Inspired by XKCD 1093: "When will we forget"
Percent of Americans
who aren’t old enough to remember
|
Event
|
10%
|
Last year
|
11%
|
Trying to say
“Eyjafjallajökull”
|
12%
|
Michael Jackson
|
14%
|
The Bush Presidency
|
15%
|
The first iPhone
|
16%
|
The planet Pluto
|
18%
|
Bl. John Paul the
Great
|
19%
|
The Superbowl wardrobe
malfunction
|
20%
|
A time before Facebook
|
22%
|
|
23%
|
9/11
|
24%
|
Y2K
|
26%
|
Star Wars Episode I
release
|
27%
|
A time before Google
|
29%
|
Bl. Teresa of Calcutta
|
30%
|
Nintendo 64 launch
|
31%
|
Calvin & Hobbes
|
33%
|
The white Ford Bronco
|
34%
|
The Bush Presidency
|
36%
|
Czechoslovakia
|
37%
|
The Gulf War
|
38%
|
The Soviet Union
|
40%
|
The Simpsons first
season
|
41%
|
World Champion Los
Angeles Dodgers
|
43%
|
Danny Kaye, Fred
Astaire, Jackie Gleason and Rita Hayworth
|
44%
|
Chernobyl
|
45%
|
Challenger
|
46%
|
1984 Los Angeles
Olympic Games
|
48%
|
Ma Bell
|
49%
|
“E.T phone home”
|
50%
|
Iran Hostage Crisis
|
52%
|
A time before Pac-Man
|
53%
|
Jimmy Carter attacked
by swamp rabbit
|
54%
|
Stayin’ Alive
|
56%
|
Star Wars release
|
57%
|
The Bicentennial
|
58%
|
The Vietnam War
|
60%
|
A time before UPC
symbols
|
61%
|
Roe v. Wade
|
63%
|
Nixon in China
|
64%
|
Cigarette ads on TV or
radio
|
66%
|
The Beatles
|
67%
|
“That’s one small step
for [a] man....”
|
69%
|
Humanae Vitae
|
70%
|
The first Super Bowl
|
72%
|
The Index Librorum
Prohibitorum
|
73%
|
Vatican II
|
74%
|
The first Ford Mustang
|
76%
|
John F. Kennedy, C.S.
Lewis, and Aldous Huxley
|
77%
|
The Cuban Missile
Crisis
|
78%
|
A time before manned
space exploration
|
80%
|
The first televised
presidential debate
|
81%
|
Pre-Castro Cuba
|
82%
|
The Brooklyn Dodgers
|
83%
|
The beginning of the
space age
|
84%
|
A time before
transatlantic telephone conversations
|
85%
|
Not having a
vaccination for polio
|
86%
|
Brown v. Board of
Education
|
87%
|
When TV was black and
white only
|
88%
|
A time when the
Commonwealth of Nations was not ruled by Queen Elizabeth II
|
89%
|
Having to tell a
telephone operator who you wanted to call
|
90%
|
A new Marx Brothers
film
|
90%
|
The first commercial
jetliner
|
91%
|
Babe Ruth
|
92%
|
Jackie Robinson’s
rookie season
|
92%
|
The first
general-purpose electronic computer
|
93%
|
WWII and everything
that goes with it
|
93%
|
D-Day
|
94%
|
Nikola Tesla
|
94%
|
The first man-made
self-sustaining nuclear reaction
|
95%
|
Pearl Harbor
|
95%
|
A time before
McDonald’s
|
96%
|
Batman’s first
appearance in comics
|
96%
|
Welles’ War of the
Worlds
|
97%
|
Amelia Earhart
|
97%
|
Maiden voyage of RMS Queen
Mary
|
97%
|
The invention of nylon
|
98%
|
Gustav Holst and
Edward Elgar
|
98%
|
The New Deal
|
99%
|
The Hoover Presidency
|
>99%
|
Black Friday
|
>99%
|
The Ottoman Empire
|
>99%
|
Armistice Day
|
(Source: US Census Bureau)
Note on statistical methods: I couldn't find data for US population by single year of age more recently than 2009, so, in a move that will likely cause statisticians everywhere to hang themselves in despair, I just bumped the years up by three in that data, and pretended it started at 2012 instead of 2009. Observant individuals will note this means that my "percent of Americans who are X years old" will therefore be wrong. However, I looked through the data, and no age bracket is more than 0.33% larger or smaller a percent of Americans than the bracket three years their junior and if you understand that sentence kudos to you, because I barely understand what I'm talking about. The gist is that I rounded to a whole percentage point because that way the percentages should still be accurate.
Heh. I was just thinking about the Beltway sniper the other day.
ReplyDeleteWait, what? Czechoslovakia doesn't exist anymore?? When did that happen?
When I was in Eastern Europe, 9 years after the break up of Czechoslovakia, I had to make a very conscious effort to not call it that.
ReplyDelete"Where are you going this weekend?"
"Oh, Czecho-- Republic."
I think it would be more accurate to say that >99% of the population can't remember Armistice Day. Unless you saying that anyone over 100 can't remember what happened when he was young.
ReplyDeleteThe actual value from my spreadsheet is 99.98%, but since I rounded off to whole digits due to my questionable statistical methods, it shows up as 100%.
ReplyDeleteSounds like Fortran math to me.
ReplyDelete