It crossed my mind during the Brexit polling and the recent US election (both of which I followed live from down here in NZ) that a LOT of unique and important things have happened over the course of my lifetime. My generation has seen more good and bad things thanks to the invention of social media, technological advances like real-time internet, smart phones, and so much more. My grandparents could never have imagined that they could answer a video phone call on a handheld device and see their granddaughter in New Zealand, or that I could live-stream myself walking around a thermal wonderland in another country and read/respond to the comments on the video as they come up – from anyone who was watching. Hell, my parents could never have imagined this.
Thirty years.
I decided to make a list of the historical events – good and bad – that have happened across the world in the last thirty years. You can definitely argue that our grandparents generation also lived through such events because they absolutely did. World War One. World War Two. The assassination of JFK. Many people in my grandparents generation can tell you where they were when they heard that news. For my parents generation, maybe the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 or their last concert on the rooftop of the Apple building in 1969. Maybe my parents remember where they were when the Fall of Saigon happened.
For my generation, its where we were on 9/11 (walking into school my junior year of high school). Or during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (sitting in the Guatemala City airport with forty of my high school classmates, on our way home from a mission trip). Or the attacks in Paris in 2015 (in a cafe in Wellington, NZ, two days after I arrived in the country). But what about the good things? Can you tell me where you were when you heard that Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014? I was in Florence, Italy. How about where you were when the Kansas City Royals won the pennant after a thirty year dry spell in 2015? I was home in Kansas, watching the game on TV with my mom, screaming and crying at the same time. The Chicago Cubs? I was in New Zealand following the news via Facebook.
With the help of some friends, here are thirty or so things that have happened during our lives. I apologise – as much as I tried to make this global, I’m afraid it skews more toward the Western/American in me. I also tried – as much as I could – to make this list things that I could remember… nothing from 1985 or 1986, as I was a baby and wouldn’t remember it.
Political:
1989 The East German Communist Party announces that citizens of East Germany can freely cross the border into West Germany, in one of the more important events in the ending of the Cold War. That night, revelers climbed onto the wall and began to chip away at it.
{image from Ryanne Lai/Flickr}
1989 The Tiananmen Square massacre occurs after widespread protest over economic liberalisation, democracy, and rule of law. An iconic photo shows one man standing up to the tanks as they roll through the square. No one knows what happened to him; estimates of dead are between hundreds and thousands.
1990 Nelson Mandela is released from 27 years in prison and begins working with South African president de Klerk to end apartheid.
1993/1999 The European Union Eurozone is officially formed, merging trade interests and allowing Europeans within the Union to legally work and live in any other Union country. The Euro is created in 1999, thereby invalidating all currency of European Union countries. Some countries are exempt from this: the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England) keeps the British pound sterling, Denmark keeps the krone. Other countries can only switch to the Euro after meeting certain economic conditions (which they can postpone in order to not make the switch).
1997 After a very public marriage and subsequent divorce, Princess Diana is killed in a car accident in Paris’ Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Millions attend her funeral in London and millions more watch it on live television. Mother Theresa, a close friend and confidante of Diana, dies the day before her funeral.
2001 Islamic terrorists hijack four planes in the New York City/Boston area and fly three of them into the World Trade Centre towers in NYC and into the Pentagon in Washington DC. The fourth plane is hijacked but fails to hit its target thanks to passengers who overtake the terrorists. The plane crashes in rural Pennsylvania. Some suspect the plane was headed for the White House. President George W Bush is in Florida reading to school children. He is politically attacked for his slow response to the attacks. Conspiracy theories will abound for decades after the attacks, with the biggest one being that the US government supported and knew about the attacks.
2003 The US Army and allies stage the invasion of Iraq. Operating at night, they attack a compound outside Baghdad, where rumours said Saddam Hussein and his sons were visiting. The invasion sets the world stage for the next twenty years.
{image from the Times of Israel}
2005 After a series of declining health events, Catholic Pope John Paul dies. The Vatican cardinals elect Pope Benedict. In 2013, Benedict resigns, the first pope to do so since the 1400s (and the first to do so willingly since the 1200s). Cardinals elect Pope Francis, the first South American pope. Three popes in a ten-year span is highly unlikely and probably won’t happen again anytime soon.
2006 Iraqi president/dictator Saddam Hussein is killed after a war trial for crimes against humanity in 1982.
2008 The United States elects their first black president and reelects him in 2012. Barack Obama’s presidency will be highly acclaimed by some and highly disparaged by others. Global views are that he is by far the best president the US could have had, especially in the lead up to the 2016 elections. His presidency is marred by high police violence in the US and horrific gun-centric attacks across the country.
2010- Burma/Myanmar begins to embark on a series of reforms designed to lead the former socialist/communist country toward a liberal democracy. This includes releasing Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.
May 2011 In an stealthy nighttime raid, US Navy SEALS storm a compound in the Pakistani desert and kill Osama bin Laden.
{image from Time.com}
2011 Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland (since 1911, when her grandfather King George V visited while Ireland was still a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland). Three years later, the President of Ireland returned the favour by visiting the Queen, becoming the first Irish president to visit England.
late 2011 The Arab Spring begins, a moniker given to the many uprisings in Arab countries. Within the uprisings, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is publicly killed (and the video shared to social media) and both Egypt’s Mubarek and Tunisia’s Ben Ali are overthrown. In all, two governments are overthrown and three civil wars occur in the wake of the uprisings.
2014 Scotland votes in a referendum to leave the UK. While the Leave voters poll high in the preliminary polls, the Stay voters prevail in a not-close race. Two years later, they will ask for another referendum in order to separate from the UK and stay in the EU when they vote to leave.
2014 Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist who was brutally shot on her way to school for speaking out against the Taliban, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in women’s education in Pakistan.
2016 In a stunning victory for “Brexit” voters, Great Britain votes to leave the European Union. This has immediate impact on global markets and within a week of the referendum, all leaders of the Independence movement have resigned. Prime Minister David Cameron also resigns.
2016 The United States presidential election reads like a bad joke. Racist, misogynistic, and egotistical Donald Trump runs as the Republican nominee, promising to “make America great again,” while former President Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary secures the Democratic nomination. The election is marred by the high levels of violence across the country and the powerful Black Lives Matter movement. In a very surprising, shocking, and horrific turn of events, Trump is elected president.
Sports
{image from Getty Images}
1996 American gymnast Kerri Strug lands a 9.712 score on her second vault in the Olympic finals, eliminating all doubt about whether the American team would win the gold medal. What makes this moment so powerful was that Strug had landed her previous vault and rotated her ankle. Limping badly to the start of the vault, she raced down the mat and landed her second perfectly, immediately hopping on to her good foot. She crumpled to the ground after bowing to the judges and was carried off the floor by coach Bela Karolyi.
1997 In one of the more controversial sports moments, American boxer Mike Tyson bites off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a match.
2015 The Kansas City Royals win baseball’s World Series for the first time since 1985, breaking a thirty-year dry spell. One year later, the Chicago Cubs break a 108 year dry spell. Three days later, the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team falls to Ireland, the first time ever in All Blacks history.
Disasters, natural or otherwise
1992 Hurricane Andrew hits the south Florida coast, killing only 65 people but costing $26 billion (1992 USD.)
1994 A famine hits North Korea and kills somewhere between 240,000 and 3.5 million people. Referred to as the Arduous March and lasting for four years (with recurrences since), the famine killed the most people in 1997. Exact numbers will never be known because the current regime will not release information to the outside world.
2003 The space shuttle Columbia disintegrates on reentry into the atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard. A similar incident occurred in 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated on take off.
2004 A 9.4 magnitude earthquake near Indonesia on Boxing Day triggers a deadly tsunami that kills an estimated 227,000 people across the southern Indian and Pacific Oceans. The humanitarian effort costs nearly $14 billion (USD) and lasted several years.
2005 On the morning of October 8, 2005, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake hit the Kashmir region of Pakistan, killing upwards of 75,000 people, injuring another 106,000, and devastating the city of Muzaffarabad. Aid relief hit $5.4 billion (USD.)
2005 Hurricane Katrina makes landfall on the southern coast of the United States. New Orleans suffered the worst, with over 80% of the levees breaking. Flooding lasted for weeks and the city never fully recovered, especially in the poorer parts of town. Deaths attributed to the hurricane are estimated at near 1,900.
{image from the BBC}
2011 An earthquake off the Japanese coast. An estimated 15 million people are reported dead or injured. There is also a partial meltdown of the Fukishima nuclear reactors, resulting in a near nuclear disaster on top of the earthquake damage. Also in 2011, the second of two major earthquakes to hit Christchurch, New Zealand in February causes $16 billion (USD) in damages and kills 185 people. It is one of the nation’s deadliest peacetime disasters.
Technological
1996 Scottish scientists successfully clone the first animal from an adult cell. Known as Dolly the Sheep, she survives and lives almost seven years, giving birth to six lambs over the course of her life. This opens the door for more cloning attempts and in 2009 Argentinian scientists successfully clone an extinct mountain ibex, the first time an extinct animal has been cloned – leading to potentially resurrecting frozen tissue to clone other extinct or endangered animals (re: Jurassic Park?)
2000 In the lead up to the millennium, computer scientists realised a flaw in the system that could – potentially – crash every single computer on earth at midnight on December 31, 1999. That didn’t happen of course, but millions of people believed it and stockpiled water and canned food in case the world came to a crashing halt.
2003 Human’s DNA is finally fully uncoded, leading to new understanding of biological heredity, many diseases, dimensions of personality, growth and development, evolution and the deep history of the human race.
{image from NASA}
2011 NASA launches the final space shuttle, Atlantis, which flies supplies to the International Space Station (created 1998). In the 2000s, NASA’s Mars rovers find traces of water and life on Mars. In 2016, NASA sends a spacecraft to Jupiter. Named Juno (after Jupiter’s wife), it uncovers Jupiter’s secrets… a science-meets-mythology joke 400 years in the making.
I obviously had to pick and choose the most important things – or what I thought were the most important and the most interesting. What do you think? What else should be on this list?
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{featured image from Gavin Stewart via Flickr}