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.
In the year 1914, 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 The Eyes of the World by Harold Bell Wright. Oh, that's many years ago. Have you read that book? Have you heard of it?
In 1914... The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor. The Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc. is founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C. The Republic of China joins the Universal Postal Union. The Tampico Affair results in the occupation of the Mexican port city of Veracruz for over 6 months. Woodrow Wilson signs a Mother's Day proclamation.
That was the world you were born into. Since then, you and others have changed it.
The Nobel prize for physics went to Max von Laue from Germany For his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals. 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 1910s were indeed a special decade. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo was assassinated, and World War I broke out. Many countries, like Mexico, saw a revolution. The last modern empires in Russia, Germany and elsewhere collapsed. The Titanic, deemed unsinkable, strikes an iceberg and sinks. The Panama canal is completed.
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 8, there was Our Gang.
Progress, year after year. Do you wonder where the world is heading towards? The technology available today would have blown your mind in 1914. Do you know what was invented in the year you were born? Liquid Fuel Rocket. The Military Tank.
It's 2016.
The world is a different place.
What path have you taken?
