You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without Disneyland.
In December 2008, P.J. O'Rourke wrote about Disneyland's vision of domesticity in the park's renewed House of the Future.
Around the time you were born, West Germany banned the Communist Party (KPD).
In October 2012, Vladimir Dubinsky interviewed Anne Applebaum about the rise of communism in Eastern Europe after World War II.
You were born in August of 1956. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 2 times as old as you.
The year you were born, Ishaq Husseini wrote about the effort to reconcile the traditional religion of Islam with the realities of modern life.
Bettmann / Getty
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
Easy Rider was released in 1969.
NASA
At 12 years old, you were alive to behold people walking on the moon.
Over the years, the moon landing has come to be lauded as the pinnacle of human achievement, although it was often derided at the time. In 1963, NASA astronauts took to The Atlantic to plead the case for landing on the moon.
Around your 18th birthday, President Richard Nixon resigned from his position following the Watergate scandal.
In August 2014, David Graham wrote a retrospective on Nixon's resignation 40 years later.
Peter Southwick / AP
In 1979, Larry Bird, who was born the same year as you, started his career in professional basketball for the Boston Celtics.
In September 2012, Conor Friedersdorf wrote about assembling a roster of the best basketball players of all time.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after The Oprah Winfrey Show.
In January 2011, Sharmin T.M. Kent wrote about Oprah launching her own television network, Oxygen.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute
When you turned 50, you watched humankind reach the outer solar system.
With NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission in 2005, humans landed a probe in the outer reaches of the solar system for the first time, a moment Ross Andersen called the most glorious mission in the history of planetary science.
By the time you turn 68, the World Bank predicts that the U.S. dollar will lose its global dominance.
In February 2012, Charles A. Kupchan wrote about the world's emerging economies, and how the world will look by 2050.
History is happening all around you, every day.
The Atlantic is here to help you process it, in stories like these:
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