Tiananmen Square, Challenger explode, the Berlin Wall come down, the Twin Towers come down, Brexit, Mount St Helens erupting...
..as stated by others on here...
Plus, as a lifelong ant-nuclear protestor/worrier, the 3 Mile Island meltdown, Chernobyl meltdown, the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake/ Tsunami was another and the Greenham Common movement in the early 80's (I attended) in the UK.
@SammyJo Don't fall into the trap of putting those three separate power-station disasters in one basket, though. The Japanese one did provoke a remarkably illogical decision by the German government, to end its own nuclear-power generation.
I'd discount Mt. St. Helens too. Volcanic eruptions are parts of natural processes rather than anything humanly historical, notwithstanding the deaths and damage they cause; and are historically quite common.
I'd add Chairman Mao Tse-Tung's "Cultural Revolution" to your list, and it cost many more lives and livelihoods, and far more harm to the nation generally, than the Tianenmen Square Massacre.
Appalling though those murders were, the awful tragedy of the latter was that not only that the protests achieved absolutely nothing, but as far as China is concerned it never happened. Not even admitted as some sort of dreadful blunder by some over-zealous Red Army commander used as a convenient scapegoat. It has been carefully and thoroughly expunged from the country's history. Mention it to many younger Chinese now and they would genuinely not know what you are talking about.
Neither did Greehman Common, and the shower who similarly encamped near RNB Faslane, achieve anything but at least the authorities largely tolerated them as long as they did nothing illegal like crimimal damage. The government did not send in the tanks as the Beijing one would have done. Maybe that is what is significant about those protests in the UK - not their message but their being allowed to message.
@ArishMell Whilst history is history, it's all personable and about the individual's lifetime. So, whilst I can see the importance of, say, the Vietnam war, the political assassinations in the US in the 60's, Flower Power, Mao Tse-Tung's 'Cultural Revolution', Moon Landings...that was all a bit before I was born - 23rd May, 1970.
...and whilst Mt. St. Helens happens a lot, it happened...to me...just the once! It affected me how it affected me. 3 Mile Island? Transfixed! I thought that we were all going to die! Seriously!
Greehman Common was very important to me. Showed that people could stand up and protest...together. Irrespective of what happened next, in history, I was part of a movement. An on-going movement.
Not discounting your 'version' of your history.....each person's is through their eyes, with their own background and baggage.
The assassination of JFK? nope. Fall of Berlin Wall and collapse of USSR? nope. The Civil Rights movement? maybe. But I'm gonna say it's the invention of the integrated circuit – an invention that enabled billion-transistor computers like the one in a budget phone to be sold for $5 each – that is having the greatest impact on human life.
@ElwoodBlues i had to go and see when this happened. And thinking it through, i have to agree with you. Although, i just missed the deadline of "in my lifetime".
@ElwoodBlues I'd agree on the Integrated Circuit except for that it was not possible until the invention of the Transistor. So perhaps more evolutionary than revolutionary.
@ArishMell True, but the transistor predates me. I'd also say that computers based on discrete transistors (Cray designed a couple for CDC) reach limits on scaling due to cable & connector reliability issues among other problems. The real computer revolution didn't take off until VLSI.
BTW, Google's AI tells me that the Cray 1 contained about 2.5 million transistors and its CPU and logic circuits were constructed using around 100,000 to 200,000 small-scale integration (SSI) and medium-scale integration (MSI) emitter-coupled logic (ECL) chips.
The end of the Korean War. (when I was a baby) The assassination of John F. Kennedy. The death of Queen Elizabeth II. The invention of the internet. The invention of A.I.
@Thatsright they are likely either natural phenomena or secret military equipment. Theres a tiny chance they are built by semi-malicious hobbyists playing around and about zero chance they are extra-terrestrial.
I was part of a group that set a world record for the most amount of paper airplanes thrown at the same time. We held that title for about a month before a group in Japan did it better.
Seeing Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic nomination the first woman for a woman to almost become U.S. President but sadly she didn't make it. People were tired of the Democrats lying to the American people but I do believe we will see a woman to be U.S. President someday it's matter of time.
Probably the start of Space flights, but more Earth-bound events in my own time, and of perhaps far greater importance, include the fall of the USSR; and the dawning realisation of anthropocentric climate-change first warned of over a hundred years ago.
One might add the Internet but that claim might be tempered by seeing it as part of a technical evolution that started in the Nineteenth Century. Its biggest boost was the invention of the transistor, in the 1950s.
Maybe should have made a poll with Covid, 911, moon landing, Berlin Wall, JFK, Martin Luther King as the selections. It kind of depends on your age, where you live, and how it affected you personally. For someone a bit older than me it might be the hydrogen bomb. We still don't know all of the effects that Trump is going to leave us with. If disclosure of aliens occurs it will Dwarf everything.
The launch of "Sputnik" in 1957,the East-West confrontation over Berlin in 1961,then over Cuba a year later,assassination of the American President in late 1963.All the major world events since then.
Elvis dying, 1972 Olympics kidnapping and boycotting, home computing, HIV/Aids, Berlon Wall Coming Down, Challenger Space Shuttle exploding , 911, Internet being created, cellular telephones, smart phones, COVID.
The Covid Hoax, it destroyed freedom, privacy and prosperity. It taught many to obey authority figures without ever questioning them.
It has ushered in the age of constant fear porn being weaponized against us all.
"If you have to be persuaded, reminded, pressured, lied to, incentivized, coerced, bullied, socially shamed, guilt-tripped, threatened, punished and criminalized … If all of this is considered necessary to gain your compliance — you can be absolutely certain that what is being promoted is not in your best interest.”
The Soviet Union fell a few months after I was born. I can't say I remember it, though. 9/11 happened when I was in 5th grade and I remember watching it on the news.
@ArishMell I'd judge it by the global impact, how many regions were affected directly or indirectly by the event, how many people know about it and consider it significant.
