Apollo 11's 40th anniversary

[innerSpaceman]

Well, I have no idea where or when I heard the of the Berlin Wall falling, so that wasn't a biggie to me. YMMV.

Lou Gehrig's speech. Um, what speech? If you think I have anything to do with any sports in my memory, you are much mistaken. I remember some Olympic moments, but not my surroundings or anything like that. Nothing in the sporting world has that kind of "imprint" effect on me.

I Have a Dream? That might have qualified ... If I'd been on the Washington Mall that day. As it was, I'm certain I saw it after-the-fact, and it didn't imprint on me at the time. I was 7 or 8 years old.

I suspect tragedies have the imprint effect more obviously. But the moon-landing (to be specific, the first step on the moon) were one of those rare good imprints.


So only the JFK assassination and the moon thing were events most people of "my" time remember where and what and everything about those moments they experienced.

From what I understand, going back, the next things were perhaps D-Day, and certainly the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.


Prior to that, I'm not even sure "everyone" remembers the 1929 stock market crash. Radio was around then, but perhaps not pervasive enough. I'm not sure.


But I'm pretty sure prior to that, there were no such shared imprints ... as there was no media to bring that kind of news to a large audience simultaneously.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerspaceman

I'm sorry young folks missed it. It was the last piece of American History that was good news instead of bad.

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Am I missing something? Because 40 years without any good news in American History is unfortunate, though I'm not suicidal about it.

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

But I'm pretty sure prior to that, there were no such shared imprints ... as there was no media to bring that kind of news to a large audience simultaneously.

See, that's kinda my point though. You've defined "good news" as only news that happens to be the kind of shared imprint news that the moon landing was. But that happens to be the singular example in the whole of history that qualifies. Sure, that's largely due to the short window that the media has existed to allow for it (although radio and television existed before 1969). But with nearly 100 years of television under our belt and exactly 1 instance, I think that speaks to the fact that the media isn't particularly suited to instant good new imprinting rather than a lack of good news.

The moon landing was an anomaly uniquely suited among good news to simultaneous national attention, not some sort of good news high water mark.