Now with 15 years of experience of being 20 years old!
With my birthday being today, I thought it was a good time to look into a few things about age, what it means to me and how old the numbers says I am. This last one may be quite surprising! 🤣
This is the year when people born in 2004 will be turning 20. Absolutely crazy(!) to think about. I'm one of the beings who are born in the last millennium. 1989 to be exact. Despite everything, recent events being a major factor (more on that later), I don't consider myself old in any way.
What is age?
Most people say "age is just a number". This is true, but this number does mean something.
What it means, or what it is actually measuring, is maturity. Is with any other scale of measure, there is a margin of error. When this margin is quite large, it makes people say "age is just a number" and they date someone who is significantly older or younger than him- or herself.
Recent events
If you have seen (and read) some of my recent posts, you might already know that doctors found 2 blood clots in my right lung. Absolutely breathtaking, I can tell you that. In more than one way 😂
This episode made it quite easy to quit smoking 🚬 🚭 Although this particular thing is great, the way that I was sort of "forced" to quit, makes it far from the ideal way to quit. Nonetheless it made it easy because my body had no desire to smoke at all. It still has no desire, but my brain is missing the cigarettes. Still fairly easy not to fall short. Hopefully it'll stay that way 🤞🏻🙌🏼
Is age catching up?
The above may suggest that age is catching up, but since the reason for the blood clots is not smoking (according to the doctors), then I don't think that age is catching up just yet. Maybe in another 35 years 😂
Wait!! How old?!
This section will put things in perspective. Not a positive perspective but a fun sort of wake-up call way. It will be fun, trust me. After reading these, I recommend you try on yourself 🤣
So, what has happened while I've been alive?
The list
### As an infant
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 20th Jan 1989 | George H. W. Bush succeeds Ronald Reagan as the 41st President of the United States of America (6 days old) |
| 24th Mar 1989 | The Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs aground in Alaska (2 months old) |
| 3rd Jun 1989 | The world's first HDTV broadcasts commence in Japan, in analog (4 months old) |
| 5th Oct 1989 | The Dalai Lama wins the Nobel Peace Prize (8 months old) |
| 6th Nov 1989 | The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is founded (9 months old) |
| 9th Nov 1989 | The Berlin Wall falls (9 months old) |
| 17th Nov 1989 | The Disney animated movie Little Mermaid, is released in theaters (10 months old) |
| 1st Jan 1990 | Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean debuts in a Thames Television special (11 months old) |
As a child
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1st Jul 1997 | The United Kingdom hands sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China (you were 8 years old) |
| 31st Aug 1997 | Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash (you were 8 years old) |
| 5th Sep 1997 | Mother Teresa, Albanian missionary and humanitarian, dies (aged 87) (you were 8 years old) |
| 19th Dec 1997 | The official Hollywood premiere of Titanic (you were 8 years old) |
| 6th Jan 1998 | The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water (you were 8 years old) |
| 7th Feb 1998 | The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan (you were 9 years old) |
| 7th May 1998 | Apple Computer unveils the iMac (you were 9 years old) |
| 5th Jun 1998 | The Truman Show, an American satirical social science fiction film is released (you were 9 years old) |
| 25th Jun 1998 | Microsoft releases Windows 98 (you were 9 years old) |
| 12th Jul 1998 | France beats Brazil 3–0 in the football World Cup final (you were 9 years old) |
| 4th Sep 1998 | Google, Inc. is founded in Menlo Park, California (you were 9 years old) |
| 30th Sep 1998 | Britney Spears releases "(Hit me) Baby One More Time" (you were 9 years old) |
| 1st Jan 1999 | The euro is established (you were 9 years old) |
| 21st Mar 1999 | 1st circumnavigation of the earth by a hot air balloon is completed (you were 10 years old) |
| 24th Mar 1999 | NATO launches air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (you were 10 years old) |
| 8th Apr 1999 | Bill Gates' personal fortune exceeds 100 Billion U.S. dollars, due to the increased value of Microsoft stock (you were 10 years old) |
| 1st May 1999 | SpongeBob SquarePants premieres on Nickelodeon (you were 10 years old) |
| 19th May 1999 | Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is released in theaters (you were 10 years old) |
| 1st Jun 1999 | Napster, a revolutionary music downloading service, debuts (you were 10 years old) |
| 22nd Jul 1999 | The first version of MSN Messenger is released by Microsoft (you were 10 years old) |
| 31st Aug 1999 | Apple Computer releases the Power Macintosh G4 (you were 10 years old) |
| 1st Jan 2000 | Start of the 2000s. The Millennium bug fails to cause chaos (you were 10 years old) |
| 4th Mar 2000 | The PlayStation 2 is released in Japan (you were 11 years old) |
| 26th Mar 2000 | Vladimir Putin is elected President of Russia (you were 11 years old) |
| 14th Jul 2000 | A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth (you were 11 years old) |
| 15th Sep 2000 | The 2000 Summer Olympics are held in Sydney, Australia (you were 11 years old) |
| 1st Jan 2001 | The dawn of the new millennium (you were 11 years old) |
| 15th Jan 2001 | Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, launches on the Internet (you were 12 years old) |
| 20th Jan 2001 | George W. Bush is sworn into office, succeeding Bill Clinton as President of the US (you were 12 years old) |
| 28th Apr 2001 | Soyuz TM-32 lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito (you were 12 years old) |
| 24th May 2001 | 15-year-old Temba Tsheri becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest (you were 12 years old) |
| 2nd Jul 2001 | The world's first self-contained artificial heart is implanted in Robert Tools (you were 12 years old) |
| 11th Sep 2001 | 9/11 terror attacks on NYC's World Trade Center and Pentagon (you were 12 years old) |
| 7th Oct 2001 | The United States invades Afghanistan, with participation from other nations (you were 12 years old) |
| 22nd Oct 2001 | Grand Theft Auto III, an open world action-adventure video game developed by DMA Design is released (you were 12 years old) |
| 23rd Oct 2001 | The iPod is first introduced by Apple (you were 12 years old) |
| 10th Dec 2001 | Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is released (you were 12 years old) |
As a teenager
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 8th Feb 2002 | The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City, Utah (you were 13 years old) |
| 1st Mar 2002 | U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: Operation Anaconda begins in eastern Afghanistan (you were 13 years old) |
| 26th May 2002 | The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large water ice deposits on the planet Mars (you were 13 years old) |
| 1st Feb 2003 | Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during re-entry (you were 14 years old) |
| 19th Mar 2003 | The Iraq War begins with the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and allied forces (you were 14 years old) |
| 14th Apr 2003 | The Human Genome Project is completed, with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy (you were 14 years old) |
| 28th Apr 2003 | Apple's iTunes Music Store opens, selling 1 million songs in its first week (you were 14 years old) |
| 26th Dec 2003 | A massive earthquake devastates southeastern Iran; over 40,000 people are reported killed in the city of Bam (you were 14 years old) |
| 4th Feb 2004 | Facebook is founded (you were 15 years old) |
| 6th May 2004 | The last episode of the TV show Friends airs (you were 15 years old) |
| 3rd Jul 2004 | Actor Marlon Brando dies (you were 15 years old) |
| 4th Jul 2004 | Greece wins the UEFA Euro in Portugal (you were 15 years old) |
| 13th Aug 2004 | The 2004 Summer Olympics are held in Athens, Greece (you were 15 years old) |
| 3rd Sep 2004 | Over 300 die in violent end to Beslan school siege in Russia (you were 15 years old) |
| 22nd Sep 2004 | The first episode of 'Lost' is aired on ABC (you were 15 years old) |
| 30th Sep 2004 | The first images of a live giant squid in its natural habitat are taken (you were 15 years old) |
| 20th Oct 2004 | The Ubuntu operating system is first released (you were 15 years old) |
| 11th Nov 2004 | Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies (you were 15 years old) |
| 26th Dec 2004 | Massive earthquake causes huge tsunami in Indian Ocean (you were 15 years old) |
| 10th Feb 2005 | Saudi Arabia holds its first ever municipal elections, in which only male citizens are allowed to vote (you were 16 years old) |
| 3rd Mar 2005 | Steve Fossett completes the fastest non-stop, non-refueled, solo flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer (you were 16 years old) |
| 19th Apr 2005 | Pope Benedict XVI succeeds Pope John Paul II, becoming the 265th pope (you were 16 years old) |
| 23rd Apr 2005 | YouTube is launched: the first video is uploaded at 20:27 (you were 16 years old) |
| 27th Apr 2005 | The Superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse (you were 16 years old) |
| 29th Aug 2005 | Hurricane Katrina makes landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast, causing severe damage (you were 16 years old) |
| 22nd Nov 2005 | Angela Merkel becomes first female Chancellor of Germany (you were 16 years old) |
| 10th Feb 2006 | The Opening Ceremony of 2006 Winter Olympics held in Turin, Italy (you were 17 years old) |
| 17th Feb 2006 | A massive mudslide occurs in Southern Leyte, Philippines (you were 17 years old) |
| 18th Jun 2006 | Former Beatle Paul McCartney turns 64 after writing "When I'm Sixty-Four" at age 16 (you were 17 years old) |
| 15th Jul 2006 | Twitter is launched (you were 17 years old) |
| 24th Aug 2006 | The International Astronomical Union demotes Pluto which is no longer regarded as a planet (you were 17 years old) |
| 24th Apr 2007 | Gliese 581 c, a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet habitable for life, is discovered in the constellation Libra (you were 18 years old) |
| 29th Jun 2007 | The original iPhone is launched (you were 18 years old) |
| 21st Jul 2007 | J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released and sells over 11 million copies in the first 24 hours (you were 18 years old) |
| 4th Aug 2007 | The Phoenix spacecraft is launched toward the Martian north pole (you were 18 years old) |
| 19th Dec 2007 | Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, is announced as Time magazine's 2007 Person of the Year (you were 18 years old) |
| 19th Feb 2008 | Fidel Castro announces his resignation as President of Cuba (you were 19 years old) |
| 1st Jun 2008 | Yves Saint Laurent, a French fashion designer dies aged 71 (you were 19 years old) |
| 27th Jun 2008 | Bill Gates steps down from daily duties to concentrate on philanthropy (you were 19 years old) |
| 8th Aug 2008 | Opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympic Games (you were 19 years old) |
| 19th Aug 2008 | Lady Gaga's first album 'The Fame' released (you were 19 years old) |
| 21st Oct 2008 | The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is officially inaugurated (you were 19 years old) |
| 4th Nov 2008 | Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States (you were 19 years old) |
In my 20s
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 8th Apr 2009 | Cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama is captured by Somali pirates (you were 20 years old) |
| 18th Jun 2009 | NASA launches the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (you were 20 years old) |
| 25th Jun 2009 | Michael Jackson dies (you were 20 years old) |
| 10th Dec 2009 | American science fiction action film Avatar is released (you were 20 years old) |
| 4th Jan 2010 | Burj Khalifa tower, 829.8 m (2,722 ft) tall, is officially opened in Dubai, UAE (you were 20 years old) |
| 15th Jan 2010 | The longest annular solar eclipse of the 3rd millennium occurs (you were 21 years old) |
| 12th Feb 2010 | The 2010 Winter Olympics open in Canada (you were 21 years old) |
| 14th Apr 2010 | Ash from Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland disrupts air traffic over Europe (you were 21 years old) |
| 4th May 2010 | Nude, Green Leaves and Bust by Pablo Picasso sells in New York for US$106.5 million (you were 21 years old) |
| 20th May 2010 | Scientists announced that they have created a functional synthetic genome (you were 21 years old) |
| 24th Jun 2010 | Isner - Mahut match at Wimbledon concludes as longest match in Tennis History (you were 21 years old) |
| 1st Jan 2011 | Estonia officially adopts the Euro currency and becomes the 17th Eurozone country (you were 21 years old) |
| 14th Jan 2011 | The Tunisian government falls, first victim of the Arab Spring (it was your 22nd birthday!) |
| 11th Mar 2011 | A 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hits the east of Japan (you were 22 years old) |
| 29th Apr 2011 | Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London (you were 22 years old) |
| 2nd May 2011 | Osama bin Laden killed by US military forces in Pakistan (you were 22 years old) |
| 7th Jul 2011 | The world's first artificial organ transplant is achieved, using an artificial windpipe coated with stem cells (you were 22 years old) |
| 8th Jul 2011 | The last Space Shuttle launch, Atlantis on flight STS-135 (you were 22 years old) |
| 17th Sep 2011 | Occupy Wall Street protests begin in the United States (you were 22 years old) |
| 18th Nov 2011 | Minecraft, a sandbox indie game is published as a full release version (you were 22 years old) |
| 11th Feb 2012 | Whitney Houston - American singer, actress, producer, and model dies (you were 23 years old) |
| 5th Jun 2012 | The century's second and last solar transit of Venus (you were 23 years old) |
| 24th Jun 2012 | Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island Tortoise, dies making the subspecies extinct (you were 23 years old) |
| 27th Jul 2012 | The 2012 Summer Olympics open in London, England (you were 23 years old) |
| 6th Aug 2012 | Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory mission's rover, successfully lands on Mars (you were 23 years old) |
| 14th Oct 2012 | Felix Baumgartner breaks the sound barrier in record 39km space dive (you were 23 years old) |
| 16th Oct 2012 | Seven paintings worth $25 million are stolen from the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands (you were 23 years old) |
| 25th Oct 2012 | Hurricane Sandy kills at least 209 people in the Caribbean, Bahamas, United States and Canada (you were 23 years old) |
| 15th Feb 2013 | A meteor explodes over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (you were 24 years old) |
| 21st Feb 2013 | American scientists use a 3D printer to create a living lab-grown ear from collagen and animal ear cell cultures (you were 24 years old) |
| 28th Feb 2013 | Benedict XVI resigns as pope (you were 24 years old) |
| 15th Apr 2013 | Two bombs at the Boston Marathon kill 3 and injure 264 (you were 24 years old) |
| 1st Jul 2013 | Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union (you were 24 years old) |
| 7th Feb 2014 | The XXII Olympic Games open in Sochi, Russia (you were 25 years old) |
| 13th Feb 2014 | Belgium becomes the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia for terminally ill patients of any age (you were 25 years old) |
| 22nd Feb 2014 | Viktor Yanukovych is removed from office as President of Ukraine (you were 25 years old) |
| 8th Mar 2014 | Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappears en-route to Beijing (you were 25 years old) |
| 21st Mar 2014 | Russia formally annexes Crimea (you were 25 years old) |
| 1st Jun 2014 | The you.regettingold.com website launches (you were 25 years old) |
| 12th Jun 2014 | The 2014 FIFA World Cup opens in Brazil (you were 25 years old) |
| 17th Jul 2014 | Flight MH17 shot down over Eastern Ukraine (you were 25 years old) |
So many interesting things
Some of the things are clear in memory, as it happened yesterday. Just crazy! 🤯
That's it
The list doesn't go any further. I'm guessing they haven't updated it very much recently.
It's quite a fun list from this website (opens in a new tab). More info from there includes stuff like:
*image created yesterday*
I sure have some mileage on me 😂
And one that is a little sad:
Despite the recent events, I am still among the majority who is still alive. It could have gone a lot worse, so I am overly happy that I am alive! ❤️
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