Key moments in history

[Daniel-Mietchen]

I have just watched and liked a documentary about the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, and it reminded me of how I got to know about it — through a major screen that mostly showed commercials and occasionally news at the main station of Duisburg.

This prompted the thought as to which other historic moments there were for which I still remember the moment & place I heard about them.

Off the top of my head, that includes the following ones:

• the fall of the Berlin Wall
• terror attacks, e.g. 9/11, Nice, Paris, Brussels, Charlottesville
• the beginning of wars, e.g. of the US war on Afghanistan or of the first US war in Iraq
• solar eclipses, e.g. the 1999 Eurasian and the 2017 US ones
• the Chelyabinsk meteor
• the deaths of princess Diana and Mother Theresa
• the announcement of the initial detection of gravitational waves

There are a number of similar occasions where I still remember the moment the news reached me but am not entirely sure where I was (most likely at home), including the Discovery Space Shuttle disaster. There are also some events that I followed (at least in part) live and still remember where I was and how I experienced them, e.g. the Alexanderplatz-Demonstration 1989, Gorbachev's visit the month before, the ceremony of German unification in 1990, the opening of the Sarajevo Olympics and several soccer matches, including the 1998 and 2014 World Cup finals or the 2004 European finals.

I am thinking that such relations between history and personal experience could be an interesting and accessible way to frame dives into the past.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

A spin to this could be to extend the approach to key moments in history that one's ancestors have experienced and told us about (see also #357 ).

For instance, my grandmother Anna was in Dresden when it was bombed.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Maybe also include events experienced by several generations together, e.g. Februrary 2018 Falcon Heavy test flight or the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony.