History is researched and at the end of the day cited from analyses made by historians. We depend on historians to get it right. But, even their work is based on what evidence they can find. Much is documentary in nature. The best evidence is often a compilation of eyewitness first-hand accounts of the actual events.
This geeklist contains my personal witness to history, however minor. It's a list of events where I can say I was there or I watched it unfold live. I have spoken with people who are not only witnesses, they are the history. While grognards debate tactics and armour effectiveness, these people chime in with accounts of how they themselves fought in tanks in North Africa or Italy. It tends to shut you up real fast.
This list is personal. It is not a journey through all important events, only the ones where I can say I touched them even if only slightly. I hope others add their own accounts of other events wherein they touched history in the making. I have no doubt there are some incredible tales out in BGGland. .
1967 The 1967 World's Fair was presented by Montreal. It was called Expo '67, which by the way was taken for our Major League Baseball team, the Montreal Expos. The theme was Man and His World (fr. Terre des hommes) and a worthy theme I think it was.
The city literally built two man-made islands in order to facilitate the fair. I only have vague mental pictures of the event. All I recall is that my father really wanted that we take the helicopter excursion. My mom would have none of it. I also remember that people were much taller in the 1960s.
All Canadians instantly recognize the iconic image of Expo 67, that of the U.S. Pavilion
Yeah, well I was at Expo '88, and we had a 'sky needle' and... and... a monorail.
Yeah, that's right. A monorail.
And then, afterwards, the sky needle, which can be seen for sixty kilometres, was bought by Stefan the hairdresser. And it still lights up the night sky.
1968 I remember watching the original broadcasts of Star Trek curled up with my father. I didn't particularly get it but I was just happy that the TV was not locked into that horrid show called The News. Remember, in 1968 we had a number of channels I could count on one hand.
It's been 41 years now since Star Trek first aired. Who on the planet is not aware of Star Trek and how many hundreds of millions of people has the show inspired in some positive way. I recall William Shatner once recounting that he was visiting in Afghanistan way in the back country. People hardly new a word of English. Out comes running some tribal figure, kapten keerk, kapten keerk!.
By the way, William Shatner is, yes, a Montrealer. He grew up a stone's throw from where I live. His aunt lived with my parents until her passing. Boy, did she have a lot of stories to tell about young Bill.
1969 One of the great achievements of mankind, landing a man on the moon. Neil A. Armstrong first set foot on the moon on 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969, then spoke the following words, That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Buzz Aldrin on the moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong
I remember watching the event live, sitting about 12 inches from the screen, blindness be damned. I had to as this was the hightech piece of equipment we had in our home.
Before, during Gemini, and for the next 7 years or so I and my friends spent most of our playtime on our backs in the astronauts' launch position, manipulating imaginary switches and talking to Houston. Cardboard refrigerator boxes were a valuable commodity in our circle .
I remember watching this and my mom asking "Why isn't the flag waving?" My sister piped up and said "It's probably not windy up there. I bet it's a calm day."
I was 8 and I remember my dad just slapping his forehead, looking at me and asking "Why isn't the flag waving?"
I had just graduated from high school and was doing what a lot of just out of high school boys did, messing around town (Rushville, Nebraska, a town of ~1000 people! not much messing to do), and just happened to be in the bowling alley when the Eagle landed. They had their TV on, and no one was watching. Until I walked by. And stopped. And realized that that was the day and the time that Armstrong was descending the ladder. So I watched it alone on the (black and white) television at the bowling alley in Rushville.
Ironic, now that I work on the Atlas program at United Launch Alliance, nee Lockheed Martin. I tell 'em where to go.
1970 The Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet passenger airliner went into service in 1970. Boeing took the jet on a world tour showing it off. My parents took me to Montreal's Dorval airport to see the public viewing. There were huge throngs of people waiting to take their turn walking through the airplane. My dad put me on his shoulders. I remember seeing a vast sea of heads, and off in the distance I could make out the sight of the 747 sitting in the well-lit Air Canada hangar. Well, we eventually made it to the front. We walked all through that amazing jet. It's curious what one remembers. The image that sticks with me is that all the seats were covered in plastic.
Before I finally flew a 747 I recall flying on 707s, Boeing's first jet airliner. Man, that thing was loud.
you could also include the Concorde-a pterodactyl of aviation-big, fast, spectacular, and ultimately an evolutionary dead end. IIRC, that was '76 or so.
I lived in Everett, WA in 1969. We lived in the Navy Housing on Paine Field, which is right next to the Boeing Field main runway. Those planes were taking off 24 hrs a day. My Dad said you could tell the veteran pilots from the rookies; the veterans would pull the plane up in a nice, leisurely manner, gently taking off. The rookies would shoot down the runway, pull back and shoot up in the air at what seemed like a 45 degree angle. And after years of living on military bases, I can tell you that the 747 was the quietest jet I'd ever heard.
1970 The world over The October Crisis refers to the Cuban Missile Crisis which took place in October 1962. In Quebec, The October Crisis refers to a period of high tension wherein the Canadian Army was called out to restore order.
In Quebec there is more or less a core 25% of the population that wants to secede from Canada to form its own nation. To their lasting credit, this movement has always remained peaceful and democratic. Twice there was a referendum in which the seperatists just barely lost.
October 1970 was a blemish on this peaceful record. Bombs were going off in predominantly English neighbourhoods. Things came to a head when a Quebec minister and a British diplomat were kidnapped. The minister was eventually executed. Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act and called out the Army.
I recall army trucks going up and down the highways and seeing armed soldiers all over the place. You have to understand, that in Montreal one hardly ever sees the Canadian military. I'll spot a single Canadian soldier perhaps once per year. I could tell my parents were very worried. Naturally, I thought it was all quite cool.
1973 My aunt happened to be visiting Israel in 1973 when the Yom Kippur War (Ramadan War) broke out. Because it is such a tiny country one regularly hears fighter jets and sonic booms overhead. Before any announcement was made my aunt new something was up because all of a sudden the sky was replete with fighters flying every which way.
Back in Montreal, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) stationed constables at all Jewish parochial schools because there was a sudden increase in bomb threats.
Several times that October in 1973 we primary school students sat up in bated breath as the principal poked her head in the class instead of the usually expected hall monitor. He would have a short exchange with our teacher and then leave. Our teacher would then get our attention and say the magic words, "OK everyone, we're going to calmly but quickly file out of class." The entire class would erupt in cheers.
Until the bomb squad showed up and then searched every nook and cranny of the building would take hours at least. The whole day was shot for sure. And, there was no way that any homework was going to be assigned. It was better than a snow day as far as we were concerned.
We'd pass one another in the hall on the way out. "What's up?"
"Bomb scare!"
"Yes!!"
It was October and chilly so they walked us down the street to The Y (Young Men's Young Women's Hebrew Association (YM-YWHA). Floor Hockey!! And, the girls..well..did whatever girls do; who knew what that was.
1973 Related to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) implemented an oil embargo against countries who supported Israel. This precipitated the 1973 energy crisis.
Up until then cars looked like my dad's 1973 Grand Le Mans.
That 400 cubic inch (6.5 litre) beast was soon replaced with this:
My dad brought home the Honda Civic in the trunk of the LeMans. We spent the night puting it together and sure enough we had a bunch of screws left over when we were done. Never did find out what they were for. The upside is that over the next 6 years or so we filled the Honda's gas tank twice. .
Related to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) implemented an oil embargo against countries who supported Israel.
Interesting viewpoint.
I think, though, that the "embargo" had more to do with the fact that the US was printing money in order to buy oil, and oil-producing nations finally figured out they were being ripped off.
Related to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) implemented an oil embargo against countries who supported Israel.
Interesting viewpoint.
I think, though, that the "embargo" had more to do with the fact that the US was printing money in order to buy oil, and oil-producing nations finally figured out they were being ripped off.
The cutback in production was ultimately designed to reinforce attempts to bring about a change in U.S. foreign policy through the embargo. As the OAPEC Ministerial Council declared in its statement announcing the reduction in production, such actions would continue "until the Israeli forces are completely evacuated from all the Arab territories occupied in the June 1967 war, and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are restored."
The Oil Weapon and American Foreign Policy Dr. Joseph S. Szyliowicz Major Bard E. O’Neill
6 February 03 Air University Review, March-April 1977
Major Bard E. O'Neill (Ph.D. Denver University) is Visiting Professor, Department of Military and National Security Affairs, The National War College, Washington, D.C. He was Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy, where be specialized in Africa and the Middle East, insurgency and American foreign policy. Major O'Neill has served with the 90th Strategic Missile Wing and the 3d Tactical Fighter Wing in Vietnam. He is the author of Revolutionary Warfare in the Middle East; coeditor and contributor to The Energy Crisis and U.S. Foreign Policy (Praeger, 1975); and coeditor and contributor to Political Violence and Insurgency: A Comparative Approach (Phoenix Press, 1974). Major O'Neill is a previous contributor to the Review.
Dr. Joseph S. Szyliowicz (Ph.D., Columbia University) is Professor of International Relations, Graduate School of International Studies, Denver University. He is author of numerous articles and books on Middle Eastern Affairs, including The Energy Crisis and U.S. Foreign Policy (editor and contributor) and the highly acclaimed Education and Modernization in the Middle East. He is currently Martin Professor, Harry Truman Institute, Jerusalem, Israel.
I'm not sure what you mean to imply about the U.S. "printing money" in 1973. I would suggest that you have the interesting viewpoint, unless I'm way of base. I'm always open to learn about substantiated opinions especially where I have things all wrong. Is that the case? .
The 70s were a period of rampant inflation. OPEC was basically created to ensure that oil-producing nations could protect themselves from the monetary tactics practiced by the US at that time.
Actually, according to Wikipedia (being the 100% reliable source that it is) OAPEC decided to embargo due to the Arab-Israeli conflict, whereas OPEC decided to lift prices due to them getting screwed - at prety much the same time, and probably with some of the same reasonings overlapping in both directions.
And I think it's kind of fair to say that they have been screwed. Market economics doesn't deal very well with limited resources,which can be oversupplied now but will eventually run out. Even if one nation isn't willing to sell its future, others will, and they all have to compete with each other. OPEC was supposed to fix that, like unions try to in the labour market. But of course it hasn't entirely succeeded.
1975 The first personal computer, the Altair, came out in 1975. I never assembled one, but I thought to put my witness to the birth of personal computing here in 1975. I sometimes think people don't quite appreciate how utterly revolutionary the invention of the personal computer has been. How completely different life is. Not only am I exuberant at what I can imagine is yet to come, I can't wait to see what will be that I cannot even imagine.
I am part of that generation that straddles life as it was without PCs and life with it. I recount stories to my children of how things were done before PCs and it's literally an alien world to them.
Altair 8800
Commodore PET - The first perosonal computer I ever used. It has 4 KB of RAM. Using it I won $500 worth of timeshare on McGill University's MUSIC mainframe computer in a programming competition.
you mean punch cards, ticker tape, batch files uploaded by 300 baud modem to a DEC 10 time shared processor. coding in assembler or even Basic coz that's the only way to get a computer to do anything. And yeah, I remember the Apple II w/ the 64K upgrade and color card
My first computer didn't even have a hard drive...
Hard Drive !?! You were lucky. My first computer didn't have a floppy drive. It was a TRS-80 and you saved things to a cassette on a cassette recorder that didn't have a pause button because pausing it ruined the tape. Approximately 1 in 3 saves were no good and you lost all your work. It was a real dis-incentive towards putting too many features in your program.
Tape drive! Luxory.
We used to get up before we went to sleep, clean the lake, build a computer out of old kitchen scraps, and carve the data on our leg with an old rusty razor, and if we didn't have a subroutine done before sunrise, our fathers would garotte us with an old sock.
And if you tell young people today, they won't believe you.
My first computer didn't even have a hard drive...
Hard Drive !?! You were lucky. My first computer didn't have a floppy drive. It was a TRS-80 and you saved things to a cassette on a cassette recorder that didn't have a pause button because pausing it ruined the tape. Approximately 1 in 3 saves were no good and you lost all your work. It was a real dis-incentive towards putting too many features in your program.
Tape drive! Luxory.
We used to get up before we went to sleep, clean the lake, build a computer out of old kitchen scraps, and carve the data on our leg with an old rusty razor, and if we didn't have a subroutine done before sunrise, our fathers would garotte us with an old sock.
And if you tell young people today, they won't believe you.
1976 On 27-Jun-1976 Air France flight 139 was hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the German Revolutionare Zellen (RZ). The aircraft was eventually flown to Entebbe, Uganda. On 3-4-Jul-1976, Israeli special forces flew from Israel to Uganda and rescued the hostages. This was Operation Thunderbolt. The entire story is as dramatic as one can imagine. If it weren't actually true, one would say that the story strains suspension of disbelief.
That summer I happened to be visiting in Israel. As a ten year old I was completely unaware of the event going on around me. My chief concerns revolved around collecting giant bugs and the characters in the neighbourhood around me. There was the Arab boy selling cactus pears on our street upon which I gorged. A man with no legs walked by on padded knees every day at the exact same time. And, there was that old lady who cursed at young couples kissing in public, get a room!
That fourth of July, lo and behold, the television was broadcatsing in the morning. Television normally only came on at 16h00 (4:00 PM) as it was state sponsored and there was not yet enough of an advertizing base to support commerical television all day. I had my viewing schedule which included Delvecchio and Kojak. I wondered what could it be. My grandmother was acting very odd. She was scurrying through the flat to inform my grandfather, "the kids brought them home, the kids brought them home!" (She actually said children but it is more correctly translated as kids). What in God's name was she talking about. I and my brother were her only grandchildren. What kids is she talking about.
Later on in life I could point to a bunch of incredibly dramatic aspects of that event. One that stands out to me to this very day are the actions of the Air France flight crew. The hijacking was a French problem, that is, until the hijackers seperated the Jewish passengers from the non-Jewish passengers, who were released. Then it became an Israeli problem. Michel Bacos, the flight's captain refused to leave with the other non-Jewish passengers, stating that all passengers, including the remaining ones, were his responsibility, and that he would not leave them behind, and his crew followed suit.
The Mercedes Benz that the Israelis brought along: They faked a motorcade bringing president of Uganda Idi Amin for a visit, in order to approach stealthily as close as possible. (Actually, no joke, this was his self-given title: His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.)
The sole Israeli military fatal casualty, Yoni, the raid commander. He was Israel's version of Audie Murphy and older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu who went on to become prime minister of Israel.
Arrival home: One of the 4 C-130s upon arrival back home from Entebbe.
1977 I once had a fiendly conversation with a nice older lady about the meaning of culture. Now, Beethoven's Ode to Joy is my favourite movement but I also expessed to her my other cultural likes such as the Beatles, for example. For her, culture meant classical music and statues of men with tiny penises. I argued with her saying that sure American film, for example, is not as high-brow as European classical music, for example, but it is nonetheless a cultural expression. She would have none of it.
Star Wars has had an indelible impact on the world. I don't know if this impact will last 1000 years but its presence all over the world is ubiquitous. Except perhaps for BGG user Sam the girl, who hasn't heard of Star Wars. People in upper-Mongolia know Darth Vader by sight.
I was there; I was there on 25-May-1977. In fact, I saw Star Wars at the Cote-des-Neiges theatre in the first showing at 12h30. This beat the showing at 13h00 at the Loews. So, I was in the first group of people in Montreal to see Star Wars.
My children looked at me somewhat bewildered as I told them that people went to see Star Wars 20, 30, and 50 times. They can hardly imagine a world without VCRs and DVD players.
When "Empire" came out, a couple of friends of mine went to the local old theater and spent all day watching every showing of the movie - on a 99 cent ticket.
That's why we used to go to movies 20 or 50 times - it was affordable!
I made the 4 p.m. show on the day the movie came to Lincoln, Nebraska. I was in graduate school there, and had seen the trailer for the movie a couple of times, and just wanted to see if it was remotely as well-made as the trailers made it seem.
1977 On 19-Nov-1977 an Egyptian air force airliner touched down in Israel. Egyptian president Muhammad Anwar El Sadat stepped out of the airplane and was greeted by an official state welcome, the blare of trumpets, and a 21-gun salute.
The intestinal fortitude of the man was exemplified in the manner in which he acted. Sadat could have easily taken the approach of normalizing relations with Israel by arranging for diplomats to meet in Geneva, for example. He instead personally went to Israel's capital and stood at the podium at the seat of government.
The Israeli nation went wild. Poor birds, because the entire country was laced in alternating Egyptian and Israeli flagpoles.
When relations between countries are normalized, several things happen such as an exchange of diplomats. One of them is postal service. As part of my stamp collection I have a stamped envelope that was on the very first postal service flight between Israel and Egypt.
The following year we were assembled in our school gymnasium to watch live the signing of Egyptian-Israeli peace accords, which have stood since then.
I've always liked the ingenuity of criminals. As part of the peace treaty, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt. Car thieves and smugglers buried Mercedes Benzes in Israel and then just waited for the border to move; instant trouble-free smuggling.
Sadat arrives in Israel to fanfare and speaks to the Israeli parliament (Knesset)
Old Warriors. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War (Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War) was fought by these two national leaders, Golda Meir and Anwar Sadat. Both grandparents, Golda Meir gives Sadat a gift for his granddaughter.
1978, 1985, 1986 Six space shuttles were built. The first was Enterprise (OV-101) but she was never designed to fly in space. NASA sent Enterprise on a world tour. I was there to see her when the Boeing 747 carrying Enterprise landed at Dorval International Airport in Montreal.
A college course I was taking had me in Florida for 10 days. Coincidentally, the space shuttle Discovery (OV-103) was scheduled to launch while we were there. The day before we were to leave at 5h00 we assembled on the beach which had a direct line of sight to Cape Kennedy. Unfortunately, the launch was postponed for a day. Disappointed we left the next day. After take-off as we were climbing, the pilot directed us over to one side of the cabin. We watched Discovery in the distance rocket past us and on into orbit.
The following year I happened to be watching CNN's live coverage of Challenger's (OV-99) launch. Although some people on the ground were confused, I immediately knew that she and her crew were lost.
(NASA: Throttle up to 104% after maximum dynamic pressure.) T+58..............PLT..... Throttle up. T+59..............CDR..... Roger. T+60..............PLT..... Feel that mother go. T+60............ Woooohoooo. T+1:02............PLT..... Thirty-five thousand going through one point five (NASA: Altitude and velocity report, 35,000 ft., 1.5 Mach). T+1:05............CDR..... Reading four eighty six on mine. (NASA: Routine airspeed indicator check.) T+1:07............PLT..... Yep, that's what I've got, too. T+1:10............CDR..... Roger, go at throttle up. (NASA: SSME at 104 percent.) T+1:13............PLT..... Uhoh. T+1:13.......................LOSS OF ALL DATA.
As my U.S. History class was getting ready to start, some students who had been in drama class were talking about it. (The drama class had TV availability.) I assumed they were talking about the plot of a play, not a real event.
I'm too young to remember Challenger (I was not quite five when she was lost), but I'm pretty sure I'll always remember exactly where I was when I heard about Columbia breaking up.
It's interesting, isn't it, that those events you will always remember hearing of in vivid detail are the bad ones? For me, it's the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, and Columbia. My brother remembers seeing Challenger breaking up in detail, and my dad can still describe exactly where and when he was when he heard about the Kennedy assassination. The only exception I can think of to this trend is the fall of the Berlin Wall. Are there others?
We had a snow day from school that day (I was living in CT at the time). My mom called me in from the front door and I stood there in my snow suit and boots, dripping a huge puddle on the woven rug as we watched the coverage. Only time I can ever remember that I was allowed into the house with my snow suit and boots still on.
At the moment it happened, so help me God, I was filling out an application for Blue Cross medical coverage.
Later that day I went to work. Every monitor in the place was tuned to CNN, which just kept showing the flight over and over and over again, prompting this utterance from Yours Truly:
"I'll betcha the damn thing blows up this time too"--
1989This is a link to the first Web page. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW), which is often confused by many as the Internet itself. Berners-Lee envisioned strictly an information sharing mechanism and is less than enthusiastic about what the Web has become. I will disagree with him if only insomuch as I really like BGG, for example.
I was there at the start, programming for this new medium. If you use electricity, ride the train, have your car repaired, wear women's undrwear, then there is a good chance that at least some of your daily frustrations are due to me.
This illustrates in 3-D the actual domains and connections of the world wide web. Colours have been added to represent .edu, .gov, .com, etc. domains.
I came in early-c. '91 where I used archie and gopher, not to mention manually splicing .jpg together. Oh, and Netscape 0.7b (although NS 3.0 was the BEST browser evah). set up my Mac Centris 650 as a web server and found out that the other person in the building could not IMAGINE that ANYONE else could ever set up a server, so she had no protection so I was able to read/raid her ENTIRE hard drive (mine was encrypted-standing offer-free lunch/beer to anyone who could hack it-never had to pay off) good times.
1991 It's amazing to me how people are so vociferous about the current conflict in Iraq and yet so completely oblivious to basic historical facts about the war. Then it occured to me that many of the younger people whose voices are the loudest were toddlers or in kindergarden during the first U.S.-Iraq war.
It was unbelievable. I was, we all were, glued to our sofas. There before us in real time was the minute-to-minute unfolding of a war, and with film/TV direction to boot. The first Iraq war literally made CNN.
You have to understand that there was never anything like it before. There was plenty of combat footage from past wars but it was snippety. Real-time satellite communication, directed in the fly, jumped from an anti-aircraft artillery filled sky over Baghdad to missile duels over Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.
It is not an accident that the daily summary report by General Norman Schwarzkopf coincided with prime-time viewing in North America. That was the first time that most of us saw bomb-camera video of a smart-bomb flying right into its target. We were amazed.
We were introduced to smart-bomb, Patriot, Apache, and mother of all [insert anything here]. The 1991 Iraq war redefined the politics of warfare.
We were watching this live on television (I don't know why but if the video is embedded, the message is this video is no longer available. However, it does play at YouTube itself.)
Just to highlight my point about witness to history, there is surprisingly very little footage online from the 1991 Gulf War. CNN has for sale a video compilation and there is some on YouTube. But, unless you wathced it live day after day, that experience is now not available to most people. .
actually, I remember grainy footage of Vietnam and those who went and came back changed or not return at all. as LBJ said "if I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost Middle America".
I was living in Belgium (in Leuven) at the time. There, the war started at about midnight or 1 AM. The few of us in the TV room at the time (shared house for American college students studying there) ran out and woke everyone else up. It was surreal--we watched 4-5 hours of CNN's coverage, even though we were very tired and punch drunk.
I'll always remember how it seemed that CNN's 3 announcers were basically repeating themselves all the time: one kept reminiscing about Vietnam, one get putting the microphone out the window so it could pick up the noise of the bombing, and the other one kept talking about hiding under a desk if anyone came to their door. I can't remember their names off the top of my head.
It's amazing to me how people are so vociferous about the current conflict in Iraq and yet so completely oblivious to basic historical facts about the war.
I think most people are aware of the basic facts of the current conflict.
I was in Madrid when Gulf War I started. It was surreal.
Thousands of people were in the streets the next day, protesting against the US.
I was living in a city called Herzelia, about 20 km north of Tel-Aviv when the war started. I remember seeing on the news the evening before an Iraqi minister threatening that they will fire rockets at Israel - and we didn't realize he meant it.
We went to bed and got woken up by air raid sirens at about 3 AM. A few days before that the government told everyone to prepare a "sealed room" as protection from chemical warfare - what that basically meant was to take the room with the least amount of windows, and cellotape plastic sheets around all openings. When the alarm sounded we went into the sealed room (which was my sisters room) and shut ourselves in, listening to the radio trying to understand what was going on. I was 17 at the time, my sister 14. We suddenly started to hear distant booms - explained on the radio as "thunder". We happily believed them, not knowing that scud missiles had fallen not far from Tel-Aviv, and that was the noise we were hearing. We kept looking at our pet canary, like miners would - thinking that it would indicate to us if any gas was around...
When the all clear sounded we returned to our beds, mainly confused, not knowing if anything happened because nothing was said on the radio or TV.
The next day, the TV showed the damage the missiles had caused - and my dad promptly said that in the next air raid we will go to the shelter (all Israeli houses are by law fitted with a reinforced concrete shelter or room), as plastic and cellotape didn't seem like very good protection from a missile.
I remember those weeks as surreal - we went on about our lives as usual, waking up at nights to air raid sirens, and carrying gas masks with us during the day.
Eventually Sadam did not fire chemical weapons, and the 40 or so scuds did little damage in comparison with what Hizbulla's hundreds of rockets did in the 2006 Lebanon war, but it was still a scary time.
I remember watching the first Gulf War on TV, but it was never graphic. Very sanitary, and cleaned up by the military and the government of the time. Strangely enough, you can find some very graphic stuff from the current war in Iraq, boldly posted to Youtube.
It's good to watch for anyone who isn't in the military and calls for war or the killing of others. I really can't stand people who call for war from their ivory towers...knowing it won't have any effect on them or their family.
2000 Now, how often does the millenium change! If I understand correctly, since the first year of the common era is year 1, the new millenium actually came into effect on 01-Jan-2001 00:00:00. Nonetheless, everyone considered new year's 1999-2000 as the new millenium.
If you're not very computer savvy, there was a huge common software bug inherant in computer systems all over the world. It was due to, plainly said, stupid programming. Dates were stored something like DD-MM-YY, such that 01-01-99 meant 01-Jan-1999. But what does 01-01-00 mean? Is that 01-Jan-1900 or 01-Jan-2000. This was named the Y2K problem, Y as in year and 2K as in 2000.
Every dire prediction that man could imagine was made. As software all over the world failed, system after system, planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear weapons would blow up on their own, power grids would fail, pacemakers would cease to function, financial records would be lost, and parking metres everywhere would fail. Many places including where I worked had millenium countdown clocks on the wall.
As the date approached companies scrambled to adjust their software to properly handle the turn of the millenium. An older style of programming known as COBOL was common when these systems were written, but its use was very much on the decline. All of a sudden COBOL programmers were getting $200/hour to fix the problem they had created in the first place.
I was working the other side of the information technology aisle where we did things differently. I could only look across and shake my head in disbelief that still as late as 1995, COBOL prorammers were continuing to insert this software bug. They asked the young wife why she clipped the ends off her pot roast. My mom always did it that way, she replied. They asked the mom who answered the same thing, and on up the generations. The great-grandmother replied, because the pot was too small.
Unlike most people who are fools, I was in my bunker awaiting the end of the world. This is what should have happened.
Funny bit, New Years eve, my brother in law (who lives in nowhere Tennessee, called and asked us if we were all right. Sure we all said, Oh, we don't have power. Just a storm it turned out, but he feared the worse.
2001 In 1979 I visited the Twin Towers and went up to the top on one of the express elevators. I had my photo taken in front of one of the towers. You just don't know, do you.
I was recuperating from an ailment when my mother knocked on my door. She was in tears and said I better see what's on CNN. I was watching intently when I saw--live--the second plane hit. At first I thought it was a re-run of the day's event. Gradually it became clear to me that I had just witnessed something incredible.
At the time I was studying for my private pilot's licence. As soon as I heard that the FAA was going to clear the skies, I grabbed my receiver and tuned into the various air traffic control (ATC) channels. Airline pilots plan their trips but still carry along all the information that will allow them to land anywhere in the world. So goes the theory. The Canadian ATC controllers were just so accomadating and helpful. There were so many planes to land all of a sudden. They talked the pilots into Montreal's Dorval and Mirabel international airports. Other planes were diverted to airports all over Eastern Canada. There were just so many passengers to accomodate. They were put up with Canadian families all over Eastern Canada.
A week or so later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the FBI show up at my brother-in-law's place of business in connection with the 9/11 attacks. . Well, as it turns out he owns a calling card company. You can guess who bought some of his calling cards and used it to orchestrate 9/11. That's why it is important to solicit new customers all the time. You can't depend on repeat business. Happily, the FBI just wanted the call information records.
A co-worker's son had driven all weekend to get back to his place (Denver) after a visit with his mom. He got in about 15 min before the first attack, fell into bed and didn't wake up until about 6 pm on the 12th. He didn't own a tv or radio and had no idea what had happened. He went to the store and found gas at huge prices and the stores almost empty. He thought the whole world had gone crazy.
Folks just stared at him when he asked what was going on.
I heard about it from a co-worker and thought it was a joke. So I looked out the window and sure enough the Pentagon was on fire, huge billows of smoke. Then we heard that a bomb exploded at the State Department so I look at the window and the State Department is fine. Then we heard jet fighters overhead. Funny how people are, the jet fighters were scaring many people but I knew that it was over, the cavalry had arrived.
But it wasn't over, then began the Escape from DC. Everyone was sent home. Well that made sense except for some strange reason they also sent all the NASA employees home at the same time. So the NASA employees clogged up all the roads from the NE of DC which is one of the main arteries out of the city. I heard there were simular problems in other directions.
I was walking in the front door to my job here in Denver, when I saw the North tower burning on the lobby TV. Remember, we're two hours earlier in Denver, so it was around 7:30 local, 9:30 eastern time, and I remember standing there, not comprehending why the big fire, and actually watched the plane fly up the Hudson river right into the South tower, in real time. You could see the plane. I thought, "Oh, shit. We're at war." And soon enough, we were.
It's sad that the towers in a way represented world cooperation in trade (of course, with our rules), and that one of the results of this attack on innocent people was that the US isolated itself from much of the rest of the world. Perhaps this is what the terrorists wanted, but I doubt it. They just wanted to hit symbols of American capitalism.
2003 Like for Gulf War 1, I was right there glued again to CNN for Gulf War 2. This time the reporters had experience and had arranged for orchestra seating.
I think that is Khrushchev (??) on the left giving the wrong salute? Maybe he was watching too many German broadcasts. Is that George Noory beside Molotov?
Boston Red Sox '67 Impossible Dream '75 vs. Big Red Machine '78 Bucky effing Dent '86 Buckner '99 Pedro no hits Tribe for 5 innings w/ a busted shoulder '03 Pedro stays in too long '04 YEEEEEEEEEEEEES-only team to come from 0-3 to win a playoff. Win World Series '07 winning never gets old
Yes, I'm to the Nation born and these are the milestones of my life.
globalization of disease-first Herpes that sounded the death knell for the halcyon hedonism of the Sexual Revolution. Then AIDS/HIV-and the astounding speed with which the mechanism and cocktail antidotes were found. Also the politicalization of medicine/vaccines/supplies as AIDS continues to ravage Africa. I might also recall SARS and how empty Hong Kong airport was when we went through there to visit my wife's family in the Philippines (we have pictures of us and our then 6 mo old daughter in surgical masks in the empty airport).
There was a generation of Americans that grew up watching Richard Nixon as the curmudgeon who'd appear at halftime on football games. A slightly older generation witnessed a simple bungled breakin lead to the downfall of a presidency and the first non-elected president (there would be another non-elected president 27 years later, but that's another story
There had been unpopular presidents, impeachments, and any number of corrupt administrations in US history, but Watergate was a drama that played out on TV (ala the other items on Iraq), so this was too big to sweep under the rug.
As that Canadian sang ironically about a "place where even Richard Nixon has got soul". Truly a remarkable, but ultimately despicable (I don't use the word tragic) figure in American politics
Wonderful list, Isaac. I am humbled, and reminded of my very, very small place in this complex and often incomprehensible world. Thank you so much.
This reminds me of where I was in 1963, when John Kennedy was assassinated. I was in 7th grade, struggling through all those things that kids of that age struggle through, and was home for lunch. I always left home at 12:30 p.m. (mountain time, so 2:30 eastern time; this is BEFORE daylight savings time was invented), and just as I had finished eating and washing up, I was almost out the door when my mother stopped me and asked me to listen to the TV, and I heard those words from Walter Kronkite, "the President is dead." I rode my bike to school; home room was the very last room at the end of the school building, so I always came in the back door from the bike rack out there. As I watched the news for a minute, I was a little late, but no one cared. Most of the girls in class were crying, and that's maybe the first time I realized that what happens in the world does affect everyone in it, to some extent sometime.
I have since written a part of that into a play, where the shooting occurs on the radio at the end of the play, coincidentally with the climax of the action. The shock of the knowledge of the murder of an American president will stay with me all of my days.
Again, thank you, Isaac, for reminding me of our world, as it is.
Posted Sat Jun 28, 2008 7:35 pm
