Perspectives from the End of a Generation

As a person born in 1980, I fall at the end of Generation X and the beginning of Generation Y or the Millennial Generation. This gives me a unique perspective on life that I’d like to share from my generation.

Sometimes it can be fun to get a little perspective. Age gives us this view. Some of these are related to people you may not know, but I’ll try to keep it as relevant as possible.

Famous Births

Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce Knowles, Kim Kardashian, and Paris Hilton are all around the same age as me (born either in 1980 or 1981).

Space Travel

The last time man left near-earth orbit was in 1972, 8 years before I were born, which was also the last time we landed on the moon during Apollo 17.

The first time man left near-earth orbit was during Apollo 8 in 1968, 12 years before we were born and the first moon landing was a year later during Apollo 11.

Civil Rights

The American Civil War ended 115 years before I was born, but the Civil Rights Act was passed only 16 years before I was born in 1964.

Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down 26 years before I was born, in 1954. If that seems like a long time, consider that I’m now 34 years old.

Presidents

In our lifetime we’ve lived through ~6 presidents (Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, and Obama) over a span of 33 years.

In the 33 years before we were born there were ~7 presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter).

Leonardo Davinci and Michelangelo were to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are to me in regards to age and perspective.

Technology

The first nuclear test was 35 years before I was born in 1945, the same year WWII ended. The ENIAC was built a year later in 1946.

In 1986, 6 years after I was born, Earth experienced both the Chernobyl and Challenger Disasters. 27 years later Columbia disintegrated in 2003.

2 years before I was born, GPS was invented in 1978. 22 years later in the year 2000, President Clinton granted nonmilitary users access to an unscrambled GPS signal. 7 years after that the iPhone was released.

Famous Deaths

John Lennon died in December of 1980. Albert Einstein died in 1955, 25 years before we were born. Pablo Picasso died in 1973, 7 years before we were born.

War

5 years before we were born, the United States lost the Vietnam War (1975). 27 years before we were born, the Korean War ended (1953). 2015 is the same distance from 1980 as 1980 is from the end of World War II (1945).

If you liked this, you might like BuzzFeed’s 7 Mind-Shattering Facts About Time that includes things like how Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were all born in the same year. How’s that for perspective?


7 Mind-Shattering Facts About Time by buzzfeedvideo

Update March 13, 2015 from Reddit

What 2 famous people lived at the same time in history that people wouldn’t think were alive at the same time?

  • Tom Selleck, Bob Marley, Rod Stewart, Bubba Smith, Micky Dolenz, Eric Clapton, Mia Farrow, and Tony Dow were all alive at the same time as Adolf Hitler
  • Cleopatra and Julius Caesar
  • Picasso and JFK
  • Hitler and Einstein
  • Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr
  • Eminem and Elvis
  • Justin Bieber and Andre the Giant
  • Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin
  • Bill Nye and Ken Ham
  • Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx
  • Walt Disney and Adam Sandler
  • Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla
  • Salvador Dali and Walt Disney

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