1900

 The period since my parents were born is remarkable. Starting from the year 1900, Queen Victoria died at 81 years old; Guglielmo Marconi sent a radio connection 299 km (186 miles) from the Isle of Wight to Cornwall. Britain's first permanent cinema opened in London, and the total population of the U.K. was 30.5m, while in 2021, it had increased to 66.8m. In South Africa, the population in 1904 was 5.2m and had risen to 51.7m in 2011. The black population in 1904 was 20% of the total, and in 2011, the percentage had increased to 80.4%

In 1901 railways of New Zealand and Australia were the first to run large numbers of successful steam locomotives, and they operated until the 1960s before being superseded by diesel. 

In 1903 the Ford Motor Company commenced assembly-line construction of the Ford Motor car. In July 1951, the U.S. Congress authorized the production of the first nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus.

On 6 May 1954, Roger Bannister became the first athlete to run the mile in under four minutes. On 4 October 1957, the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite. The  Apollo 11 was the first crewed landing on the Moon on 20 July 1969. Now we have invaded Mars, and we are preparing to pollute that pristine planet.

While startling in themselves, I quote these facts; they reveal the immense historical change in my lifetime—considering the past historical presence of humans upon this planet, they are awesome, indeed.

As a young person born in 1935, I travelled extensively with my father in South Africa as he investigated crimes in the neighbouring countryside. There were miles of pristine and uninhabited grasslands. Those fields are now covered by houses, slum shacks and tarred roads. I'd roam the fields with a .22 rifle shooting at targets without the fear of injuring someone in the distance.