Three-Quarters of a Century

I turn 75 this month! I am thankful for the wonderful life I've lived so far: Incredible parents, close-knit family, loyal friends, a career to be proud of, and a loving husband.

I started to think about all of the historical events I've witnessed the past seventy-five years. Here are some headlines:

1948: The Birth of Israel
1949: NATO Founded
1950: Korean War Starts
1951: Rosenbergs Sentenced for Espionage
1952: First Hydrogen Bomb Tested in the Marshall Islands
1953: Watson & Crick Explain DNA
1954: Brown vs. Board of Education Case
1955: Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up her Seat
1956: Red Army Troops Invade Hungary
1957: 9 African American High School Students Start Classes at All-White Little Rock High School
1958: U.S. Launches its First Satellite
1959: Castro Takes Over Cuba
1960: Lunch Counter Sit-In in Greensboro, NC
1961: Berlin Wall Built
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
1963: JFK Assassinated
1964: LBJ's War on Poverty
1965: Civil Rights Turns Violent in Selma, AL
1966: Chairman Mao Begins the "Cultural Revolution"
1967: 6 Day War in the Middle East
1968: Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Assassinated
1969: Landing on the Moon
1970: War in Asia Widens
1971: Pentagon Papers are Released
1972: President Nixon Travels to China
1973: "Roe vs. Wade" Supreme Court Decision
1974: Nixon Resigns
1975: North Viet Nam Captures Saigon
1976: The Concorde Changes Air Travel
1977: Desk Top Computers Become Modernized
1978: Cult's Mass Suicide at Jamestown, Guyana
1979: The Islamic Republic is Born in Iran
1980: Ronald Reagan Elected President
1981: AIDS Impacts America
1982: Mexico Triggers Regional Debt Crisis
1983: The Internet is Born
1984: Chemicals from a Union Carbide Plant Kill Thousands in India
1985: Reagan and Gorbachev Meet
1986: U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes
1987: Black Monday - The Dow Jones Industrial Averages Plunges 508 Points
1988: Iran-Contra Affair Indictments
1989: Berlin Wall Falls
1990: Lech Walesa Becomes President of Poland
1991: Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East
1992: Cold War Ends
1993: The European Union Goes into Effect
1994: Amazon.com is Born
1995: Domestic Terrorist Attack in Oklahoma City, OK
1996: Cloning Dolly the Sheep
1997: IBM's Deep Blue Became First Machine to Beat a World Class Chess Champion
1998: Search Engine Google is Launched
1999: NATO Forces Initiate Military Campaign Against Montenegro and Serbia
2000: International Space Station Opens
2001: 9/11 Terrorist Attacks
2002: Homeland Security Act Enacted
2003: U.S. Begins Invasion of Iraq
2004: Facebook Founded
2005: Hurricane Katrina Overwhelms New Orleans
2006: Saddam Hussein Executed
2007: Steve Jobs Introduces the iPhone
2008: The Dow Plunges
2009: Barack Obama Becomes First African American President
2010: Catastrophic Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
2011: Osama bin Laden Killed
2012: The "God Particle" is Discovered
2013: Snowden Reveals Secrets
2014: Putin Orchestrates the Annexation of the Crimean Peninsula
2015: NASA's Spacecraft New Horizons flies past Pluto
2016: Donald Trump Elected President
2017: 3 Massive Hurricanes Strike Florida, Louisiana and the Caribbean
2018: Wildfires Engulf Northern California
2019: Mass Demonstrations in Hong Kong
2020: COVID 19
2021: Taliban Return to Power
2022: Russia Invades Ukraine
2023: Lois Podolsky McGuire Turns 75