4N6 DNA

There have been so many unparalleled moments in our history that have changed the very way the world works. Are there any moments in particular that meant more to you than just whats written in the history books? Or any moments you love reading about? Wish you were a part of?

October 25, 1945, Taiwan Restoration Day (臺灣光復節 <--not sure if you guys can read that ). My great grandfather was one of the leaders under Chiang Kai-shek who led thousands of Chinese out of China to Taiwan where they established a democracy free from communist influence. This is a chapter in history that is very important to my family. My parents both grew up in Taiwan, went to college there and then came to the US 30 years ago ( and went to U Mass )

I made a wallpaper in fact a few weeks ago on some moments an figures in history that I am fond of :





Hopefully this thread is okay.

What about you guys?

Jerry D

Great topic, Jessie, and I love that wallpaper!

November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. I'll never forget that day (I was in 1st Grade) and I don't think this country, or the world, was ever the same after that. JFK inspired a generation, and his death ushered in an age a cynicism that still reverberates to this day, and I can't help but think that the world would be a different place if he had lived.

It's hard to know what would have happened if JFK had lived, because a lot of people think he would have pulled out of Vietnam, but there's no guarantee that he would have, and the people who made the decisions to escalate our involvement in Vietnam were people he appointed, but I just think that things might have been different, and better, if he had lived.

TheAngel

Of course, for me, being 21, the outstanding moment in my history was September 11th, 2001. It was my Pearl Harbor Day, my JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinations, my Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the day my generation realized that everything was not OK. I was a freshman in high school when it happened. I still remember what class I was sitting in when I got word and I remember that I was doing benchmark testing. I can still remember what I did that night, going home and curling up in my chair with a blanket and watching the news all night long. It was the first time I was brought face to face with my nation's vulnerability. September 11th for me was the day the world changed, and my generation, as well as all other generations, are still dealing with the consequences of 9/11 and will continue to do so for many years to come.

COOLCAT200

I will say the end of the Cold War. I think the fall of the Soviet Union was a huge event in history. After all the years the Cold War went on and to finally have it end and come out on top I think was a huge moment for America.

I am 25 and I also must say 9/11 as well. I will never ever forget the moment I turned the TV on and saw the horror and tragedy that was taking place. I teary up thinking of all those innocent people.

sunnykerr

I'll never forget September 11, that's for sure. It was my first semester in journalism school, ergo my first semester away from home. I only had a late class that say, so I woke up around noon.

I remember turning on the TV and, in that state of not being completely awake yet, being stupidly peeved off that, once again, my shows had been taken over by news coverage.

(What can I say, I don't have the best knee-jerk reactions when I've just woken up.)

Then, about a nanosecond later, I realized what was going on. And my stomach just about dropped out of my body.

I have a cousin who's not really my cousin inasmuch as he's my uncle's former step-son. But we grew up together. We're just not that much in touch any more. But I knew he was working for his father, and that his father is some big muckety-muck in New York City, with an office in a big building somewhere.

So I ran to the phone and called my mum. She answered. Told me that, no, Jonathan (my cousin) wasn't working for his father anymore. Hadn't for some time now. No. He was a firefighter now.

Well, you can imagine... So we hadn't heard from him at all. But I had a class that afternoon and, for whatever stupid reason, I decided to go instead of staying by the phone. Lot of good that did... The attack was all everyone was talking about. The teacher even suspended whatever it was we were supposed to go over that day to talk about the role of the journalist at a time like this. Or something like that. I can't say that I was paying much attention.

We didn't hear from Jonathan till the next day. I don't even know how that was possible, all things considered. Turns out he wasn't on shift that day. He had been playing golf. And, by the time he got there, they had closed the bridges. So he couldn't get to it. Because that's what he was trying to do. Get there. Help people.

vc318

Sunny, that's really incredible that this relative of yours didn't end up working that day.

Next to 9/11, I'd have to say the event that hit me the most was how in the late 1990's, many Haitians risked their lives trying to flee their homes because of the hardship in their country and made the frightful trip in rafts to the United States. Unfortunately, their journey was pointless every time they made it to soil because they were not protected under the same "Dry Foot, Wet Foot" policy as Cubans. In thus, they were sent back. Even to this day, I think about how hard it is for them especially since the poverty level has grown there.

Nad

Two events come to mind:

November 9th, 1989 - The fall of the Berlin wall and inner german border. I'll never forget how the news broke and the pictures of the people celebrating on the streets of Berlin. I was in my second to last year of high school back in the day and we talked about what impact it would have on the country and the world for days in school. We also had some pupils at our school whom had left the GDR via Hungary when Hungary opened its border to Austria earlier that year and therefore we had a chance to get first hand reports on what the conditions in the GDR were back in the day, which made the events even more significant to us.

September 11th, 2001 - I remember being at work and listening to the news on the radio. At first everyone thought it was a small plane and a few minutes later, the reports changed and soon afterwards the second plane hit. I called my mum and asked her to turn on the TV and she confirmed what the radio had just reported - two planes had hit the WTC. Sufficient to say I was stuck infront of the TV when I got home that day, watching the news for the rest of the day/night.

sunnykerr

There's always a personal way that certain moments in history affect us.

These upcoming Olympics in Beijing... the government's been cracking down real hard (you know, more than normally) on any and all things that could make it look bad to the international media. And that includes stopping all international adoptions proceedings (well, you know, not full-stop, but postponing them, which... if anyone knows anyone who's ever adopted internationally... can sometimes mean the end of one attempt).

Anyway, my cousin and his wife had been going through the procedure and waiting for almost three years to adopt and they only just got back from China a couple of weeks ago with their little daughter. Had it taken just another month, it might have been another year... It might never even happened.

Or, another example, on the night Princess Diana died and on the day JFK Jr. died, my cousin (the same one) was having a party. He was celebrating his birthday the night Princess Diana died. And we were celebrating mine the day JFK Jr. died. Obviously, we stopped having parties after that. Not that there's a connection. Obviously. But you get superstitious after a while.

sm_love_dc

Moments that end an era or a decade are really shocking. The end of the
60's. There were several events that really ended that time, that come to mind.

First: RFK. The end of the political ideals that surrounded the 60's. After he died the youth in America felt that they really had no voice, and there would be little change.

Second: Martin Luther King. The end of the non militant side of civil rights. Others would go on, but it would never be the same again.

Third: The manson murders. The murder of Sharon Tate and others really put America on high alert. The fun times were over. Youth was against youth, and you could not turst anyone.

sunnykerr

Funny you should mention RFK. As I mentionned on another thread before, the movie Thirteen Days aired on TV a while back and it's sent me on this whole thing about finding out all the information about RFK that I can get my hands on.

His carreer was definitely less "flashy" than that of his brother, but I've just been brought to tears by reading the speech he gave right after Martin Luther King Jr's death. It feels so odd, because I've never given the man much thought. I don't give many American politicans that much thought, generally speaking. But, ever since I've starting "looking into" him, as it were... I don't know, I'm kinda falling in love (in an obviously purely ideological sort of way) with the man. He was kind of awesome, wasn't he?

sm_love_dc

Oh yah you should really look into his work in politics. The good and the bad. He did take some sides that were not perhaps the best. He got more liberal after his bother died. He went and tried to find out what the issues other classes had. He took up those causes, and he was genuine about it. So genuine that he was shot.

welshgirlyUK

For me, it's the day Princess Diana died. There was never an experience quite like it, the suffering the whole word seemed to feel, but especially here in Britain. And then the funeral.... Just seeing the boys walk with his coffin. I'm not sure i'll ever encounter a collective mourning like that again in my lifetime.

There's also living through the IRA. That's an experience i'll never forget.

4N6 DNA

I will never forget September 11th either. I remember that it was the only day in my 4 years in High School were we allowed to take out our cellphones and use them. Many people at my school's parents worked at the Pentagon and it was a very chaotic day. I remember I was in my Molecular Biology class and my teacher had just finished saying "good morning Cell researchers!" (he said that every morning.

Jerry, I often think about what would be different about the Vietnam war had JFK not been assassinated. I must agree with you. I think we would have avoided LBJ's escalation of the conflict and Nixon's expansion of it beyond Vietnam's borders. I also think that he'd be enormous in ending the cold war with his relationship with the then current Russian Premier.

It is fun to talk about what ifs. Can you imagine the difference our would might have been had many of our key figures not been assassinated? How would Lincoln be viewed in the history books if Booth hadn't assassinated him and he'd lived to be the President during the early years of Reconstruction? How would the ACW have turned out if Stonewall Jackson not accidentally been shot by his own troops and then died later because of it? Would WWI have occurred if Archduke Ferdinand and his wife had not been assassinated? What would have been the ultimate result of the Civil Rights Movement had Martin Luther King not been killed? We just don't know

TheAngel, I know what you mean. I was so naive, so unaware of the issues. September 11 really opened up my eyes about the world and from then on was when I took more of an interest in politics and the world around me.

Sunny, I am glad that everything went okay for your family that day. As for your cousin and his wife, glad they were able to adopt

And as for the day Princess Diana died, to be perfectly honest I didn't even know who she was. I was at my friends house (she has family in London) when the news came and they were devastated. I must admit at the time I was so uneducated in the British system and the royal family

sm_love_dc, so many things happened in the 60's that stay with us..

welshfirlyUK, does that stand for the Irish army?

Nad, where were you living during the fall of the wall? Germany?

Nad

I remember hearing about her being in a car accident in Paris shortly before I went to bed that night and when I got up in the morning, the news of her death was all over the place And - as you said - the whole world seemed to be affected by it.

Yep

And since today is his 90th birthday - how about the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 years? Resulting in Mandela leading South Africa to its first fully representative election which would end the Apartheid regime that devided the country for decades.

welshgirlyUK

Yeah, it seems one of those moments you remember where you were when you were told. I'd just woke up and my uncle called too tell us to turn on the tv because Diana was dead and we all just sat around the tv all day.