You should know about this.

It’s interesting how we all understand the impact of a catastrophe depending on how close to our time and culture such catastrophe occurred.

This particular thought comes from a conversation in which I was asked if I had ever heard about Chernobyl. My friend and I entered in an argument about whether she was polite or rude by asking me if I had ever heard about Chernobyl. Her point of view was that not everyone knows about this event. My point of view was that everybody should know about this event. I got more upset when I remembered that some months ago, after the re-screening of Titanic, a large number of people started posting on their social networks that they had always thought that Titanic was a fictional story…

By living in the US, I’ve found that it’s most likely that everyone here will feel deeply affected by the 2011 WTC event, one way or another. But at the same time, it’s interesting to see that some people have no feelings or thoughts for other even greater natural or man-caused catastrophes that have happened in the past years on remote places, such as Chernobyl. It’s also embarrasing to see how some of these events even become material for jokes and internet memes. IMHO, this shows a lack of culture and respect for all the people that lost their lives, health, relatives or possesions on such disasters.

There’s a number of events in our modern history that should be known and remembered by everybody because of the number of deaths they caused, the impact on the worldwide society, the impact on the technology, the impact on world economies, and the amount of racial/ethnical hate involved. It’s sad to see that some people know about these events only from movies, but hey, at least they know, right?

So, this is my list of “Events That Changed Modern History And Should Be Known By Everybody”, some of you may have more, or may have others, but please at least go google them. You know, general culture and good conversation starters.

In no particular order:

• Chernobyl
• 9/11 WTC
• ‘04 Indian Ocean Tsunami
• ‘11 Japan Earthquake (and nuclear disaster)
• WWII
• ‘04 Madrid bombings
• ‘10 Haiti earthquake
• The Apartheid
• The Titanic
• The Congo wars
• Yugoslav wars
• The Exxon Valdez and the BP Gulf of Mexico’s spill

Peace