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  The 20th century was astounding when you really think about it. I watch a lot of classic films from the 30s 40s 50s and when you see old people In those films you can't help but think how they were born in the mid 19th century and went from steam boats, locomotives, horse and carriage, telegraph to automobiles, phones, planes, nuclear energy, television. Can you imagine explaining to the average person in 1850 that a rock is capable of wiping out an entire city.
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  My great uncle was born in 1896 and passed in 1994 when I was 14. Radio had just been invented, automobiles were a curiosity, it'd be almost a decade before the Wright brothers made their first flight and television was several decades beyond that. By the time he passed he'd been through two world wars, helped wire our town for electricity and phones, seen planes evolve into 747s and horse-less carriages become luxury cars. In his lifetime we went from "man could never fly" to the space race and using Morse code on telegraphs to the nascent days of the internet. Blows my mind whenever I think about him and the fact I grew up around someone from the 19th century.