Most significant events in world history in your lifetime

What are the most significant world events to happen in your lifetime that you actually remember as they happened? My number 1 is the moon landing. After that it gets a bit tougher to put in order.

• The JFK Assassination
• RFK and MLK's assasinations
• Nixon's resignation
• The attacks on 9/11/01
• AIDS
• The Breakup of The Soviet Union

That's a pretty eventful lifetime. There was a lull there between Nixon's resignation and the fall of the Soviet Union. Just the slow motion disaster of AIDS.

Others to add to the list maybe??? These are things I remember vividly as a child growing up in the late 80's and early 90's.
- the Challanger explosion
- The fall of the Berlin Wall
- the First Gulf War (desert shield/storm)

the Challanger explosion

That was a huuuge one for me....

We were watching it in my elementary school.
Oy.

We were too, in the auditorium. It was....disturbing.

The Challenger explosion is way up there. The fall of hte Berlin wall I'll put together with the breakup of the Soviet Union. I couldn't think of a good way of phrasing it. How about the fall of European Communism?

The gulf wars I think are going to go down in history like the Mexican war or the Spanish American War. We lost so many more people in Vietnam, there were months that we lost as many people in Vietnam as we lost in the entire second gulf war.

I left out the Vietnam War. I shouldn't have. It profoundly affected American history. It was so long and draw out that I don't think of it as an event. It was just what the world was like when I was growing up.

Desert Shield/Storm will stand out IMO as it was the first war that was broadcast live over the airwaves. I remember it because the first night of the attack, I was at church watching the US planes bomb the Iraqi capital.

I agree that the berlin wall/fall of the communist block/soviet union can all fall into the same general event... the breaking of the wall was the most visual representation of that event, and it's the one that'll stick in my mind.

I was home sick from school, so my Mom and I were watching the shuttle launch when the Challanger exploded...

Iran Contra affair. How Reagan wasn't impeached for that I'll never understand. Selling arms to a terrorist state to fund an covert operation which�congress had cut off the funding for certainly sounds like a reason to impeach to me.

THe 2000 Presidential election. The Supreme Court under Rehnquist interfered in the democratic process by stopping the recounts. We will never know who really won that election.

The invasion of Iraq by GW Bush under the guise of Saddam Hussein having WMD's. A lie that cost untold numbers of Iraqi's and 2000+ Americans their lives.

I remember when Princess Diana died..
the Oklahoma City Bombing..
9/11..
Bush II's election into office.. I did my damndest to vote him out the second time...
The Red Sox winning the World Series for the first time in almost a century.

and if I can remember any more, I'll post them later..

Bush II's election into office.. I did my damndest to vote him out the second time...

Yeah, I think that's gonna be BIG for this couple generations.... how hard we all worked to get him out, and how we failed because of the old rich corrupt assholes.

actually, i think it's more likely the because of the newer younger republicans.

there may be a lot of old rich corrupt assholes. but they don't make up a voting majority, there aren't that many of them ;P

Bush lost badly in the 18 - 30 age bracket. That's encouraging.

Not as badly as he should have, though. For one, a lot of 18-30-year-olds still didn't even bother to vote, and for two, young people apparently aren't as progressive as they once were.

well yeah, they used to have me in the group.

yeah, if I ever get rich or insensitive enough to be a republican, I'll letcha know.


IN the mean time, I'm kinda leaning towards the closest thing to humane treatment you can get from any government.

Red Sox!!!!

And then White Sox!!!

Yay!!!

First one that stands out in my mind is 9/11.

W's second term is the second one...that is totally going to affect my life. And I couldn't do anything about it, either. Ha.

heh...this reminds me of a project we did in 5th grade. It was the year Billy Joel's hit We Didn't start the Fire came out and we all had to write our own lyrics for the current major events of the time...it think my teacher eventually sent all our lyrics to Billy Joel, but i can't remember if we ever heard back from him.

As a child the most memorable event was definatly the Challenger explosion...we got the announcment over the school P.A. during math class in 3rd grade. My teacher stopped class for a moment of silence and a Hail Mary.

I would say John Lennon dying, but I was 4 and don't remember it. But I have somewhat older friends who were very affected. My friend Dean used to tell me he remembers vividly what he was doing the moment he heard (much like the Kennedy thing)...decorating the Christmas tree, hanging an ornament...

Oooh that was huge for me. I was in the car� with my mother listening to the radio and the DJ came on after the song that was playing and said "The Beatles are over.� We've just received word that John Lennon was shot today in NYC". I couldn't beleive it.

The Beatles are over? I still argue that the Beatles will NEVER be over!

And then I went on to do my first large research paper (you know where it's ten pages and they want the outline and bibliography etc) on his murderer Mark David Chapman. What a sicko!

Challenger Explosion
Columbia Explosion
9/11
3/11
7/7
The Tsunami, December 26, 2004
Hurricane Katrina
The Iran Earthquake, December 26, 2003
The Pakistan Earthquake
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
The 2000 U.S. (s)election
The 2002 botched coup in Venezuela
The introduction of the Euro
Naming the new Pope
Red Sox victory
The WTO protests in Seattle, 1999
Hale Bopp comet
All of Reagan's various invasions of the 1980s: Panama, Angola, Libya
Columbine

There are probably lots more but those are the ones that come to mind.

Probably only a big deal to those on the west coast but a freakin' volcano blew in 1980. I was watching the Road Runner cartoons and I was quite upset that they were interrupted. Until I saw the footage. Then I was rapt for about 3 minutes. Then I wanted my cartoons back. And then things got rather dark...

I think of the line from When Harry Met Sally

"Of course when I asked her where she was when Kennedy was shot she said 'Ted Kennedy was shot?""