I have been working on this for a couple of month and have narrowed my list down to three events. All three events share a common theme of tearing down walls and changing the world.
On 9 November 1989, the wall literally fell down that is the Berlin Wall. The fall of the Wall ended the Cold War. It would start a chain of events that saw other communist countries began to fall as well. The constant threat of a Soviet take over or invasion was gone. It would no longer be “us” against “them” to somehow prove our way of life was better. The world would be changed forever.
The commercialization of the Internet in 1995 may not have literally knocked down walls but suddenly almost instant communication with people in other parts of the world was possible. The impact of the internet has permeated every part of our daily lives. I think the most significant changes brought by the internet was the ease of access to information and the way we communicate. I really can’t remember the last time I actually wrote a letter. Of course, I never was much of a letter writer.
The final event September 11, 2001 was the day that changed everything. The attack on the World Trade Towers was the first time we had been attacked by “outsiders” since 1941. The fear of a terrorist attack was unknown to most in the U.S. After all we were supposed to be immune from such things. We were supposed to different from other countries, or at least that is what many of us believed.