Virgil Newlands (1879 - 1969)

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

In 1879, in the year that Virgil Newlands was born, on April 26th, the National Park - later renamed the Royal National Park - the 2nd oldest national park in the world, was formally proclaimed in New South Wales, Australia. It was the first park to have the word "national" in its name.

In 1906, he was 27 years old when abolitionist and suffragette leader Susan B. Anthony died, before women's right to vote nationally was realized (in 1920). She, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association which later became the League of Women Voters. She died at the age of 86 of heart failure and pneumonia in her home in New York.

In 1914, when he was 35 years old, in August, the world's first red and green traffic lights were installed at the corner of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland Ohio. The electric traffic light had been invented by a policeman in Salt Lake City Utah in 1912.

In 1943, at the age of 64 years old, Virgil was alive when on March 31st, the Broadway musical Oklahoma! opened. Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (the first of their string of successful collaborations), audiences loved it. The musical ran for 2,212 performances originally and was made into a movie in 1954.

In 1969, in the year of Virgil Newlands's passing, on July 20th, the first men walked on the moon. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. both walked on the moon but it was Armstrong who first stepped on the moon. They fulfilled the promise of President Kennedy's commitment in 1961 to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade.