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 19th 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
5th 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?
- There
were no other galaxies known except ours.
- The
number of Civil War Veterans still living?
Most of them.
- We
knew about the electron but just just. We did not know about the proton.
- People
who were as old as Ms. Okawa is now - were born in 1784
- Passenger
pigeons were not yet extinct, nor were dozens other species, but there were only
971 American bison left alive.
- There
were no antibiotics, a cold could prove fatal and often did. The average lifespan in the U.S. was 47
years.
- There
was no subway system in New York (work was just about to begin).
- Most
of Europe was ruled by kings and the sun never set on the British Empire - which
will invade China the following year.
- 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).
- Coca Cola still
featured that “special” ingredient.
- 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.
- 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:
- There are billions and billions of
other galaxies. Ours is a
relatively minor dot in the local group.
- 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.
- We now know about quarks and
neutrinos, and maybe, just maybe, we’ve caught a Higgs boson
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- There is now a nice functional
subway system in New York. Pretty
much the same one as in 1939.
- Much of Europe is now broke. China is considering buying large parts
of the former British Empire.
- 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.
- Coca Cola no longer has that "special" ingredient
- 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.
- While we now know there is no intelligent life
on Mars, there’s very little of it on Earth either.
So
on March 5th, happy 116th 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.
