Early 21st century history (up to a decade ago)

Harpo

Harpo

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Now that we are beyond “the early ‘20s” and into “the mid 20s”, it must be time to start considering the earlier part of this century as history.

So this thread is for anything that started after the turn of the millennium, and let’s set an end-point of “more than ten years before the current date” so as to avoid impinging on forum rules.

To get us started, here are some early 21st century things:

The London Olympics
The Iraq War
Breaking Bad
Pope Benedict XVI


If this thread continues for years, eventually it can include 2014 and then 2015. But not yet, obviously.
 
Dave said:
Obviously, 9/11


Then it'll be Facebook and Twitter. What were they all about? Did people really stop using online forums before returning back to them again?
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I reckon we should keep this to things that have ended, and did so more than a decade ago.
For example, Friendsreunited didn’t actually close until February 2016, so that will have to wait. Facebook and Twitter? A while longer yet.

9/11 is where the 21st century truly began, just like the 19th century didn’t truly end until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 (or possibly Geronimo in 1908)
 
Harpo said:
I would agree, except for me that would exclude the Vietnam War, which was the main focus when I attempted History evening classes in my 30s. So if actual History classes are about stuff that happened after I was born, then hey.
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I think that our view of history, what it represents and how it is defined, is very much a matter of personal perspective. And that is often defined by our educational experience. For me, most of the interesting aspects of British history happened 500+ years ago, which makes anything that happened in the last 50 years feel like (relatively) current affairs.
 
paranoid marvin said:
Smart phones have probably changed human behaviour more profoundly than any other commercial invention.
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Totally disagree with this claim. Just to name a few, printing presses, steam ships, railroads, telephone (without which the concept of smart phone is nil), eletronic devices, computers, VLSI chips (without which smart phones don't exist), the internet.
 
KiraAnn said:
Totally disagree with this claim. Just to name a few, printing presses, steam ships, railroads, telephone (without which the concept of smart phone is nil), eletronic devices, computers, VLSI chips (without which smart phones don't exist), the internet.
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I also agree, especially printing presses and railways, but I think he meant "within our lifetimes" because that goes with the theme of this thread.
KiraAnn said:
What is that?
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I'm sensing that you may have been using hyperbole for comedic effect, but before ATMs and online banking, you could deposit money and cheques, draw money on personal cheques, take out loans and mortgages, and order all the necessary paperwork and books, by attending a bank in person and speaking to a human being, once called a bank manager. These banks had convenient locations in the centre of town where you could still tie up your horses and park your carriages without being towed. They had a large safe in the rear where they kept all of the paper money and coins, that were once used before strangely named plastic cards and other fruit-based payments on smartphones were invented.
 
Dave said:
I also agree, especially printing presses and railways, but I think he meant "within our lifetimes" because that goes with the theme of this thread.

I'm sensing that you may have been using hyperbole for comedic effect, but before ATMs and online banking, you could deposit money and cheques, draw money on personal cheques, take out loans and mortgages, and order all the necessary paperwork and books, by attending a bank in person and speaking to a human being, once called a bank manager. These banks had convenient locations in the centre of town where you could still tie up your horses and park your carriages without being towed. They had a large safe in the rear where they kept all of the paper money and coins, that were once used before strangely named plastic cards and other fruit-based payments on smartphones were invented.
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Yes, I meant within the definitions of this thread.
 
Dave said:
There are many things dying a very slow death, which while not completely gone by 2013, the priest had definitely been called to their bedside:

Telephone Kiosks
Ashtrays
Photograph albums
High Street Bank branches
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In my family, my sister has been famous for keeping photo albums - for events going back to high school. She has a bookshelf of them. And now she is disassembling them to send the photos off to be scanned. An end of an era.

Remember when "scrapbooking" was huge in the mid-2000s. What will become of all of those? What was in all of those?
 
Yozh said:
The shift from landline phones at a fixed address and published phonebooks to mobile phones with no official directory whatsoever.
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I miss phone books.
Google search is not nearly the same. I remember the good old days when I could remember there was a lighting store on Main street, not remember its name and look it up in the phone book - Lighting store - scan for address.
Because many stores that don't pay Google will never show up on a google search.

Sometimes, now, I'll go to Google Street view to look at store names to remember the store. But those signs are not always visible for any number of reasons. - There it is at an oblique angle - click forward - oh, now there is a huge truck blocking the sign - click forward - oblique angle again.
 
Re: High Street Bank Branches - this is not an American term, that's why I asked. That's strictly a UK phrase. I'm still not certain what that means. The US had a few banks at the beginning of the 20th century with branches in other states and cities, for example Wells Fargo. As for online banking, we had drive-up tellers in the late 60's or early 70's. Did the UK not have those then?
 
A high street is the main road in a traditional British town, where most of the big-name shops would be found (and, historically, grand houses, civic buildings etc). A high street bank branch would be one you could walk into like a shop, where you could make deposits, open an account, talk to an employee and so on. In recent years there's been a sense that high streets are in decline and shops are being closed: partly due to the internet taking over and partly due to overall poverty, corporate penny-pinching and national decline. It's very common to hear people say of banks that it's near-impossible to speak to a human, because high street branches are closed and everything is supposed to be done online.

I've never heard of a drive-through bank at all, but I wasn't alive in the 60s and 70s.
 
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