What major historical events do you remember?

Born in 1973 so I’m now about to clock in for 52 years on the planet. As most of you should know, a whole lot went down in the span of those five decades.

For the sake of some form of structure, I’m going to limit my list to things that I still specifically remember top of mind. To note, most things prior to 1980 are very limited.

But that’s a story for another time.

On to the list…

The first events I recall distinctly from the television were the murder of John Lennon and the attempted assassination of President Reagan.

Next would be watching the Challenger explosion, again on the television that we at my elementary school were plopped down in front of for the big “teacher in space” lesson.

I’ll fast forward here to the Rodney King incident. That was a rough day in an already racially charged high school experience.

The election of Bill Clinton. That one was more real world as I was working at a news radio station. I was pretty much the only one in house as the rest of the staff was taking part in all the grab assery of the night in downtown Little Rock. I manned the fort and phones as we were feeding info to news outlets and journalists from around the world. It was a pretty high energy night. Even more so when a German correspondent showed up at the door at around 2 in the morning trying to get in to use the phone. She was quite the intimidating human. Still, a great piece of color for the story of my lived experiences.

This one isn’t quite so well known per se but we can fast forward a year or so and the most I can say right now is that I was on hand for the filming of one of the conspiracy documentaries that was focused on some truly shady shit that went down right before the election of same said former President.

Stay in this linear mode, I remember the big to dos that revolved around the last episode of Seinfield. I wasn’t much of a a fan of the show but one watch party made again, for an interesting story. Again, we can save that one and how walking back to the office was a damn hilarious experience for me, for another time.

The premier of new Star Wars toys prior to the opening night of Episode One: The Phantom Menace.

And then the hysteria around the Y2K lead up and let down. So many micro stories from that human watching. People are dumb.

Then came the first real reality shifter: September 11, 2001. I too have one of those I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing as it unfolded on live television.

At this point the fast forward button is getting pushed so lost of this period up until 2007 is pretty much a blur. The stop / resume moment of this little exercise was the nomination of former president Obama was announced and I was certain that America wasn’t ready to elect, not a black man but instead a guy named Barack Hussein Obama. After all we were a mere six years removed from that last sign post. Plus most of us were still being fed the weapons of mass destruction bullshit where a guy named Saddam was involved in everything and deserved our “Shock and Awe”. Can’t say rather he did or not but the story that led up to the big boom booms in that exchange certainly helped convince it had to be true.

Fast forward again to 2016 and the first election of President Trump. Not gonna lie, when the early reports were calling it for Clinton, I was horrified at the thought that evil wench was about to grab the most powerful seat in the western world. When that flipped at the end of the night, I’m not to proud to say I had a tear of relief and joy roll down my cheek. Not because Trump actually won but more importantly, that hag lost.

Then we hit 2020 and the events from that 15 days of flattening the curve still hasn’t stopped ranking high on historically important events.

We all have lived through and are still living in the aftermath of that so I’ll leave those reflections for the next similar writing prompt that comes in about 10 years.

This speed session concluded the biggest takeaway I can offer is this: Live today and everyday like there is no tomorrow because it truly is all you’ve got.

Now, Go Play!

Jim 10/22/2025