Born 11 years after the RMS Titanic sank and two years before the birth of the late Queen Elizabeth II (United Kingdom’s longest-reigning monarch), former senate president and current Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile has turned 100 years old today, February 14, 2024.
Officially a centenarian, Enrile is older than bubble gum, which was first produced in 1928; penicillin, discovered by Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming in 1928; electron microscope, created by Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll in 1931; microwave oven, which was first built by Percy Spencer in 1945; pager, patented by Alfred J. Gross in 1949; cassette tape, developed by Dutch inventor Lou Ottens in 1962; Sony Walkman, released in 1979; and personal computer which was first sold in 1971—and all the other modern gadgets that came after.
Enrile’s existence was also marked by historical events, including the Philippines’ first participation in the Summer Olympics in 1924; Vatican City’s separation from Italy in 1929; the “Great Crash of Wall Street” which took place in 1929; first Academy Awards or Oscars in 1929; the Spanish Civil War in 1936; the Great Depression that lasted until the late 1930s; the World War II which began in 1939 and ended in 1945; the establishment of the World Health Organization in 1948; the opening of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) in 1984 and Metro Rail Transit (MRT) in 1999; and many other modern-day developments and events.
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