Tag: 1880

Layne Hall is born; will become oldest licensed driver in United States


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Year
1880
Month Day
December 25

On December 25 1880, Layne Hall is born in Mississippi. Some records indicate that he was actually born in 1884; either way, when he died in November 1990, Hall was the oldest licensed driver in the United States.

In 1916, Hall moved north to Silvercreek, New York, just west of Buffalo. When he arrived, his nephew taught him to drive, and he got his first license that fall. In his nearly 75 years on the road, Hall never got a speeding ticket or citation of any kind. In January 1990, the New York State Commissioner of Motor Vehicles wrote Hall a letter commending him for his lifetime of safe driving.

Hall continued to drive his blue 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville sedan–to the grocery store, to the doctor’s office, to visit friends and even to go on dates–until he died on November 20, 1990. His accomplishment won him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. (He displaced Mrs. Maude Tull of Inglewood, California., who remained behind the wheel until she was 104. Tull died in 1976.)

Though Hall had an exemplary driving record, many older drivers are not so lucky. In 2004, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 28 million licensed drivers over the age of 65 in the United States, and many of them suffer from what the CDC called “age-related decreases in vision, cognitive functions, and physical impairments” that makes it difficult and even dangerous for them to get behind the wheel. As a result–though the CDC study did note that older people were more likely to wear safety belts and less likely to drink and drive than any other group–older drivers have what the agency called “higher crash death rates per mile driven” than every group except inexperienced teen drivers.

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Chiricahua Apache leader Victorio is killed south of El Paso, Texas

Year
1880
Month Day
October 15

The warrior Victorio, one of the greatest Apache military strategists of all time, dies on October 15, 1880, in the Tres Castillos Mountains south of El Paso, Texas.

Born in New Mexico around 1809, Victorio grew up during a period of intense hostility between the native Apache Native Americans of the southwest and encroaching Mexican and American settlers. Determined to resist the loss of his homeland, Victorio began leading his small band of warriors on a long series of devastating raids against Mexican and American settlers and their communities in the 1850s.

After more than a decade of evading the best efforts of the Mexican and American armies to capture him, the U.S. Army managed to convince Victorio to accept resettlement of his people on an inhospitable patch of sunburnt land near San Carlos, Arizona, in 1869. But with summer temperatures reaching 110 degrees on the San Carlos reservation (an area also known as Hell’s Forty Acres) and farming nearly impossible, Victorio decided the new reservation was unacceptable and moved his followers to more pleasant grounds at Ojo Caliente (Warm Springs), thus again becoming an outlaw in the eyes of the United States. In 1878, the U.S. Army attempted to force the Apaches back to the San Carlos reservation, but Victorio eluded capture, disappearing into the desert with 150 braves. Surviving by raiding the towns and farms of Chihuahua, Mexico, Victorio and his men began to ambush U.S. troops as well as Mexican or American sheepherders.

In 1880, a combined force of U.S. and Mexican troops finally succeeded in tracking down Apache and his warriors, surrounding them in the Tres Castillos Mountains of Mexico, just south of El Paso, Texas. Having sent the American troops away, the Mexican soldiers proceeded to kill all but 17 of the trapped Apaches, though the exact manner of Victorio’s death remains unclear. Some claimed a Native American scout employed by the Mexican army killed the famous warrior. But according to the Apache, Victorio took his own life rather than surrender to the Mexicans. Regardless of how it happened, Victorio’s death made him a martyr to the Apache people and strengthened the resolve of other warriors to continue the fight. The last of the great Apache warriors, Geronimo, would not surrender until 1886.

READ MORE: How Geronimo Eluded Death and Capture for 25 Years

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George Bernard Shaw quits his job

Year
1880
Month Day
July 05

On July 5, 1880, George Bernard Shaw, 23, quits his job at the Edison Telephone Company in order to write.

Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, and left school at the age of 14 to work in a land agent’s office. In 1876, he quit and moved to London, where his mother, a music teacher, had settled. He worked various jobs while trying to write plays. He began publishing book reviews and art and music criticism in 1885. Meanwhile, he became a committed reformer and an active force in the newly established Fabian Society, a group of middle-class socialists.

His first play, Widowers’ House, was produced in 1892. His second play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, was banned in Britain because of its frank dealing with prostitution. In 1905, when the play was performed in the U.S., police shut it down after one performance and jailed the actors and producers. The courts soon ruled that the show could re-open. Although some private productions were held, the show wasn’t legally performed in Britain until 1926.

Shaw became the theater critic for the Saturday Review in 1895, and his reviews during the next several years helped shape the development of drama. In 1898, he published Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, which contained Arms and the Man, The Man of Destiny and other dramas. In 1904, Man and Superman was produced.

In his work, Shaw supported socialism and decried the abuses of capitalism, the degradation of women, and the evil effects of poverty, violence, and war. His writing was filled with humor, wit, and sparkle, as well as reformist messages, and his play Pygmalion, produced in 1912, later became the hit musical and movie My Fair Lady.

In 1925, Shaw won the Nobel Prize for literature and used the substantial prize money to start an Anglo-Swedish literary society. He lived simply, abstained from alcohol, caffeine, and meat, declined most honors and awards, and continued writing into his 90s. He produced more than 40 plays before his death in 1950.

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