Oh this was fun. Visit the website What Happened in the Year of my birth and put in the year of your birth. Then wait for the report on what was going on that year and how things have changed a bit since then. Here are my results pictures and all via copy paste:
In 1975, the world was a different place.
There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo.
In the year of my birth, the top selling movie was Jaws. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazing eyes when looking at the poster.
Remember,
that was before there were DVDs.
The academy award for the best movie went to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The Oscar for best foreign movie that year went to Dersu Uzala.
The top actor was Jack Nicholson for his role as R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The top actress was Louise Fletcher for her role as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The best director? Milos Forman for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
In
the year 1975, the time when I arrived on this planet, books were
still popularly read on paper, not on digital devices.
Trees were
felled to get the word out. The number one US bestseller of the time
was Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow. Have you read
the book? Have you heard of it?
In
1975... Altair 8800 is released, sparking the era of the microcomputer.
In relation to the Watergate scandal, former United States Attorney
General John N. Mitchell, and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman
and John Ehrlichman, are sentenced to between 30 months and 8 years in
prison.
Iran and Iraq announce a settlement in their border dispute.
The
United Nations proclaims International Women's Day. Colonel Richard
Ratsimandrava, President of Madagascar, is assassinated.
Bobby Fischer
refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov
the title. The Suez Canal opens for the first time since the Six-Day
War. The United Kingdom votes yes in a referendum to stay in the
European Community.
NBC airs the first episode of Saturday Night Live,
with George Carlin as the first host. The first petroleum pipeline opens
from Cruden Bay to Grangemouth, Scotland. The wreck of the HMHS
Britannic is found in the Kea Channel by Jacques Cousteau. Victoria,
Australia, abolishes capital punishment.
Volkswagen introduces the Golf,
its new front-wheel-drive economy car, in the United States and Canada
as the Volkswagen Rabbit. The video game of the day was Pong.
That was the world I was born into. Since then, I and others have changed it.
The
Nobel prize for Literature that year went to Eugenio Montale. The
Nobel Peace prize went to Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov.
The Nobel
prize for physics went to Aage Bohr, Ben Roy Mottelson and Leo James
Rainwater from Denmark and the United States for the discovery of the
connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic
nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic
nucleus based on this connection. The sensation this created was
big.
But it didn't stop the planets from spinning, on and on, year
by year. Years in which you would grow bigger, older, smarter,
and, if you were lucky, sometimes wiser. Years in which you also
lost some things.
Possessions got misplaced. Memories faded.
Friends parted ways. The best friends, you tried to hold on.
This is what counts in life, isn't it?
The 1970s
were indeed a special decade. Women's liberation continued. The
hippie culture faded. There was an opposition to the Vietnam war, and
nuclear weapons. The environmentalist movement began. Tom Wolfe coined
the decade the "Me decade" due to a new self-awareness.
Mao Zedong died
and the market began to liberate in China. There was an oil crisis.
After the first oil shock, gasoline was rationed in many countries. In
Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies begin showing signs of
stagnation. The Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, witness the
kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian Arab
terrorists. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The Who, Pink Floyd,
The Eagles, Bee Gees, Abba and others play their music. Jimi Hendrix,
Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all die at the age of 27.
The space
mission Apollo 13 nearly ends in disaster. Egypt signed the
Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. There was a revolution in Iran. The world
sees its first general microprocessor.
The C programming language makes
its debut. Consumer video games show up on the scene. Microwave ovens
become commercially available. Margaret Thatcher was victorious in the
UK elections.
Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15? Total Recall.
Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was How Am I Supposed to Live Without You by Michael Bolton.
Were you in love? Who were you in love with, do you remember?
In 1975, 15 years earlier, a long time ago, the year when I was born, the song Fly, Robin, Fly by Silver Convention topped the US charts. Do you know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? Sing along.
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Up, up to the sky
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly
Fly, robin fly Up, up to the sky...
There's
a kid outside, shouting, playing. It doesn't care about time.
It doesn't know about time. It shouts and it plays and thinks time
is forever. You were once that kid.
At 9, the movie Gremlins was playing. At 8, there was A Christmas Story. When I was 7, there was a Disney movie out called The Fox and the Hound. Does this ring a bell?
6,
5, 4, 3, 2, 1... it's 1975. There's TV noise coming from the
second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun
is burning from above. These were different times. The show
playing on TV is Baretta. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels.
There's The Jeffersons on now. That's the world I was born in.
Progress,
year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading towards?
The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1975.
Do you know what was invented in the year I was born? DNA
Sequencing By Chain Termination. The Digital Camera.
I was surprised
I was happy for a day in 1975
I was puzzled by a dream
It stayed with me all day in 1995...
That's from the song State I Am In by Belle and Sebastian.
In
1975, a new character entered the world of comic books: Colossus.
Bang! Boom! But that's just fiction, right?
In the real
world, in 1975, Charlize Theron was born. And Lauryn Hill. Liv Tyler,
too. And you, of course. Everyone an individual. Everyone
special. Everyone taking a different path through life.
It's 2013.
The world is a different place.
Wow, thanks for the great trip down memory lane :)
ReplyDeleteI was born in 1968, so I remember a little bit of some of those events.
I'm definitely going to have to check that site out.
Great post!
The funny thing is that I remember a lot too. Some of that stuff is just classic like Jaws. Other things I enjoyed as syndicated reruns but since it was new to me that seemed normal.
DeleteIt is fun to see such a clear snap shot of a moment in time. I think everyone could get a kick out of this site.
Thanks!
Yes, the world is a much changed place since I entered it in 1955 - There! Now you know how old I am! :) Much of what you've recorded here, I do remember, although, being in college at the time, I was much more engrossed in my books and lessons than the news. Thanks for this fun and interesting post!
ReplyDeleteBlessings!
I am amazed by how much I remember or that stayed in our social consciousness through all these years. I need to go put my parents birth year and see what pops up for 1950. hahahahaha
DeleteThis information is probably all free to find by searching the web and history links. I did not compile it the web site author did but yes fun fun fun.