1. Weâre poorer than our parents were at our age. Few people have been through as many economic ups and downs as the members of Generation X. Born between 1965 and 1980, any entered the workforce during the boom years of the Clinton administrationâbut then along came 9/11 and, a few years later, the Great Recession.
The shooter, Charles Whitman, was a student at the University of Texas. A former Marine who grew up with an abusive father, he admitted to killing his mother and his wife in a suicide note. The next day, Whitman began shooting people from the top of the Texas Tower with a sniper rifle.
A total of 18 people, including an unborn child, died in the tragedy, including Whitman himself and then-engineering student David H. Gunby, who died from complications of his wounds decades later in 2001. In the early morning hours of August 1, 1966, Whitman murdered his wife and his mother in their homes.