The Year You were Born.

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http://whathappenedinmybirthyear.com/ - What happened in the year I was born? If you want to know then follow the link as I did… less typing so thanx for that at least.

A bunch of pretty useless information but here I go:

"In 1949, the world was a different place.

There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo. Or Forum.ih8mud, for that matter.

In 1949, the year of your birth, the top selling movie was Samson and Delilah. People buying the popcorn in the cinema lobby had glazing eyes when looking at the poster.

Remember, that was before there were DVDs. Heck, even before there was VHS. People were indeed watching movies in the cinema, and not downloading them online. Imagine the packed seats, the laughter, the excitement, the novelty. And mostly all of that without 3D computer effects.

Do you know who won the Oscars that year? The academy award for the best movie went to All the King's Men. The Oscar for best foreign movie that year went to The Bicycle Thief. The top actor was Broderick Crawford for his role as Willie Stark in All the King's Men. The top actress was Olivia de Havilland for her role as Catherine Sloper in The Heiress. The best director? Joseph L. Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives.

In the year 1949, the time when you 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 wasThe Egyptian by Mika Waltari. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it?

In 1949... UN sponsored ceasefire brings an end to the Indo-Pakistan War of 1947. The first Volkswagen Beetle to arrive in the United States, a 1948 model, is brought to New York by Dutch businessman Ben Pon. Unable to interest dealers or importers in the Volkswagen, Pon sells the sample car to pay his travel expenses. World heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis retires. The North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C., creating the NATO defense alliance. The Tokyo Stock Exchange is founded. The last U.S. troops withdraw from South Korea. The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, code named "Joe 1." Its design imitates the American plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The People's Republic of China is officially proclaimed.

That was the world you were born into. Since then, you and others have changed it.

The Nobel prize for Literature that year went to William Faulkner. The Nobel Peace prize went to The Lord Boyd-Orr. The Nobel prize for physics went to Hideki Yukawa from Japan for his prediction of the existence of mesons on the basis of theoretical work on nuclear forces. 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 1940s were indeed a special decade. World War II continued, affecting people in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. The post war world encouraged decolonization, new states and governments emerged, while others declared independence, often not without bloodshed. The dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is published, picturing a totalitarian Big Brother regime controllings its citizens. The NATO gets established. Iceland declares independence Denmark. Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party is victorious in the Chinese Civil War. Mathematics sees the invention of cryptography. Ballistic missiles are created.

Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15?The Pink Panther. Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was The House of the Rising Sun by The Animals. Were you in love? Who were you in love with, do you remember?

In 1949, 15 years earlier, a long time ago, the year when you were born, the song A Little Bird Told Me by Evelyn Knight topped the US charts. Do you know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? Sing along.
A little bird told me that you love me
And I believe that you do
This little bird told me I was fallin'
Fallin' for no one but you
...

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.

When you were 9, the movie The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was playing.

Progress, year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading towards? The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1949. Do you know what was invented in the year you were born? Atomic Clocks. Radiocarbon Dating.

She did her triple somersault and when she hit the ground
She winked at the audience and then she turned around
She had a picture of a cowboy tattooed on her spine
Said, Phoenix, Arizona 1949
...
That's from the song Little Egypt by Elvis Presley.

In 1949, a new character entered the world of comic books: Claude Cat. Bang! Boom! But that's just fiction, right? In the real world, in 1949, Lionel Richie was born. And Tom Waits. Whoopi Goldberg, too. And you, of course. Everyone an individual. Everyone special. Everyone taking a different path through life.

It's 2010.
The world is a different place.
What path have you taken?"

© 10.05.2010 stevendphilbrick SR+ DakotaDawg