Born in 1969

If you were born in 1969, you were born into the year a man walked on the moon. On July 20th, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface and said the words that have never quite lost their power, and the whole world watched on televisions that turned the moment bluish and grainy and miraculous. It was the pure distillation of what American ambition and engineering could do.

The year had other glories and other shadows: Woodstock in August brought half a million people to a farm in upstate New York for three days of rain and music—the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Crosby Stills Nash and Young—and it became a mythology even before the mud dried. Vietnam ground on; the My Lai massacre details emerged and the country recoiled. Nixon began the long wind-down he called "Vietnamization.

" The Stonewall riots in June began the modern gay rights movement in the back rooms of a Greenwich Village bar. The first McDonald's drive-through opened. The 747 made its first flight and shrank the world.

"Honky Tonk Women," "Get Back," "Everyday People"—the radio was magnificent. The Miracle Mets won the World Series and the city of New York screamed itself hoarse. It was a year of genuine wonder, genuine anguish, and genuine American strangeness, which is perhaps as true a summary of the country as any.