Sylvia Verkowsky (1908 - 1994)

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In 1908, in the year that Sylvia Verkowsky was born, President Theodore Roosevelt held the White House Conservation Conference, which lead to the establishment of the National Conservation Commission. Preparing the first inventory of the United State's natural resources, the commission was divided into four parts: water, forests, lands, and minerals.

In 1915, when she was only 7 years old, the Germans first used poison gas as a weapon at the second Battle of Ypres during World War I. While noxious gases had been used since ancient times, this was the first use of poisonous gas - in this case, lethal chlorine gas - in modern war. Subsequently, the French and British - as well as the United States when they entered World War 1 - developed and used lethal gas in war.

In 1938, when she was 30 years old, on June 25th (a Saturday) the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt (along with 120 other bills). The Act banned oppressive child labor, set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and established the maximum workweek at 44 hours. It faced a lot of opposition and in fighting for it, Roosevelt said "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, ...tell you...that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry."

In 1967, she was 59 years old when on November 7th, President Johnson signed legislation passed by Congress that created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which would later become PBS and NPR. The legislation required CPB to operate with a "strict adherence to objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature".

In 1994, in the year of Sylvia Verkowsky's passing, on May 6th, the Channel Tunnel or "Chunnel" was officially opened. The Chunnel is a railway tunnel beneath the English Channel that connects Great Britain to mainland France. Original plans for such a tunnel were developed in 1802 and approved by Napoleon Bonaparte but the British rejected the plan fearing that Napoleon would use the railway to invade.