I found an interesting discussion today, and thought it was well worth cribbing to use here on my site. One of the members of the HTF started a thread asking where people were and what they remember about significant dates in history. He started with a short list of about five dates, and as people have responded the list of days has grown.

I’ve posted my list here — it’s my hope that some of you visiting will take the time to follow up in the comments, and feel free to add other dates you might find significant. The first few dates on the list were added as more of a joke, but I went ahead and included them — who knows? Maybe Methuselah stops by every so often. :)

* 1,000,000 BC (Fur bikinis) * 30 AD (Ben-Hur) * 1215 AD (Signing of the Magna Carta) * 2 Sep 1666 (Great Fire of London) * 1 Sep 1939 (WWII begins) * 7 Dec 1941 (Pearl Harbor) * 6 Aug 1945 (Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima) * 22 Nov 1963 (Kennedy shot) * 15-28 Oct 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis) * 9 Feb 1964 (Beatles appear on Ed Sullivan) * 4 Apr 1968 (Dr. Martin Luther King shot) * 20 July 1969 (Moon landing) * 7 Dec 1972 (Apollo 17 launch)

All those were before my time…now, for events since May 3, 1973:

  • 20 Jul 1976 (Viking 1 lands on Mars)

    I’m 3. Mars, shmarz. I’ve got a 2-month old brother to torment. Lemme at’im!

  • 16 Aug 1977 (Elvis dies)

    I’m 4. I’m sure I’d heard Elvis by this point, but was much more likely to be cognizant of songs on Sesame Street.

  • 8 Dec 1980 (John Lennon shot)

    No cognizant memories of this…must not have been a huge Beatles fan at 7 years of age.

  • 30 Mar 1981 (Ronald Reagan shot)

    No real clear memories here, either. At 8, I probably wasn’t overly concerned with current events beyond what cool toy was coming out soon.

  • Jan 28 1986 (Space Shuttle Challenger explodes)

    I was 13 and in Jr. High at the time. I know some of the classrooms had the launch on, but I wasn’t in one. I do remember going into the orchestra room and hearing the news there not too long after it happened, as it was spreading across the school — from then on for the rest of the day, anytime you saw a television, it had the distinctive double-trail of smoke from the explosion.

  • Nov 9 1989 (Berlin Wall falls)

    This is one of the key dates for me. I’d been taking German in High School for a couple years. At 16 years of age, this is the first event I can really conciously remember being amazed that I was able to witness — knowing without a doubt that I was watching history in the making. Sitting first at home, then in German class over the next days watching people take sledgehammers to the wall and finally tear down what had been, until that day, such a powerful and horrid symbol of oppression.

    The next two years, in the summers of 1990 and 1991, I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Germany, and went through Berlin on both trips. It was truly amazing — having seen pictures of East and West Berlin for years, then being able to see the newly reunited city so shortly after the fall of the wall. Not just seeing it once, either, but being able to see the changes between the first and second trips. Even in areas where the wall was completely gone, you could still pick out where it had run almost as if it were still there, just because of the sudden shift in architecture, upkeep, and even just the feel of the buildings. Truly, truly incredible.

    For me, the fall of the Berlin Wall is probably the single strongest event, even more so on a personal level than the 9-11 attacks, because of my interest and studies in Germany.

  • 11 Sep 2001 (WTC/Pentagon attacks)

    Woke up, got ready to go to work, hiked down from Capitol Hill into downtown Seattle. Got to the building a few minutes early, so was standing on the patio of the Norton Building (2nd and Columbia), looking at the city, vaguely in the direction of the Bank of America tower at 5th and Columbia — hard not to look at it, it’s the tallest building in Seattle. A guy standing next to me calmly looks at me, then the Bank of America tower, and remarks that, “They’re sweeping it now.”

    “Sweeping it?” I replied — seemed a little early for janitors to be out. This guy wasn’t making much sense.

    “Yeah. For bombs.”

    “Excuse me?”

    He then proceeded to tell me that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and possibly the White House. No way. This has to got to be a joke, right? I rode the elevator up to my floor and walked in, glanced over at one of the computer screens — and saw a picture on the CNN site of the WTC towers in flames.

    It’s really happening.

    Spent the rest of the day alternating between my job and rabidly reloading every news website I could find that hadn’t been overloaded. When I got the chance, I’d visit the other floors in my office, where the TVs in the lounges were on CNN, with people gathered around them, watching in horror.

    I also spent much of the rest of my day looking out my 6th floor window at the 70-some stories of the Bank of America tower. The hills in Seattle put its base roughly at eye level, just 3 blocks uphill from me. If that ever came tumbling down — it wouldn’t collapse in on itself like the WTC did, and I likely wouldn’t be around to tell the tale afterwards. Made for a very nerve-wracking day.

[See also: A good view, a picnic, and naked women running up and down staircases | New WTC plan chosen | Memory Maps | Three Years | Al-Qaeda type? ]

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