Moments We All Missed (& a Happy Thanksgiving!)

1914 was a defining year for the American people, though it's likely few recognized it at the time.  The startling, big news was from Europe--the death of the Archduke and start of war.  But the fundamental and lasting change for the American population was this: In 1900, the big killers in America had been diarrhea, pneumonia/influenza, tuberculosis, and diphtheria, which combined accounted for over a third of all deaths.  In 1914, however, heart disease (the fourth leading killer in 1900) and cancer (the sixth) moved to first and second places on the mortality chart.

In other words, for the first time in their history, Americans were healthy enough to die from old age--a combination of genetics and just plain bad living.  In fact, by 1945 infectious diseases caused just 9% of all deaths, and cancer killed more Americans than all such diseases combined.  By 1980 strokes had moved to third position.  By 2000, Alzheimer's had made it to the top 10.

Welcome to the modern age.  (Welcome, too, to Herbert S. Klein's A Population History of the United States, which I acquired after the last post about the American male's declining height. Klein's book takes dry statistics--like mortality--and makes them read like a novel.  Great stuff.) 

The 1914 rise of heart disease to first place in mortality was a well hidden but oh-so-defining moment in American history.

In 1989, CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal to develop a distributed information system for the Laboratory.  His boss jotted on the cover, "Vague, but exciting."  The following year, with the help of others, Berners-Lee implemented the first successful communication between something called an HTTP client and server, using something else called the Internet.

Hidden but defining, no?

Friend Katherine posted a Los Angeles Times' article from November 19, the anniversary of the Gettysburg address,  reminding us that Lincoln's speech that day was the result of a last minute invitation to a very unpopular president, and the speech itself 200 or so words that seemed meager and inconsequential next to the two-hour oration of Edward Everett.

If not the single greatest speech in American history, the Gettysburg Address's  two minutes would be later defined, pound-for-pound, as the most important.

Hidden but defining.  See how easy it is to miss this stuff?  

And it was Lincoln, of course, who just a few months before Gettysburg had, on October 3, 1863, declared the last Thursday of November to be a national day of Thanksgiving.  Which brings us to our last hidden but defining moment.

Edward Winslow, Plymouth's Indian ambassador, writing a letter in late 1621 to a friend back in England, noted, "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors. . .At which time among other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming among us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. . .And although it be not always so plentiful as it was this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."

Hidden but defining.  Little did Winslow know, or could he have guessed. 

So, as you test your genetics with the bad living of too much gravy and pumpkin pie, all to be posted on Facebook for your Web-enabled relatives, think back to the hidden events of 1621 and 1914 and 1990.  Today we have cadres of sociologists, economists and journalists looking to discover and report on the next big thing, or the death of the last--and many of them trying to boost circulation of their latest issue with a gaudy headline.  But it's likely that the next really big thing is also really well hidden, and we will comprehend its true significance only after it changes us all.

In the meantime, may your fowling result in a special manner of rejoicing together.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet