1920: Agency is founded on June 30, 1920 as Preventorium; a live-in facility to care for and educate ill and malnourished children.

1920: Agency purchases first building in San Mateo for $10!

1923: 34,000 students enrolled in special education classes; nearly exclusively available in large cities only.

1920s: Families chose to send their children with disabilities to institutions because it was largely believed only institutions could help these youth receive training.

1935: In the United States, Dr. Alexis Carrel, a Nobel prize winner who had been on the staff of the Rockefeller Institute since its inception, publishes his book "Man the Unknown." In it he suggests the removal of the individuals with developmental disabilities and criminals by small euthanasia institutions equipped with suitable gases.

1927: The Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision ruled that forced sterilization of people with disabilities was not a violation of their constitutional rights. This decision removed all restraints for eugenicists. By the 1970s, over 60,000 disabled people were sterilized without their consent.

1935: A group in New York City called the League for the Physically Handicapped formed to protest discrimination by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The league's 300 people -- most disabled by polio and cerebral palsy -- all had been turned down for WPA jobs.

1930s: Nazis persecute people with disabilities ordering widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled. 100,000 children and adults with developmental and physical disabilities were exterminated during the Holocaust.

1939: World War II begins.