Several significant family events took place during Lincoln's youth in Indiana. On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln died of milk sickness, leaving eleven-year-old Sarah in charge of a household that included her father, nine-year-old Abraham, and Dennis Hanks, Nancy's nineteen-year-old orphaned cousin.
In 1977, Meier set the world record for longest filibuster. From the floor of the Texas Senate, Meier spoke mostly uninterrupted for 43 hours to fight a bill he viewed as an attack on the state's open records laws. The achievement was recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records for well over a decade.
One of the most notable filibusters of the 1960s occurred when Southern Democrats attempted to block the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by filibustering for 75 hours, including a 14 hour and 13 minute address by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. The filibuster failed when the Senate invoked cloture for only the second time since 1927.