Virginia L Mclaughlin (1920 - 2010)

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

In 1920, in the year that Virginia L Mclaughlin was born, on January 1, over 6000 people were arrested and put in prison because they were suspected of being communists. . Many had to be released in a few weeks and only 3 guns were found in their homes. The U.S. Department of Justice "red hunt" netted thousands of "radicals" and suspected "communists" and aliens were deported. But the "hunt" ended after Attorney General Palmer forecast a massive radical uprising on May Day and the day passed without incident.

In 1931, she was merely 11 years old when in March, “The Star Spangled Banner” officially became the national anthem by congressional resolution. Other songs had previously been used - among them, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", "God Bless America", and "America the Beautiful". There was fierce debate about making "The Star Spangled Banner" the national anthem - Southerners and veterans organizations supported it, pacifists and educators opposed it.

In 1942, she was 22 years old when on February 19th, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This authorized the Secretary of War to "prescribe certain areas as military zones." On March 21st, he signed Public Law 503 which was approved after an hour discussion in the Senate and 30 minutes in the House. The Law provided for enforcement of his Executive Order. This cleared the way for approximately 120,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry to be evicted from the West Coast and to be held in concentration camps and other confinement sites across the country. In Hawaii, a few thousand were detained. German and Italian Americans in the U.S. were also confined.

In 1952, by the time she was 32 years old, 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 1996, at the age of 76 years old, Virginia was alive when on April 3rd, Theodore Kaczynski (nicknamed the Unabomber) was arrested. His mailed or hand-delivered bombs, sent between 1978 and 1995, killed three people and injured 23 others. Diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Kaczynski is serving 8 life sentences without the possibility of parole.