I had a birthday just last week. My half sister who turns seven today. My father turned 60 two months ago, my stepfather turns 60 in two days and my mother also turns 60 this September. As you age you, at least I do, think about time a lot more than you used to. It's certainly more relevant now. Now that my parents and I are at that rare occurrence in life where they've doubled my age (I was 30 for three weeks this year and three of my parents all turn 60 within 10 months of each other, in case you were doing the math) I like to think back to what was happening in world history when I was born, or when they were my age now. So, I did research in order to find one historically significant event from five months in 1983. What was happening socially, in politics, in sports and even in our own backyard. But, more importantly how has it affected the world today, as we know it.
1. January 1983 - Swede Bjorn Borg retires from professional tennis after setting the bar for generations to come, specially Borg dominated Wimbledon before American Pete Sampras burst onto the tennis scene in the 90's. Today, Roger Federder now has tied Borg with the most career Wimbledon titles and Rafael Nadal has surpassed him in overall French Open championships.
2. February 1983 - Nearly 2,000 Muslims are killed in India in the Nellie Massacre in an election dispute. It was believed immigrants would skew election results and when the country would not postpone votes until the foreigners were removed this ethnic clash took place on the morning of the 18th. India is now a republic but is still a very religiously diverse country today.
3. April 1983 - The US Embassy bombing in Beruit claimed the lives of 63 people, including 17 Americans. It was and is believed Islamic Jihadists were responsible for the attack and is also thought this to be the beginning of these attacks on Americans from the volatile group.
4. August 1983 - Guion Bluford becomes the first African-American in space, 22 years after the first American was sent into space. Bluford was aboard the Challenger in a mission to place weather instruments and various other devices in space. While a landmark, one could argue this country battles with divisive issues such as race, ethnicity, sex and demographics still today.
5. November 1983 - President Reagan signs a bill to create a federal holiday for the third Monday in January to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Like Bluford, this was certainly monumental in breaking down race barriers in America, however this was on a much bigger, national, even world stage now. Most years my own birthday coincides with this holiday and I've always thought it to be really neat to share this "birthday" with Dr King.
In becoming a high school history teacher, I'm especially now interested in watching for patterns and threads from the past. Do we, as human beings, continue to make many of the same mistakes we made last year, a decade ago, or even 50 years ago? Just looking at these five events from 30 years ago, it would appear we certainly still fight many of the same battles we did long ago. However, there has undoubtedly been advances on so many fronts and hopefully these patterns of error and even disaster can be minimized, if not all together eradicated.
