[ endhoot ]: What Happened in My Birth Year?

Pas baca milis, Naif melaporkan random browsingnya, yaitu What Happened in My Birth Year? Iseng-iseng aku menuju ke situs tersebut dan mengetikkan angka 1972. And these were happened 38 years ago:

In 1972, the world was a different place.
There was no Google yet. Or Yahoo. Or Mail.google, for that matter.
In 1972, the year of your birth, the top selling movie was The Godfather. 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 The Godfather. The Oscar for best foreign movie that year went to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The top actor was Marlon Brando for his role as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather. The top actress was Liza Minnelli for her role as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. The best director? Bob Fosse for Cabaret.
In the year 1972, 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 was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it?
Look at the cover!

In 1972... Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is discovered in Guam; he had spent 28 years in the jungle. The RMS Queen Elizabeth is destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbor. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy is set up on the lawn of Parliament House in Canberra. The British government declares a state of emergency over a miners' strike. A Lufthansa plane is hijacked and taken to Aden. Passengers are released after a ransom of 16 million German marks is agreed. The Club of Rome publishes its report Limits to Growth, a book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies. The book used the World3 model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the Earth's and human systems. Sculpted figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson are completed at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China elevate diplomatic exchanges to the ambassadorial level after 22 years. The last trolleybus system in the United Kingdom closes in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire after over 60 years of operation. Iraq nationalizes the Iraq Petroleum Company. Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty in Moscow, as well as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and other agreements. The Watergate first break-in, the "Ameritas dinner", fails.
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 Heinrich Böll. The Nobel prize for physics went to John Bardeen and Leon Neil Cooper from the United States for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory. 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 1970s were indeed a special decade. Women's liberation continued. The hippie culture faded. There was an opposition to the Vietnam war, and nuclear weapons. The environmentalist movement began. Tom Wolfe coined the decade the "Me decade" due to a new self-awareness. Mao Zedong died and the market began to liberate in China. There was an oil crisis. After the first oil shock, gasoline was rationed in many countries. In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies begin showing signs of stagnation. The Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, witness the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian Arab terrorists. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Who, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Bee Gees, Abba and others play their music. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all die at the age of 27. The space mission Apollo 13 nearly ends in disaster. Egypt signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. There was a revolution in Iran. The world sees its first general microprocessor. The C programming language makes its debut. Consumer video games show up on the scene. Microwave ovens become commercially available. Margaret Thatcher was victorious in the UK elections.
Do you know what was on the cover of Life that year?

Do you remember the movie that was all the rage when you were 15? Lethal Weapon. Do you still remember the songs playing on the radio when you were 15? Maybe it was La Bamba by Los Lobos. Were you in love? Who were you in love with, do you remember?
In 1972, 15 years earlier, a long time ago, the year when you were born, the song American Pie by Don McLean topped the US charts. Do you know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? Sing along.
A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they?d be happy for a while.
...
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 Time Bandits was playing. When you were 8, there was The Watcher in the Woods. When you were 7, there was a Disney movie out called The Rescuers. Does this ring a bell?

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... it's 1972. There's TV noise coming from the second floor. Someone turned up the volume way too high. The sun is burning from above. These were different times. The show playing on TV is Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. The sun goes down. Someone switches channels. There's M*A*S*H on now. That's the world you were born in.
Progress, year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading towards? The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1972. Do you know what was invented in the year you were born? The Computed Tomography.
You come around soundin' 1972
You did nothin' new with 1972
Wher's the "Smile You", where's the black and blue?
Where's the black and blue, where's the black and blue?
...
That's from the song Entertain by Sleater-Kinney.
In 1972, a new character entered the world of comic books: Luke Cage. Bang! Boom! But that's just fiction, right? In the real world, in 1972, Jenny McCarthy was born. And Eminem. Denise Richards, 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?

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