I turned 60 last week. This got me thinking about all the things I would have experienced had I been born 100 years earlier, in 1855, and managed to live until 1915. Turns out there were some pretty momentous events I would have lived through. F’rinstance:
The election and assassination of Lincoln.
The Civil War and Reconstruction.
The impeachment of Johnson, Grant’s presidency, and the disputed election of Hayes.
The opening of the transcontinental railroad.
The Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The assassinations of Garfield and McKinley.
The invention of the electric light, the phonograph, motion pictures, radio, the internal combustion engine, the automobile, and the airplane.
The work of Pasteur, Koch, and Lister.
The discovery of radioactivity.
Jack the Ripper.
The Chicago and St Louis Expositions.
HH Holmes’ Murder Castle.
The Spanish-American war.
Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency and his run for a third term.
Krakatoa.
The San Francisco earthquake.
The Galveston flood.
Most of Queen Victoria’s reign.
All of Edward VII’s reign.
The sinking of the Titanic.
Halley’s comet (it was believed that the tail would poison all life on Earth).
The first Russian Revolution.
The first two years of WWI.
Kind of makes the last 60 years seem pretty dull, doesn’t it? 