The Last Survivor of the 19th Century

10 January 2014

Soon now, we hope not for a while, but probably soon, we are going to lose the last people who have lived in the 19^th Century.  Depending on your viewpoint, that means either before 1900 or before 1901.  I prefer the former.  It’s just neater.  Currently this includes, in addition to several Americans of dubious documentation, Ms. Misao Okawa, of Osaka, Japan who by virtue of enduring calmly in a state of rural wa for 115 years AND being born on March 5^th 1898 is now the oldest fully-documented living person on the planet.  Incidentally, Ms. Okawa is also the only person left who was my current age on the day I was born.

So, assuming you were paying attention, and not peacefully allowing the decades to drift by as a lesser function of the rice harvest, when the last minutes of 1899 ticked away (or 1900 if you’re a strict “0 AD was a year too” believer) - and Ms. Okawa was just learning to toddle - where were we?

1. There were no other galaxies known except ours.
2. The number of Civil War Veterans still living?  Most of them.
3. We knew about the electron but just just. We did not know about the proton. 
4.  People who were as old as Ms. Okawa is now - were born in 1784 
5.  Passenger pigeons were not yet extinct, nor were dozens other species, but there were only 971 American bison left alive. 
6.  There were no antibiotics, a cold could prove fatal and often did.  The average lifespan in the U.S. was 47 years. 
7.  There was no subway system in New York (work was just about to begin). 
8.  Most of Europe was ruled by kings and the sun never set on the British Empire - which will invade China the following year. 
9.  Women and children were still considered noncombatants in most wars, and terms like “ethnic cleansing”, “terrorist” and “genocide” were virtually unknown (although practiced avidly against tribal Africans, aboriginal Australians and Native Americans). 
10.  Coca Cola still featured that “special” ingredient. 
11.  If you wanted to bad enough in 1899 you could drive a car, listen to the radio, make a (relatively) long-distance phone call, play your favorite record, take a trip in an airship, mail a letter that would get there in 3 days maximum and have an afternoon of fun at Coney Island for under a dollar. 
12.  It was popularly believed, thanks to Lowell, that there was intelligent life on Mars.

Now it is 2014, over a year after the Mayan Apocalypse, (which still is depressing a lot of people because it didn’t happen).  Miley Cyrus dominates the news because we have a juvenile fascination with antics of pointlessly famous mental midgets.  The New York Public Library has become the Stephen Schwartzman New York Public Library because money apparently buys the right to stick your name wherever there’s a free expanse of marble or wall.  But apart from that let’s take a look at where we are now:

1. There are billions and billions of other galaxies.  Ours is a relatively minor dot in the local group. 
2. The Civil War has been over for almost 150 years and its last verified veteran died in 1956. Nevertheless, you will still be taking your life in your hands if you yell out “God-DAMN Jeff Davis!” at a truck stop in Alabama.
3. We now know about quarks and neutrinos, and maybe, just maybe, we’ve caught a Higgs boson
4. Babies born today who will live as long as Ms. Okawa, will be strapping on their anti-grav walkers in the Mars retirement colony each morning in the year 2128.
5. Amphibian species continue vanishing worldwide due to water contaminated with very, very bad things.  Those who don’t vanish are routinely born with six legs and three heads.
6. There are lots of antibiotics, but since hospitals in China and elsewhere are prescribing them wholesale to get kickbacks from the manufacturer, there’s now so much acquired resistance that they’ll soon be as useful as mud for the next H5N3 killer virus
7. There is now a nice functional subway system in New York.  Pretty much the same one as in 1939.
8. Much of Europe is now broke.  China is considering buying large parts of the former British Empire.
9. Genocide and ethnic cleansing has become a way of life in many parts of the world. No one is a noncombatant and children are regularly, and savagely, murdered.  A lot of us think that kids dying in Syria is somewhat OK, because they’re foreigners.
10. Coca Cola no longer has that "special" ingredient
11. In 2014 we can listen to the radio, make a phone call, thumb-diddle a text and get down with i-tunes WHILE driving a car - frequently into someone or something else.
12. While we now know there is no intelligent life on Mars, there’s very little of it on Earth either.

So on March 5^th, happy 116^th birthday to Ms. Okawa-san.  Hang in there a little longer and perhaps soon those little green men who only seem to visit places in rural Arizona will take pity on us all and bestow the gift of civilization.