensued and there were runs on banks since the U.S. was in the middle of a recession. J.P. Morgan offered his own fortune to back the banks and he was followed by other financiers. This temporarily shored up the banking system, stopping the immediate panic. All of this led to the creation of the Federal Reserve.

In 1911, when she was just 4 years old, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred, one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. 146 workers (123 women and 23 men, many of them recent Jewish and Italian immigrants) died from the fire or by jumping to escape the fire and smoke. The garment factory was on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of a building in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Doors to stairwells and exits had been locked in order to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to prevent theft, so they couldn't escape by normal means when the fire broke out. Due to the disaster, legislation was passed to protect sweatshop workers.

In 1922, Stella was only 15 years old when from October 22nd - 29th, 3,000 men of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party marched on Rome. (Mussolini waited in Milan, he did not participate in the March.) The day after the March Mussolini went to Rome and the King of Italy handed over power to Mussolini, in part because he was supported by the military, the business class, and the right-wing factions of Italy.

In 1964, at the age of 57 years old, Stella was alive when in June, three young civil rights workers - Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner from New York City, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi - were kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi. Working with "Freedom Summer", they were registering African-Americans to vote in the Southern states. Their bodies were found two months later. Although it was discovered that the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office and the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department were involved, only 7 men were convicted and served less than six years.

In 1985, in the year of Stella Manuel's passing, on March 15th, the first internet domain name was registered - Symbolics.com. Symbolics, Inc., a spinoff of the MIT AI Lab, was a computer manufacturer headquartered in Massachusetts. The company no longer exists and the domain name was sold 25 years later.