Historian Rick Perlstein says he’s been assigned by one publication or another to come up with the five most important days in the world over the last 175 years. Why 175? Search me.
Out of curiosity, I typed the following into Google:
What were the five most important days of the last 175 years?
Here’s what Google’s AI came back with:
- April 25, 1953, The discovery of DNA’s structure
- November 9, 1989: The fall of the Berlin Wall.
- September 2, 1945: The formal end of World War II.
- July 20, 1969: The Apollo 11 moon landing.
- August 15, 1947: The partition and independence of India.
That’s it. Nothing beyond 81 years ago. Nothing that happened between 1851 and 1945, AI contends, is as important as five things that happened since. Who knows? Maybe AI is right. Although I might suggest Lincoln’s wholly un-American Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, might give at least one of those five a run for its money.
By the way, I call Lincoln’s EP “un-American” because it was just that. It was the first time in our weird nation-state’s history that the chief executive ever prioritized human beings over property rights. And, for the life of me, I can’t think of a single other time a president — or Congress, for that matter — has done it again. If you don’t see how very, very un-American Lincoln’s act was (and is), then you don’t understand this place at all and/or have bought in to your seventh grade social studies teacher’s happy horseshit.
What about, as well, July 16, 1945: The Trinity test? I’m guessing proving humanity’s capability to invent, produce, and detonate a weapon that, in sufficient numbers, could potentially wipe out all of us might be a tad important.
How about the unspecified date in October, 1879 when Thomas Edison demonstrated the first practical incandescent lightbulb. Time magazine around the tunr of this century ran a series on the greatest inventions of the preceding millennium and concluded with the claim that the lightbulb was Number 1.
Then again, I’ve got a book somewhere in my library that claims the nail might be the most important, transformative invention in human history. Once our species started nailing, screwing, and bolting things together we Homo sapiens began separating ourselves from the rest of the food chain. I don’t know if I buy it but it’s an argument.
Philo Farnsworth ought to put in a claim — September 7, 1927: The first television signal transmission. Farnsworth, of course, is the poor schlub who invented the one thing that has come to dominate our every waking moment — and even our non-waking moments if we forget to turn the TV off before we fall asleep. The corporate monster, the RCA Corporation, got all tumescent when it heard about Farnsworth’s TV system and tried to buy his patent for it. He refused and the company responded by…, well, crushing him. The poor sap.
My personal favorite is the day in 1933 when Frances Perkins told the soon-to-be inaugurated Franklin D. Roosevelt she would reject his request that she become Labor Secretary unless he pledged to enact what would become the New Deal. We’re talking about a bold, straightforward woman leveraging the President of the United States into providing electricity for rural Americans, putting the Great Depression unemployed back to work, repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, protecting people’s bank accounts, investing in the arts, initiating Social Security, and so, so much more.
Too, there was October 1, 1949, the day Mao Zedong stood in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China. The country’s then population of more than a half billion might consider that front-page news.
Anyway, Perlstein’s assignment sounds like fun. I look forward to finding out his five most important days in the last 175 years.
How about the Civil rights movement? Or the lifting and crushing of the abortion ban?