We all remember certain moments that felt bigger than the usual news cycle, forever changing our perspective of the world and shaping it for what it is today. Many of us can still picture when we first heard about these global incidents and how they came up in our conversations a lot right after they happened and much later than they did, lingering in our memories and becoming topics we still bring up every now and then when we look back at the world.
It’s clear these moments had a lasting effect on how we now understand global change, influencing how quickly information spreads, how we respond to large-scale events, and how connected different parts of the world feel during these circumstances. Because we lived through them at the same time, they also created shared points in recent history that continue to shape how we recognize and talk about similar events today regardless of the distances between us.
The COVID-19 Pandemic
The 2011 Tōhoku Tsunami
The 2020 Beirut Port Explosion
The 1945 Hiroshima Bombing
The 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
