Vance Cartee (1913 - 1985)

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

In 1913, in the year that Vance Cartee was born, Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. It had previously taken 12 hours to assemble a whole vehicle - now it took only two hours and 30 minutes! Inspired by the production lines at flour mills, breweries, canneries and industrial bakeries, along with the disassembly of animal carcasses in Chicago’s meat-packing plants, Ford created moving belts for parts and the assembly line was born.

In 1920, he was only 7 years old when the Volstead Act became law. Formally called the National Prohibition Act, the Volstead Act enabled law enforcement agencies to carry out the 18th Amendment. It said that "no person shall manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, or furnish any intoxicating liquor except as authorized by this act" and defined intoxicating liquor as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume.

In 1945, Vance was 32 years old when on February 19th, US Marines landed on the island of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Iwo Jima began. Lasting 5 weeks, it was some of the bloodiest and fiercest fighting in the Pacific theater during World War II. The occupying Japanese forces were heavily armed and there were 21,000 Japanese soldiers on the island at the beginning of the battle. Only 216 Japanese soldiers were captured afterwards - the rest had been killed in action or committed suicide. 6,800 American soldiers died but the Americans took control of the island.

In 1952, he was 39 years old when on July 2, Dr. Jonas E. Salk tested the first dead-virus polio vaccine on 43 children. The worst epidemic of polio had broken out that year - in the U.S. there were 58,000 cases reported. Of these, 3,145 people had died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.

In 1985, in the year of Vance Cartee's passing, on March 7th, the song "We Are the World" was released as a charity effort to alleviate the African famine. The song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and produced by Quincy Jones. They were joined by 37 other famous singers in the recording studio and a phenomena had begun