Sunday, September 01, 2002
100 Years ... 10 Events
Interesting article courtesy of UPI and the UK History Channel. Seems the British have fully canonized Princess Di as their new cultural patron saint. Not terribly surprising, given the tendency of American culture to do the same with JFK, though I daresay that Kennedy was a significantly more important figure in the history and culture of the United States than Di ever was or will be in the UK.
The article got me thinking, though, as to how I would answer the central question: What are the most important events of the past 100 years? In some general order, here are my Top 10:
- D-Day landings at Normandy
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
- Rise of Zionism / Birth of Israel
- Invention of the transistor
- Treaty of Versailles ends World War I
- Neil Armstrong walks on moon
- Bolshevik Revolution
- Terrorist attacks of 9-11-01
- Installation of Pope John Paul II
- American Civil Rights Movement
[Narrowly missing the cut were the Great Depression and the Cuban Missile Crisis.] Looking them over again, I notice that three of my top ten deal with the rise and fall of the Soviet Bloc (2,7,9) and that two others (1,5) deal with the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Number 4 leads directly to number 6, and the argument can be made that number three led, in some part, to number eight. It's a thought provoking topic, to say the least. I'll try to come up with a purely American list for later today or tomorrow.
# posted by Eric @ 2:48 AM 
