Sunday 23 November 2008

Where were you when...?


History is not just the stuff that is recorded in dusty old tomes in the backs of university libraries, it's the stuff that is happening, day to day, around us in the world we live in. I've only been alive for 26 years and so far several historic things have happened in my lifetime that my grandkids will know about.

"Wow, Granny, you mean you saw the Towers collapse on the news?!"

I got to thinking about this the other day and thought it might be worth thinking about all of the historic events that have happened so far in my lifetime. Especially seeing as thought we are in the wake of the ground-breaking event that is the election of Barack Obama.

Off the top of my head, these are the things that I can remember that have happened in my lifetime:

Gulf war (1990-91)
Beginning of the Bosnian War (1992-95)
Death of Princess Diana (1997)
The Asian Financial Crisis (1997)
Turn of the new millennium (do I really need to put in a date here??!)
9/11 (2001)
The declaration of the Iraq war by George W. Bush (2002)
The Boxing Day Tsunami (2004)
Hurricane Katrina (2005)
Capture and execution of Suddam Hussein (2006)
Election of first African-American president in USA (2008)

Interesting how most of them are "bad news" events. At least the most recent is a nice "good news" event.

I guess here I have focused on global events, not just stuff that's significant to NZ... Those are the ones I can think of just for now. Anyone else think of any others I have missed?

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