William Roberge (1900 - 1983)

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

In 1900, in the year that William Roberge was born, the unemployment rate in the U.S. was 5.0% and the cost of a first-class stamp was $0.02. 31% of all workers were employed in the public service sector, 19% of women were employed (1 percent of all lawyers and 6 percent of physicians were women), 6% of the workforce were children, and 14% of the workforce was "non-white."

In 1949, at the age of 49 years old, William was alive when on April 4th, NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was established. Twelve nations originally signed the North Atlantic Treaty - the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. Greece, Turkey, and West Germany later joined. Today, there are 26 nations in NATO.

In 1954, William was 54 years old when from April 22 through June 17th, the Army v. McCarthy hearings were held. The U.S. Army accused Roy Cohn (chief counsel to Senator McCarthy and later trusted mentor of Donald Trump) of blackmail. McCarthy and Cohn accused the U.S. Army of harboring communists. The Army allegations were found to be true. The U.S. Senate later censured McCarthy.

In 1961, when he was 61 years old, on April 17th, about 1,000 CIA trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba with the intention of igniting a rebellion and overthrowing Castro. They were defeated within three days. Although the operation began under Eisenhower, Kennedy approved it and the operation, named the Bay of Pigs for the beach where they landed, was a humiliation for the United States.

In 1983, in the year of William Roberge's passing, physicist Sally K. Ride, 32, became the first US woman astronaut in space as a crew member aboard space shuttle Challenger on June 18th. She was also the youngest (32) astronaut to go into space. Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space in 1963.