Pictures from the Past: Jennifer

The Year is 1995!

Mont Saint Michel, France

• We were living in Thorigne Fouillard, France when this picture was taken.  My dad was a liaison officer in France.
• Behind us is Mont Saint Michel a a rocky tidal island and a commune in Normandy, France. It is located approximately just over a half-mile off the country’s north coast. (Note: Remember Emilie’s post on places she can’t wait to see?  Well I had this scheduled before I knew she was writing that post…but there’s Mont Saint Michel in all it’s glory!  Now Emilie you’ll have to post a picture of your own when you return!!)
• My family and I had just finished walking across the bay to get there when this photo was taken.  The walk across the bay was a yearly event.
• In the two years I lived in Thorigné-Fouillard I visited Mont Saint Michel five times.
• I was sixteen and attending the French high school L’Assumption at the time.
• There was a bakery not even five minutes from my house and for two years I lived off of fresh baguettes every day.  It was heaven, or close to it.

It happened this year: 1995

Headlines:

• January: In southern France near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc a network of caves are discovered that contain paintings and engravings that are 17,000 to 20,000 years old.
• March: Yahoo! is incorporated, establishing the Internet Portal as a model.
• April: Truck Bomb devastates Oklahoma City Federal Building killing 168 people.
• May: Jacques Chirac is elected President of France.
• August: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
• Major League Baseball players end a 232-day strike

Technology:

• Windows 95 released by Microsoft.
• JavaScript was first introduced and deployed.
• DVD, optical disc storage media format, is announced.

Films:

• Toy Story (first ever wholly computer generated film)
• Batman Forever
• Apollo 13
• Pocahontas
• Braveheart

Cost of Living:

• Average Cost of new house $113,150.00
• Average Income per year $35,900.00
• Average Monthly Rent $550.00
• Cost of a gallon of Gas $1.09
• US Postage Stamp 32 cents

Pictures from the Past: Emilie

1996–Facts About Me

• I am thirteen years old and in seventh grade in this picture.  It is Christmas and I’m at my Aunt Kathy’s house.
• About a year earlier, I’d fallen madly in love with, IMHO, the best TV sitcom ever made: I Love Lucy.  For Christmas, someone got me the first of several Lucy video tapes I would own.  This one featured the infamous candy factory episode and “The Fashion Show,” where Lucy models in Hollywood while suffering a severe sunburn.
• Around this same time, I gave up on modern TV for many years, contenting myself with Nick at Nite re-runs of Lucy, Happy Days, Bewitched, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and others.  They all made me laugh, but while watching Lucy, my mom said I had a special hysterical laugh she called my “Lucy Cackle.”
• I have seen all 179 regular episodes of I Love Lucy multiple times, along with all the later Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour episodes.  My favorites include “The Ballet,” “Lucy is Enciente (Pregnant),” “The Golf Game,” “Lucy Does a TV Commercial (Vitameatavegimin),” and an oscure one where Lucy locks herself in a steamer trunk because she can’t get a passport to go to Europe with Ricky.
• This video also sparked a long collection of memorabilia in various forms, including t-shirts, books, key chains, fridge magnets, Christmas tree ornaments, a cloth patch I sewed on my high school backpack, and a lightswitch plate (which my husband refuses to put up).  I don’t have all of these right now, just enough to be a little embarrassing.

1996–World Events

• OJ Simpson murder trial begins–need I say how it ends?
• Summer Olympics held in Atlanta.  It is the 100th anniversary of the modern games.
• Dolly, the first cloned sheep, is created.
• Madeline Albright is chosen as the first female Secretary of State.
• TWA flight 800 crashes, killing all aboard.

Pictures from the Past: Jennifer

 

The Year is 1985! 

Jennifer got some cleaning genes!

• I was six years old.
• It was the summer of 1985 and we were moving from Ithaca, NY to West Springfield, VA (this was already my 4^th move and I was only 6!)
• My sister, Rebecca, was born in February.
•  The picture was taken at my aunt’s house in Bergenfield, NJ.
• My uncle had put me to work helping him with the yard work.
• My mom and aunt were joking about child labor laws because my uncle had put me to work!

 It happened this year: 1985

Entertainment:

• The Cosby Show, Murder, She Wrote, Cheers, Who’s the Boss?, and Growing Pains were popular tv shows.

 Notable:

•  The first mobile phone call is made in the UK by Ernie Wise.
• British scientists discover a hole in the Earth’s ozone layer.
• The Nintendo Entertainment System is released in U.S. stores.

Cost of Living:

• The average cost of gasoline is $1.09.
• Minimum Wage is $3.35

Headlines:

• President Reagan and Soviet Leader Gorbachev meet for the first time in Switzerland.
• Microsoft Corporation releases Windows 1.0.
• Compact discs are introduced to American Consumers.

Pictures from the Past: Tricia

1969—Facts About Me

º This is my school photo from Nye Elementary in Laredo, Texas.

º I was eleven years old and in the sixth grade.

º At summer camp, we heard the announcement about Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon!

º Lesson I should have learned: Never wear white alone. I’m too pale as it is.

1969—Events

º January 20 — Richard Nixon becomes the 37th president of the US.

º March 17 — Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel.

º July 20 — Apollo program: The lunar module Eagle lands on the lunar surface. The world watches as Neil Armstrong takes his historic first steps on the Moon.

º August 1 — Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).

º October 15 — Vietnam War: Hundreds of thousands of people take part in antiwar demonstrations across the United States.

º December 2 — The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its debut.

º Cost of a first-class stamp:  $0.06

Entertainment:

º The Brady Bunch, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Sesame Street premiere on TV.

º The FCC bans all cigarette advertising on television and radio.

º March 10 — The novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo is published.

º August 15–18 — The Woodstock Festival is held in upstate New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.

Pictures from the Past: Jennifer

Pictures from the Past

The present was as big as me! And no one remembers what the gift was!

Christmas 1980

1980 – Facts about Me

• I was living in Worms, Germany.
• My mom bought the pajamas for me because they were red and white and Christmas-y.
• We had a live Christmas tree (that was soon to be the last year we ever had a live Christmas tree because I kept stepping on the needles and screaming bloody murder.)
• I got my very own rocking chair as a gift that Christmas.
• I was still an only child at this point.

1980 – It happened this year in history

• February 14:  Walter Cronkite announces his retirement from CBS Evening News in February.
• April 29: Alfred Hitchcock, the British film director who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres, died.  His movie Rebecca won an Academy Award for Best picture in 1940.
• May 18:  In Washington state, USA, Mount St. Helens erupted. It was one of the largest volcanic explosions to happen in North America in recorded history.
• May 21:  The Empire Strikes Back is released in theaters.
• October 21:   In 6 games, the Philadelphia Phillies win their first World Series.

Pictures from the Past: Tricia

1966—Facts About Me

° We lived in Laredo, Texas, where my father did pilot training at Laredo Air Force Base.

° I was eight years old and in third grade.

° I have no memory of the gift I am holding. It’s most likely a Barbie tennis outfit.

° It’s morning, because I’m rockin’ some blue pajamas.

° Note the half-eaten candy cane in my right hand—probably why my lips are red. (Yes, my parents let me eat candy in the morning. It was Christmas!)

1966—World Events

° First episode of the science fiction television series “Star Trek.”

° The Salvation Army celebrates 100 years.

° Hovercraft service begins over the English Channel.

° US has nearly 500,000 troops in Vietnam.

° China under Chairman Mao launches China’s Cultural Revolution and begins purging intellectuals.

° Soviet Union Lands Luna 9 on the moon in February and the US follows in June with the Surveyor 1 soft moon landing.

° The US Supreme Court rules in the Miranda case that police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

Pictures from the Past: Emilie

1989–Facts About Me

• I was six years old and in kindergarten in this picture.
• My life had drastically changed about five months earlier: I was no longer an only child.  The cute little baby I’m holding is my brother, Geoffrey.
• I’d also gotten my first pair of glasses a few weeks before Geoff was born.
• This picture was taken at my maternal grandparents’ house, where I have some great memories of being dearly loved and spoiled rotten.
• I think my grandma made the dress I’m wearing.  If not, she made one very similar to it.
• The stocking and tree skirt were made by Aunt Kathy, my mom’s sister, who later made most of my wedding decorations.  (Alas, I did not inherit either Aunt Kathy’s or Grandma’s crafty tendancies.  Guess that’s why I write.)

1989–World Events

• Soviet troops leave Afghanistan after nine years of occupation.
• The Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
• Student protests in China’s Tiananmen Square lead to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
• Nintendo releases its first Game Boy device.
• East German government opens checkpoints along the Berlin Wall and within days the wall had been torn down.  The East German Communist goverment resigns a month later.

Pictures from the Past: Tricia

1963 — Facts About Me

• I’m pretty sure this was my kindergarten photo and I was five years old.

• We lived on a US air force base in Germany.

• I was the fourth of five kids and very shy at the time. (No laughing Damsels!)

• We had periodic air-raid drills where those in the apartment-style housing had to gather in the basement of the buildings.

1963 — World Events

• January 11: The Beatles release their single “Please Please Me” and on the flip side “Ask Me Why.”

• July 1: ZIP Codes are introduced for United States mail.

• August 8: Great Train Robbery in England, 2.6 million pounds ($7.3 million) stolen.

• August 28: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech before an audience of 250,000 near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

• Sept. 30 to Oct. 8: Hurricane Flora left over 7,000 people dead in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, making it one of the five deadliest hurricanes in Atlantic history.

• November 22: US President John F. Kennedy assassinated.

Pictures from the Past: Emilie

1984—Facts About Me

 • This picture was taken at Christmastime 1984, so I was thirteen months old.

• I lived in Van Wert, Ohio, where both my parents had grown up.

 • At the time, I was an only child, and the only granddaughter on both sides of my family.

• The Raggedy Ann doll I’m holding was given to me by my paternal grandmother, Gloria Bauer. She later gave me a Raggedy Andy doll to match.

 • In this picture, my mom was a year older than I am right now…scary thought!

1984—World Events

• Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer.

• At the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean scored twelve perfect 6.0 marks for their free program and became the first non-Soviets to win the gold medal in ice dancing.

 • The Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

 • Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term of office.

• A leak from a Union Carbide plant in India killed more than 2,000 people.

 • Several of Britain and Ireland’s most popular musicians formed a group called Band Aid and recorded the song “Don’t They Know It’s Christmas” to raise money for a famine in Ethiopia that killed more than one million people by the end of the year.

Pictures from the Past: Jennifer

Pictures from the Past
Occasionally we like to change things up a little and do a fun post here and there. So this week we present to you “Pictures from the Past”. We’ll each take a picture of us as a child, state the year and list some facts about us from the year the photo was taken and then list some facts that were happening in the world that year.

Jennifer and her mom

1981 – Facts about Me

• We were living in Worms, Germany.
• I was about 2 years old.
• My grandmother gave me the dress I was wearing.
• My parents had bought the rug in the picture second hand from someone who was moving.
• The statue in the background is a Morano dolphin that my parents got on a trip to Italy.
• I’d just returned from my first camping trip vacation in Italy.

1981 – It happened this year in history

• January 20: Ronald Reagan takes the oath as the 40th President of the United States. His inauguration speech was the first live broadcast to use closed captioning for the deaf.
• March 5: Scott Hamilton of the U.S. wins gold at the World Figure Skating Championship in Hartford, Connecticut.
• March 10: The U.S. Postal Service announces an increase in first class postage from 15 to 18 cents.
• July 29: Lady Diana Spencer marries Charles, Prince of Wales.
• August 12: The IBM PC, an early personal computer, is introduced
• September 25: Sandra Day O’Connor was the 102nd Justice sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the first woman to hold the office.