Man who witnessed Lincoln's assassination on TV

[Duke87 1,070]

Yup, and there is video of it.

Who'da thunk?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Wasn't really all that long ago, eh? Just how long ago did you think the U.S. Civil War was? It was well after the War of 1812, when America (and Canada) really came into existence. Before that everything in BNA was a little spongy. If you are having rouble with time-frames take a citizen's introduction to Geology. That will set you straight about earthly time.

[Meg 368]

wow. I remember that show. Can't say that I remember any particular episode but I do remember the show and those panelists who were asking the questions.

It is surprising to realize what our elders have witnessed over the years. For instance, there were former slaves who were still alive and kicking when my mother was a child and she is still alive and kicking now. I remember hearing on the news when the last confederate widow died. The civil war was not that long ago.

Recently, I was talking with a young cousin at a family wedding. He was trying to figure out how everyone was related. For instance, my grandparents are his great-great-grandparents. At one point, he took the pen from the guest book, brought it to me, and asked me to explain it all so I started drawing charts.

This kid is 12 so, for him, it has always been the 21st century. At one point, he asked when various people where born. I pointed to my grandmother on the chart and said she was born in 1888. His eyes got wide. I told him I have pictures of her together with his mother. I could see his brain go on tilt.

[Larks2242 251]

lol "by golly" who says that?

That is crazy though, I wonder if they can do video editing to make it in color so you can see it better.

[Meg 368]

lol "by golly" who says that?

Lots of people back then

That is crazy though, I wonder if they can do video editing to make it in color so you can see it better.

That's what TV used to look like.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

That is crazy though, I wonder if they can do video editing to make it in color so you can see it better.

You can't put in what isn't there. The resolution was lousy in those days. In 1955 when we got our first 13-inch b&w set, it was pretty fuzzy. You have no idea what a shock HD Colour TV is for people who grew up with that.

[Meg 368]

You can't put in what isn't there. The resolution was lousy in those days. In 1955 when we got our first 13-inch b&w set, it was pretty fuzzy. You have no idea what a shock HD Colour TV is for people who grew up with that.

That's the truth! I'm still impressed by my HD color TV.

[Zelgadis 638]

There was a movement back in the 70s and 80s to colorize old black and white movies. The end result looked worse than the black and white.

[Jack³ 291]

And I complain that my 720p HDTV isn't as good quality as a 1080p HDTV.

Very interesting video. And John, the American Civil War was around 1860-1865.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Yes,Jack, I know. It was almost contemporary with my grandmother who was born in 1881. I am most definitely a pre-WW II baby, and both my parents were born in 1913. History is one of my hobbies.

[Easy Bakes 253]

I do recall hearing in my youth when the last Civil war soldier passed away.

[LexusInfernus 908]

I feel so young when I see stuff like this... Or hear people talk about it because its part of their personal past.

[Meg 368]

I feel so young when I see stuff like this... Or hear people talk about it because its part of their personal past.

Well, one day you'll be able shake your cane at some kid and say "Yes, sonny! I remember . . . back in the 20th century . . . we had to write 19 in front of the year instead of a 20!"

(Scary thought: many people here probably don't remember that.)

[hym 358]

Even scarier, in less than 5 years, the freshman college class will have no memory of 9/11.

[Meg 368]

Even scarier, in less than 5 years, the freshman college class will have no memory of 9/11.

You're right

[astronelson 339]

I do remember writing 19 at the start of years.

I don't remember a world with a divided Germany, Soviet Russia, or Apartheid South Africa.

My sister won't ever remember the Troubles, 9/11, or, indeed, writing 19 at the start of years.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Well, one day you'll be able shake your cane at some kid and say "Yes, sonny! I remember . . . back in the 20th century . . . we had to write 19 in front of the year instead of a 20!"

(Scary thought: many people here probably don't remember that.)

Eh, if thats all I have to remember I dont really mind.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Century XX was a troubled time. I managed to survive most of it. Highlights: The Great Depression, Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, Stalin, the Cold War, the Korean War (still going on, by the way), the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Assassination, Suez, the six day war, Canadian Flag debate, Canadian Constitution signed by everyone except Quebec, Canadian Peacekeepers in Cyprus, the Atlantic Charter and the general failure of the UN after the Korean War, Invention and announcement of the IBM PC (1980), Internet, TV, Transistors, Disney Animated Movies, Gone with the Wind (the movie), the General Theory of Relativity, Schrödinger’s Cat (Quantum Theory), Hiroshima and Nagasaki, H-Bomb tests in the Pacific (Eniwitok), etc. In no particular order.

  Edited October 20, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Meg 368]

My list would be a little different: riding in my parents' 57 Chevy (which didn't have seat belts); the freedom riders and high pressure water hoses in Alabama; the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. (all completely unrelated . . . uh huh); the riots and burnings in the streets of DC before the National Guard was called out; being told it's not "if" it's "when" we go to nuclear war with the Soviet Union; sending the first American man into space; having the first two space capsules rendez-vous in space; watching space capsules splashdown into the ocean; the first moon landing; sending the first American woman into space; attending a segregated school (I did not know it at the time) and going to a segregated amusement park (still didn't know it; the park shut down rather than integrate); having my schools go through court ordering busing to achieve integration; being told I can not pursue a career in science because I'm female; having no plastic: drinks only came in glass bottles or cans, chairs in public places were mostly wooden, the first McDonalds had an aluminum counter and no place to sit; the demonstrations about the Vietnam war; the shooting at Kent State ("4 dead in Ohio" can still evoke anger); the resignation of President Nixon; boycotting companies that did business in South Africa until Apartheid was ended; having no ability to tape a TV show or movie, either watch it when it aired or wait for the rerun which may or may not happen; wishing I could afford the $400 it took to buy a calculator; accessing a computer by teletype using paper tape; working with computers that were the size of a huge room and had to be on a raised floor so cold air could run beneath them; using IBM punch cards to input lines of computer code; advancing to "dumb terminals" that could perform the functions of the punch cards but couldn't do anything else; listening to management declare that the internet was a fad that would soon go away so we didn't need to do anything about it, in no particular order.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Prince Albert in a can. just shows how old That joke is.

I'm not as old as meg and moose but there lots of events these youngsters missed just in my life.

The moon landing,The murder of John Lennon,Iranian Hostage crises,Challenger exploding, Reagan being shot.

  Edited October 20, 2012 by Easy Bakes  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You know, I actually stayed home to watch that Challenger launch. It was almost as great a shock as the Kennedy assassination.

[AcmeSigns 97]

@Meg...I still drive my '57 Chevy (it now has both seat and shoulder belts) on an almost daily basis...as I have for the past 38 years.

@Nonny...When I lived in Vegas we used to drive out to the fence at the 'test grounds', sit up on the hoods, knock back a few cold ones and watch the ground heave when they did underground nuclear tests. Fun times. I also, some some unknown reason, was watching as the Challenger exploded. And I also vividly remember Lee Harvey Oswald being shot as the Texas Rangers parted so Jack Ruby could get a clear shot.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Hmm, my list looks so different. Then again, Im young and not American.

First thing I vaguely remember is the Bijlmer disaster (an airplane crashed into a residential block in Amsterdam), Serbia being bombed by NATO during the Kosovo crisis, I vividly remember 9/11 (who doesnt) the assassination of a Dutch politician, the subsequent failure of a government (made for hilarious political satire though) assassination of Theo van Gogh (in hindsight Im not surprised that happened), and yeah, thats about it.

[Duke87 1,070]

More the thing is that for a lot of people, not being old enough to remember something tends to mean not knowing about it. I try to avoid falling subject to this, but I am atypical.

I was born at the very end of 1987. Margaret Thatcher stopped being prime minister of the UK in 1990. I don't remember her, but I at least know who she was and a few basic things about her. Yesterday I was talking to someone else my age, and I mentioned the name. I then got a blank stare and realized that the person I was talking to had never heard of her.

It's moments like this which make me sad to realize that things which I consider common knowledge are often not.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Yes, it must be awkward in the U.S. to talk about people like Adlai Stevenson, when people were just not around when he was UN ambassador nor the twice he ran against Ike. (Ike who??).

  Edited October 21, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Meg 368]

My history education was terrible. My parents were upset by it because I graduated from high school without having had a history class that covered anything past World War I. Things like the Vietnam war and Nixon's resignation were covered in Current Events. but nothing in between.

[Easy Bakes 253]

Yes, it must be awkward in the U.S. to talk about people like Adlai Stevenson, when people were just not around when he was UN ambassador nor the twice he ran against Ike. (Ike who??).

Haha want to know were i 1st heard of Adlai Stevenson?

The TV show Happy Days.

[Odainsaker 2,136]

My late paternal grandfather on Oahu remembered seeing the Japanese planes flying overhead towards Pearl Harbor, while one of my older friend's Japanese mother remembered her crash course civil defense training as a young girl on how to use a naginata spear to repel the American invasion of the home islands.

My memories are no where near so dramatic, though I remember as a child that Carter was U.S. president. Of course, one of my best friends in young childhood had the last name of Carter as well, so the name likely resonated. I remember the airliner that hit a bridge at takeoff and crashed into the Potomac, as well as the infamous Soviet shootdown of the Korean 747, and even the U.S. shootdown of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes during the Iran-Iraq war. Glasnost, perestroika, Kurt Waldheim, Khomeini, "The Day After," trickle-down theory, Voyager 1 and 2, Challenger, Japan Inc. buying up America...yeah, I'm a child of the Reagan Era, when power outages and communication losses on Oahu were potentially feared as the initial Soviet retaliatory strike. More locally, I vividly remember Hurricane Iwa as it decimated and traumatized Hawaii, which till Iwa had slowly forgotten how vulnerable its urbanized islands could be to occasional hurricanes.

I watched "Dune" at an actual outdoor drive-in overlooking Pearl Harbor, and the original "Battlestar Galactica," "V," and even the likes of "Dallas," "Dynasty," and "Falcon Crest" were fun, but the Japanese import to America of "Star Blazers" was a childhood cultural revelation. Nowadays, I'm getting unnerved at how increasingly common it is for me to find members of the younger generation who have not even seen the original "Star Wars." Really, Star Wars! The Achillie Lauro was a character Brad Pitt played in a movie, and isn't Gorbachev just the guy with the map on his forehead? I will be impressed if they recall Star Wars as the Reagan era Self-Defense Initiative, but to not even know R2D2, Princess Leia, or Luke Skywalker's father?!?! Thus, Rome fails not from without, but, from within!

  Edited October 22, 2012 by Odainsaker  

[Easy Bakes 253]

Ah The Drive In Theater, a thoroughly American icon that could not survive the technology change that took all movies indoors to HD and surround sound. most of them were gone by 1984.

[Meg 368]

I remember the airliner that hit a bridge at takeoff and crashed into the Potomac,

Air Florida Flight 90. I was driving my carpool home in that ice storm. A friend of my sister's . . . her mother was on the plane. She had gotten up that morning, not feeling well, not wanting to go to the conference she was supposed to be attending and almost stayed home. But the airline tickets were non-refundable so she went. She wasn't one of the 5 who made it.

The survivors in the water said that a man kept passing the rope to others instead of taking it himself but, when the rescuers returned for him, he wasn't there. They later identified him by the fact that he was the only one who died from drowning. The rest died on impact. There is a sign with his name on the middle of the bridge.

I notice that, on my list of events, I left off a lot of the bad ones, like this, the Challenger explosion, and of course, 9/11. I can go to a dark place, thinking about these. So let me move on to other things . . .

I watched "Dune" at an actual outdoor drive-in overlooking Pearl Harbor

wow. That must have been something. I remember going to drive-ins but they were in the middle of nowhere. My parents would put us kids in our pajamas and lay blankets down in the back of the station wagon for us. (Seat belts? What were they?)

Nowadays, I'm getting unnerved at how increasingly common it is for me to find members of the younger generation who have not even seen the original "Star Wars." Really, Star Wars! The Achillie Lauro was a character Brad Pitt played in a movie, and isn't Gorbachev just the guy with the map on his forehead? I will be impressed if they recall Star Wars as the Reagan era Self-Defense Initiative, but to not even know R2D2, Princess Leia, or Luke Skywalker's father?!?!

I know. This just isn't right. Even some of the younger generation who kinda know don't really get it. I tried once to explain that, after "The Empire Strikes Back" there were three years before "Return of the Jedi". The answer I got: "Yeah . . . but there was more than that . . . you knew what was happening . . . you had the books, right?" No, we didn't have the books! We just got to wait three years.

But, if it helps, here is the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCjMGOvMghY.