OT: History in a Person. Something I felt like sharing
My mother works as a donor rep for the American Red Cross here in Columbus Ohio. A few days ago I met up with her for lunch and she told me a woman who was 100 years old had donated blood at one of the drives she was sponsoring. I was blown away for two reasons. 1. This woman could still donate at 100 and 2. She is 100! Born in 1912 and still alive in 2012 that is incredible! I stopped as my mind was blown open thinking about all the history this woman has seen in her life!
She was born the year the Titantic sunk! Saw two world wars from 1914-1919 to 1939-1945. The Great Depression. Television. The Korean War. Creation of the space program. The computer. First man on the moon. Vietnam War. Color TV. VCRs. 8 tracks. creation of the Internet and the micro processor. Persian Gulf. 9-11. Ipods and Iphones. The list goes on but what is even more amazing is her parents were alive during the CIVIL WAR...Unreal! People like her should be declared national human landmarks or something because these are people who have seen almost everything in their life! The woman's name was Margret and I would love to meet this person face to face. People like her are history! Do anyone of you know someone that's 100 or past it still alive?
no, but i am giving blood today.
One thing I've always found crazy to think about is that when my dad was born, there were still people around that had been alive during the civil war. I don't know why, I guees the civil war seems like a long time ago but it really wasn't.
Not to mention, assuming the average lifespan has historically been around 60 years over the last millenium, the American Revolution was barely over 4 lifespans ago. Medieval times were only 10 lifespans ago. Things have changed so fast over the last few generations, it makes me so excited for what I'll get to see in my lifetime.
EDIT: And yes, I know my assumption for avg lifespan is probably not accurate/valid, nor is my assertion that Medieval times were 600 years ago, but you get the picture.
her parents were probably not alive during the civil war
not as adults but most likely children. My great grandmother's parents were alive during the Civil War. She was Seminole Indian.
Civil War: 1861-1865
Random lady born: 1912
Her parents would have been a minimum of 47 when she was born (or perhaps 46 when concieved) to have witnessed the Civil War. I'm no OB/GYN but that's not a normal childbearing age for a woman and I'm guessing even less so in the early 20th Century.
Back at that time there was no birth control so childbearing age would run fairly late. Not to mention the large families, which were quite common amongst farming families of the day even up to the WWII era. My grandmother for instance was the oldest of 16 kids. Even if my great-grandmother had her 1st at age 16 and one every 1.5 years thereafter, she would have been at least 40 when she stopped and there were a few gaps in there. Not to mention even in the 60's my wife was born when her parents were 45 and 42 respectively. So yes it is possible the woman parents were that old when they had her.
In my family my great-grandmother lived to be over 100. I still remember going to her house in G.R. and playing board games with her plus she had an outhouse for a bathroom with only indoor plumbing going to the kitchen sink. As I recall she was born in the 1880's. Many times I wish I had asked more questions of some of the older generations about the history of their lives and what they witnessed.
Maybe she means a different civil war. There's been plenty in the last 100 years. Maybe she got them mixed up, I mean, she is old.
She was around the last TWO times the Cubs won the World Series!!! 1907 & 1908 back to back Champs!
I used to go to camp in Climax, MI. Also found it amusing that you could take I-69 to get to Climax. Even tho I'm now in my 40's, I still go in to Beavis and Butthead mode when I'm on I-94 and pass Climax.
For a large portion of the LPGA tour, I-69 is the ONLY way to get to Climax.
I was watching a Charlie Chaplin movie from i beleive 1919 (circus) last night, and i just started thinking how crazy it is that back in that time, people must have been estatic that they could watch a movie. It must have been a HUGE deal, big time technology. It was low quality black and white with no sound, but WAY ahead of the next best thing.
THen shortly after came sound. HUGE advance.
Then shortly after came color. Another big advance.
Then HD. Then 3d. Then......
Evolution of products through time, and short periods of time now, are just mind blowing if you take the time to stop and think about it.
Same with records/8tracks/casettes/CDs...etc.
EDIT:
One more additional thing in regards to age: Scientist say that the first person to live to be 150 years old.....has been already born. Pretty crazy.
But does it change your mindset when you consider that there has been pretty widespread discussion about a woman in a Chaplin film that appears to be talking on a cellphone?
Did they say who it is? Is it me?
...what kind of equipment that the 1919 Chaplin movie was recorded on but the original quality is probably better than you realize since what you are seeing was likely adapted to a tv and then later a digital format. At it's original presentation it would have been film project onto a large screen. Although "analog" techniques may be considered old, in terms of quality they've only been recently surpassed by digital technology.
I would wager a bet that everyone here has seen everything that happened in there life time, unless they are blind. If they are blind they probably missed a few things.
were around during is truly remarkable. There are not many people left on this Earth that have lived through two world wars and are still alive to talk about it.
because I blinked at inopportune times, or maybe had my head turned in the wrong direction.
/missedthingsoccassionally
My great grandmother was born in 1910, and she passed away two years ago just months after turning 100. She grew up in the Netherlands and came to the United States in the late 1940's. She has seen and experienced so much history, and it was always truly remarkable when we could visit her and talk to her. My grandma was almost killed in a WWII bombing, but a door fell over her crib and protected her from other debris. It is always fascinating to talk to people who have lived longer and seen more than me (I am only 20).
there is a special place in heaven for someone that had to spend 100 years in ohio. God bless her.
This woman has been around for seven (7!) U of M national championships. And she is only 6 years older than the forward pass.
My great grand father on my mother's side was 99 years old when he died in 1986, when I was 6 years old. It's crazy to think that I knew someone who was born in 1887. Its quite possible he knew people that where born in the late 1700s, and, probably someone that was in a movie with Kevin Bacon.
When I'm 100 people will be talking about the things I've been alive for:
-VHS
-RR era
-Two Girls One Cup
And others, but mainly those three.
Someday if the regulars here are lucky enough to reach that age, they can explain to future readers of MGoBlog the late 20th and early 21st centuries:
1. Once there was no national championship game and a bunch of people would get together and vote on what team they believed was the best and amazingly this was acceptable.
2. There was once over 100 Division 1 schools playing college football.
3. You saw the first night game at Michigan Stadium. About 1,000,000 people and their descendents now claim to have been at that game.
4. That going to a bowl game actually cost most teams money and the lucky few break even.
5. That the game back then had four downs to go 10 yards.
6. The onside kick was a rarely used play.
7. The stadium was actually originally built using a machine called a steam shovel and that somewhere in the bottom there are the rusty remains of that machine.
8. There was usually only one QB playing at a time and that person threw most of the passes.
9. You saw the throwback uniforms when they were the regular home jerseys.
10. The stadium was all benches all the way to the top before the chair backed seats, the luxury boxes, the second layer of enclosed boxes and the dome with the 70 yard long replay screen or the field on massive pallets so it could be rotated in and out of the stadium.
11. You remember when the band would play classic football music like "Gangster's paradise" and "Don't stop believing" instead of this modern syntho-neo binary rip music.
12. The Heisman trophy was once nearly always given to a player on offense.
#1 is definitely going to be the hard one to explain. "We beat Washington State, then woke up the next day and checked the newspaper (these broad sheets of thin pages that people used to buy to find out what happened the day before) to see if we were champions. We won the vote by the writers but not the coaches."
When you have to say you had to wait another day for the Orange Bowl to be played before you could pick up the paper and see if we were #1 or not.
My great aunt Laura died at 102 years of age in 1997. She was the daughter of a British Army officer in India and actually spent a majority of her childhood going back and forth between the family estate in Cheshire and India. I only met her a handful of times, as I grew up in SE Michigan, but I would have enjoyed having in-depth chats about her experiences, especially because she was there during the time Gandhi took leadership of the Indian National Congress.
As an interesting sidenote, my great aunt and her husband Gordon moved to Grimsby, Ontario in the 1940s, and in his later years, Gordon was actually a contestant on "The Price Is Right" in the mid 1970s.
My grandma passed away last year at the age of 102.....born in 1909. And the best part was I don't think her mind dropped off one bit from her 20s. Sharp as a tack. It was always really awesome to hear her tell stories about the relatives she knew growing up.....people that were alive during the Civil War and even before. When you think that she was basically a direct link to ancestors that were alive in the 1830s or even 1820s.....incredible.
The other best part was how much she enjoyed beer and strong martinis.
And if he had stayed and been killed, you wouldn't be here to post on MGoBlog.
For anybody that was 101 or older in the year 2000, (and there were thousands of them), they were born in the 1800's. I always thought that was really cool . . . to be a person who lived across three centuries.
There were some people out there that left some amazing looking tombstones, like 1898-2002.
I have an "uncle" (actually my grandfather's brother-in-law) who lived from 1893 to 2002 (yes, he lived to be 108, and was all there right up to the end). He lived in Detroit from about 1919 to 1929.
I know somebody who saw Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth play in Briggs Stadium. I know somebody who met Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone. I know somebody who helped Harvey Firestone change a flat tire.
Thanks for starting this thread, WNW.
Sort of along the same note on longevity, John Tyler...the 10th president of the US, who was born in 1790, still has 2 living grandchildren!
Link from mental floss if you want to read more:
Another stunner: the last widow of a Civil War veteran died in 2008, 143 years after the war ended!
http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/48344
The last widow of a Union veteran, who had married under similar circumstances, died in 2003. As part of his household, she received a monthly pension of $70 for his service in the war - a 138-year pension.
The last WWI vet died not too long ago-
To make it from the Civil War is remarkable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_surviving_World_War_I_veterans_by_country
My grandma was born in 1914, and her memory is still extraordinarily sharp. She'll tell a story and at the end just casually drop that it happened around 1925. Grew up in Detroit, graduated from Wayne State in 1933 (skipped a couple grades as a kid), taught in Detroit Public Schools for 35 years. She was an adult during both the Great Depression and WWII. She's the greatest person I know.
My grandma was born in 1913, so there! She was also a teacher. She passed away in January this year, 98 years young.
Has she ever dated Herm?
Lately, I've been finding it somewhat mindblowing that we now have whole generations graduating from college who have had the internet their entire lives.