In passing, 1929

I was side-lined by a suggestion on one of the web pages I visited recently by the words, ‘Gregorian calendar’ and decided to take a peep at the year 1929, the year I was born:

• February 14 was the day of the St Valentine’s gangland massacre in Chicago, (not a good start … ),
• the year ended with the stock market crash, when $26 billion dollars was wiped off US Securities.

It wasn’t all bad however, as developments in science were encouraging:

• Albert Einstein proposed the unified field theory … seemed a good idea to me,
• a German psychiatrist developed the electroencephalograph (EEG) for recording brain waves; useful for those told they had no brains,
• for the first time, penicillin was used to fight infection,
• and Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York gave the first public demonstration of colour TV: the first images were a bouquet of roses and an American flag.

And there were important (early) developments for the rights of women too:

• the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the UK announced that women were now "persons" under the British North America Acts, and thus eligible for appointment to the Senate of Canada.

But best of all, on 7 March, Fred and Florence Crompton welcomed their new baby son, Dennis, into their family. A baby brother for Hilda, Jean and Fred. Yes indeed!

Dennis Crompton © 2013
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)