return to opening page            by Sabrina Marsh  

introduction to 1996

The 1990s seem, to me, to be a time when people in the United States realized that the world was changing all around them, and that the customs and institutions that the people once took for granted were either no longer necessary, were hopelessly inept, or were just plain dangerous.  Accepted ways of thinking got thrown out in the 1990s, never to return.

During 1996 we came to realize that our insular shell was crumbling around us, and that the shell was probably just an illusion anyway.  The President gets sued for chasing women, domestic terror threats and violence are everywhere, technology can outthink us and create a superior being, the world is shrinking as people log on and shut down, and the government can no longer be trusted to protect us or to tell us the truth.

As Alanis Morrisette sings in her song Jagged Little Pill, what one needs to learn is often going to be painful going down.
 

table of contents

  The top five events of 1996 and why I think they remain important

• FBI arrests suspected Unabomber
• 747 airliner crashes in Atlantic off Long Island, NY; all 230 aboard perish
• The Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1996 Summer Olympics
• From Microsoft: Hotmail.com, a Web-based email site

• Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell, is born 

  Other noteworthy events that helped to shape 1996, divided into categories

• Politics
• Science
• Technology
• Popular Culture
• Sports