When I was born...

May 12, 2005 08:55



...interracial marriage was a crime in some states of the U.S.A.
...the U.S. Supreme Court was made up of only white men.
...LSD was legal, if barely, in the U.S.A.
...there had been no successful heart transplants in humans.
...Israel had never controlled the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, or the Sinai peninsula.

...Swedes drove on the left side of the road.
...the Dow Jones Industrial Average had never closed above 1000.0
...NYSE stock performance was given in eighths, not in decimal.
...the 747 had not flown, nor had the Concorde.
...ARPANET (and therefore the Internet) was still in the future.

...nobody had been to the moon.
...NASDAQ did not exist.
...voting age in the U.S.A. was 21.
...Amtrak did not exist.
...Walt Disney World had yet to open.

...the microprocessor had not been invented.
...there were no UPC labels.
...no U.S. President had ever resigned the Presidency.
...there was no trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
...there was a country, the Republic of Vietnam (or South Vietnam) and a city, Saigon.

...smallpox still existed "in the wild."
...food and medicine packages did not have special anti-tampering seals.
...AT&T was the long-distance phone company in the U.S.
...Coca-Cola was just Coca-Cola with no variation - unless you mixed it yourself.
...U.S. television had monaural sound.

...there was no tunnel under the English channel.
...Hirohito was Emperor of Japan.
...ChloroFluoroCarbons were common refrigerants and aerosol propellants.
...there were no "Happy Meals" sold at MacDonald's.
...there was a wall dividing Berlin, and an "Iron Curtain" dividing Europe.

...Eastern and Pan Am were major U.S. airlines.
...there was apartheid in South Africa.
...the U.S.S.R. existed as a superpower.
...Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show.
...there was an edict of Inquisition against Galileo Galilei.

...the F.W. Woolworth Company was in business.
...the Peanuts comic strip was in its original run.
...Volkswagen Beetles were rear-engine rear-wheel-drive vehicles.
...all manned spacecraft were government owned.
...no spacecraft had visited Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, any comet, or any asteroid.

And history isn't over yet. I plan on seeing quite a bit more of it happen.

birthday, history

Previous post Next post
Up