living memory

[madasacutsnake]

Pinched this from another board but it was too good to pass up:

How far back is your living memory (memories of the oldest people you've known)?


One definition of living memory doesn't mean things that we remember ourselves but, loosely, what the oldest generation still largely represented and cognizant remembers the oldest generation when they were young recalling from their life experience. Since the oldest generation that exists in significant numbers of mentally/physically healthy people today would have been born around WW1 (give or take a little) and able to remember the 1920s fairly well, they would have known people who could have remembered the Civil War fairly well from their own childhood/young adulthood, so I'd say the Civil War is basically the border for living memory in America today.

What's yours?

[madasacutsnake]

I'm not sure it really counts according to a strict definition but my father can remember his great uncle talking about meeting the Duke of Wellington on his visit to Newcastle, UK..........which was in 1829.

[craig johnston]

it's very tricky cos people do tend to, erm, embroider certain things.
i don't see how you can claim somebody else's memory as your own.
so if it's just my memory it's like, middle of last week or so.

[karma_queen]

^ tis true. old people are crazy and senile. my grandfather always tells us that his dad (or someone... i don't remember) invented cats eyes (on the road, you know) first, but then this horrible evil guy nicked them off him, and said that he invented them, and got all the money.

i don't believe him for a second though. he lost his marbles years ago.

[Zaftig]

First thing that comes to mind is my grandmother telling me about the mass hysteria ensued by the broadcast of The War of the Worlds in 1938. I can still remember the vivid description she gave me of the fear in the air that day.

[Audreyvgs]

AN old man my dad knew had fought in the civil war...My great gramma lived with us until she was 95 and she was born in 1888. (then we made her go get a real job)