You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without human spaceflight.
In April 2011, The Atlantic editors collected essays about human spaceflight on the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic trip.
You were born in September of 1962. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 3 times as old as you.
The year you were born, Robert Moses, the controversial and influential city planner who shaped the development of New York City, defended his vision for the American city.
Around the time you were born, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech to galvanize Americans behind the mission to walk on the moon.
Kasia Cieplak Mayr von Baldegg posted the speech on its 50th anniversary in 2012.
NASA
At 6 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.
John Springer Collection / Corbis via Getty
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
Cooley High was released in 1975.
Around your 18th birthday, incumbent U.S. President Jimmy Carter defeated Senator Edward Kennedy in a bitterly contested presidential nomination battle.
In May 1979, James Fallows, who was a speech writer for Carter, wrote about why the latter's presidency had been so constrained.
Stefan Wermuth / Reuters
In 1986, Tom Cruise, who was born the same year as you, starred in the film Top Gun.
In July 2015, David Sims wrote about how Cruise's Mission: Impossible franchise resists character development in favor of insane stunts.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after Game Boys.
In April 2014, Eric Levenson looked back on the games that popularized handheld gaming.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute
When you turned 44, 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 62, 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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