William L. Ballinger (1822 - 1918)

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

In 1822, in the year that William L. Ballinger was born, on July 3rd, Charles Babbage published a proposal for a forerunner of the modern computer. Called a "difference engine", it calculated logarithms and trigonometric functions. Babbage wanted to eliminate the errors that occurred through the use of human "calculators" by creating a machine to do the same work. While a prototype was begun, it was never completed.

In 1835, when he was only 13 years old, on January 8th, the U.S. Federal Government declared that President Andrew Jackson had paid off the national debt - for the first and only time.

In 1875, at the age of 53 years old, William was alive when on February 18th, the Mason County War, also called the Hoodoo War, began. In central Texas, a German-American mob broke into a jail with a battering ram and lynched two suspected cattle rustlers. Thus began a year of vigilante "justice."

In 1889, when he was 67 years old, on February 22nd, President Cleveland signed a bill allowing North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington to become states. North and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states on November 2nd, Montana became the 41st state on November 8th, and Washington became the 42nd state on November 11th.

In 1918, in the year of William L. Ballinger's passing, in July, Russian revolutionaries executed the former Tzar Nicholas II and his immediate family. While it was rumored that two of the children had survived, it was later proven through DNA analysis - when their bodies were found - that the entire family had been killed.