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Back in my day, we only had one computer in the whole house. And we couldn’t use it if anyone was talking on the telephone! The world around us is changing at an incredible pace, and it’s extremely easy for young generations to forget or simply be unaware of what our grandparents experienced growing up.

So to remind ourselves how different the world was back then, one Reddit user recently asked older adults to share their favorite “pieces of trivia” that people their age know but younger generations might not. Below, you’ll find some of their most fascinating responses, so enjoy scrolling through. And keep reading to find a conversation with Jean Mader and Laura Bettinger of the OK Boomer podcast!

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#1

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Phone numbers were memorized, and there was no speed dial, caller ID, or voicemail. I still remember my home # and my best friend's # from 50+ years ago.

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AnnaRachelle
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I can still remember my friends phone numbers for being in my early teens. Am 46 now

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#2

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook The world was way more colorful.

Cars were cool colors, not just gray, white or black. Like, a mall parking lot would look spectacular.


Now it seems like everywhere is just a ubiquitous, low profile, architecturally acceptable sea of blah.

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ADJ
ADJ
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Exactly! Problem is my car (VW Tiguan), just like many many other is not even available in any bright color. Default is grey, or another shade od grey. Most crazy you can get is dull dark red, and dull dark blue ...

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#3

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook That when you watched TV you had to watch what was on and if you wanted to watch something in particular, you had to wait for it to come on.

BreakfastBeerz , Aleks Dorohovich Report

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When I was a kid we only got three channels through the antenna and one of them was PBS.

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To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to Jean Mader and Laura Bettinger, co-hosts of the OK Boomer podcast. They were kind enough to provide some examples of things they remember that Gen Z might be confused or surprised by. "We all had a crush on Little Joe on Bonanza, watched in black and white," Jean revealed. "[We were] excited to get the annual big phone book and peruse the yellow pages (old books used as handy booster seat for kids)."

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The hosts also provided a long list of things Gen Z might not be aware of: Princess style landline phones, typing on typewriters and using whiteout, getting blue fingers from carbon paper to make copies, using World Book Encyclopedias instead of Google, giant paper roadmaps you could never properly refold, and trading Beatles cards. Jean also pointed out that men would hold doors open for women, open car doors, and walk next to curb for women. "Always!"
#4

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Not that long ago, but you no security screening at airports. You could literally walk the person to the boarding area and watch them board the plane.

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#5

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook When the internet first came out, you couldn't talk on the phone and be online at the same time.

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#6

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook My boss blew my young co-workers mind the other day when she explained that there is a special kind of black paper, that you can put between two regular pieces of paper, and when you write on the top one, it shows up on the bottom one!

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Jean also reminded us of 3.2% low alcohol beer, diets from 1980's like the Cabbage Soup diet and Grapefruit Diet, huge Hi Fidelity furniture like stereo record players, metal lunch boxes, riding in the back of station wagons facing backwards with no seatbelts, view finders, video stores, Swanson TV dinner nights, arm wrestling to settle disputes, nobody wearing sunscreen, fallout shelters and houses with coal chutes.
#7

MTV was all music.

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Dude! I miss that so much. Reality TV is GARBAGE. I want the Music back in MTV.

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#8

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Tv stations used to just go off at midnight. They would play a test pattern and a tone until resuming broadcasting around 6am.

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#9

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook That it was normal for an entire household to share a single phone number.

AlexMango44 , Annie Spratt Report

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And also share a single phone which was kept in a communal room.

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We also asked the hosts if they happen to miss any of these things from the past. "Do not miss encyclopedias," Jean shared. "Google at our fingertips is amazing (although with this, we lost the ability to spell on our own). Truly thankful for GPS, but miss a map here and there to get a true perspective as to where things are. And a good arm wrestle is always fun and handy."

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#10

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook My 20 yo son liked this one:

When driving to anywhere new, you had to get directions or stop at the gas station and ask for them…

Or you could buy a map/atlas.

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Premium 9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had the atlas. I could figure out the miles, how long a trip could take, possible shortcuts. I loved that thing

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#11

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook There were telephones EVERYWHERE. Streets, shops, sidewalk corners, etc., etc.

You paid for calls with COINS.

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Isa
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The struggle to find a working phone or having coins...or have to stop in the middle of no where and try to find a phone...I'm so glad that we have a phone that we can use anytime...and we have GPS...my worst nightmare was to try to go to a certain address using a map, without having no one to help me...dear lord...

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#12

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook We used to make our Christmas or birthday wish list from looking in a Sears & Roebuck (or other store's) catalog. You could actually order and pay for things via snail mail, and it was safe to do so.

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And when it comes to things we do today that future generations might be shocked by, Jean predicts that because AI will take over, they may be shocked that we ever had to creatively write anything! "Will cars all be automatic and they will be shocked we used our hands to steer?" she asked. "Robots will clean our houses, and they will chuckle at the fact that we actually moved a vacuum."

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If you'd like to hear more from Jean and Laura about life "back in the day," be sure to check out their podcast, OK Boomer!
#13

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook My adult children and all their friends didn’t believe me when I first told them that married women weren’t allowed to have a credit card in their own name until 1974. Before that, they could only have one through their husband.

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Lauren Caswell
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9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, I didn't quite believe it when my mum told me that mid 70s (ten years before I was born) the bank wouldn't let her have a chequing account without dads approval. In their words "husband, boyfriend or father". Seriously so long as their was some random p*nis owner next to her they were happy. So dad went in with her, closed their account and told them why (their treatment of mum) (Edit: they technically could legally have chequing accounts, but the bank had every right to decline women or impose these requirements. So the closing of the account did mean something, as he found a bank that would be fine with mum having free reign as much as he did)

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#14

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook There used to be a phone number you could call to get the time. It would update every 10 seconds. “At the tone the time will be…”

GshNAttck , Min An Report

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And the temperature! For some weird reason I thought that was so cool as a kid

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#15

All of us kids, as young as toddlers, used to pile into the open bed of a pickup truck and just be driven all over hell and gone by adults who didn't even have seatbelts in the cab. No one ever questioned this. It was a perfectly legitimate method of transporting small kids.

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I was still doing this as a teenager working construction. Me and the rest of the laborers got hauled from jobsite to jobsite just like that in the 90s.

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#16

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Ashtrays everywhere. Homes, businesses, restaurants, hospitals, malls, schools (designated area), etc. Even if you didn't smoke you had ashtrays, at least on your coffee table, for guests.

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Lauren Caswell
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Would you like to sit in the smoking section, or directly next to the smoking section?

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#17

No ATM or debit cards. You would have to withdraw enough cash to cover you for the weekend, since the banks were closed.

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ADJ
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

In the 80s and early 90s in Poland very little people even had an account, work pay was in cash, all shoppping was in cash. Cheques existed, but never gained any popularity and were phased out in late 1990s, when debit cards gained popularity.

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#18

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Cigarette machines pretty much everywhere, as long as you put the money in you could get a pack of smokes no matter what age you were

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Italy and other European countries still have those, but you need some form of ID to be able to purchase.

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#19

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Leaving kids in the car to run into a store was no big deal.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Where I grew up (NI in the early 70's), you HAD to leave someone in the car, or it would be removed & blown up.

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#20

(M69). Gas station attendants would put gas in your car, cleaned your windshield, and check your oil as a part of buying the gas. Then you paid him through your car window without getting out of your car.

Pop / soda came in glass bottles.

Grocery stores only sold food and the stores were about a quarter of today’s sizes.

When you needed wood and such for a home project, there was no Home Depot. You went to the lumber yard for wood and anything else, a small local hardware store.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And the pop bottles were generally re-fillable. You'd go to the store with a six-pack of empties, and come home with full bottles, save on the 2-cent deposit charge. And the Cub Scouts would go from door-to-door collecting bottles to generate money for trips, picnics, and courses.

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#21

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook At one time, Top 40 radio was comprised of real musicians and singers.

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#22

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook People used to actually write letters, put a stamp on them, and mailed them to their friends and relatives! As a kid, I would write letters to my school friends over summer break just to tell them how my summer was going and most would write back telling me how things were with them.

I still remember when stamps went from 18 cents (US) to 20 cents and my Grandma complained about how outrageous that was. Today a first class stamp is 66 cents, and I only mail Christmas cards and thank you notes nowadays.

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Isa
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It was so exciting to get a letter from my pen friends...such an amazing feeling...

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#23

We had a Tylenol scare where several bottles were tampered with. Those that took them died (if I remember that correctly).

Until then, nothing was ever protected. So you could open any bottle or box from drug store items like Tylenol all the way to food and drink.

I told this to my 34 year old daughter and she was shocked that there was a time when we didn’t worry about such things.

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CK
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Until much more recently, ice cream was never tamper proof. Then some jerks started licking ice cream and closing it back up, so now it's much more common for there to be a foil or paper cover.

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#24

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook There was a room called the “coal room” in the basement of our house. We’d shovel coal from that room into a coal furnace to heat our house. The coal was delivered by a truck that had a coal chute that was inserted through a basement window in the coal room.

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Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa)
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9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Our house had an autostoker so you only loaded the hopper up once a week. We's buy a dump truck load a year. Blue Mountains so long winters.

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#25

We went to the moon before we put wheels on suitcases.

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9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or before allowed women to have credit card on their own name #LandOfTheFree 😁

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#26

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook A 15 minute phone call coast to coast was about $12 in 1977. Equivalent to about $60 today.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We could only ring our grandparents in the country on Sundays because it was cheaper.

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#27

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook When you went to a concert, you made sure to take a lighter — even if you didn’t smoke.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Did you see any of the videos from Coldplay’s recent tour where everyone was given an LED wristband to hold up? Amazing Honestly, put lighters to shame! (I’m old enough to have a lighter to my first concert though)

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#28

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Drunk driving wasn't a serious crime until a group of moms got together and advocated. (MADD).

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You could drive and drink alcohol. But you couldn't drive inebriated. There were limits. A couple cold beers and the road was the way to go !

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#29

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook I'm just old enough to remember smoking on planes. It still blows my mind that that was a thing!

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They used to refresh/cycle the air on aircraft. Now they are just smoke-free flying petri dishes

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#30

That "Help wanted" ads in the back of the newspaper were a good way to find jobs, and they were segregated by sex.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not my first job but my second. I went to work for Pizza Hut by answering a newspaper ad.

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#31

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Houses in the same area had to share a telephone "party line". And you could listen in to their conversations.

Unless you sneezed or something...

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#32

Whenever you wanted to download something online, you'd have to basically threaten everyone in the house with their lives if they picked up the phone during the amount of download time it took. It would take hours to download a game or an image, and if someone used the phone, the download would START OVER from the beginning. Plus, in the mid-'90s, you'd have to pay by the hour.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is why you collected links during the day and did your downloads after 11pm, when everyone had gone to bed. If you didn't, you should have.

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#33

There was such a thing as penny candy. A store near my school sold lots of it. Little Tootsie Rolls, many flavors of gumballs, and lots of other tasty things. A group of kids could come away with a big haul if one of them had a quarter.

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#34

Every year I teach my students about Y2K and they think it’s hilarious.

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keyboardtek
keyboardtek
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It was a real threat, but the reason we think it was dumb was because the world did unite to prepare for the problem and the software people were successful. Now if the world could just unite and plan for global warming...

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#35

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Milk was delivered to your house every week in a gallon glass bottle.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We still have this. It costs like $100-$120 a month.

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#36

Morning and evening newspapers. Mail delivered twice daily.

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#37

Drinking age was 18 in my day, but you could walk in a bar at 16 and order a drink, because nobody cared.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I was 11 or 12 when my mother send me to shop to buy a wine. Lady in the shop just asked me - who send you? -My mom. -OK, here you go. It was in the 80s.

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#38

We actually grew up having face to face conversations.

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ADJ
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Face to face to face to face to face to face ... we lived in packs :)

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#39

Movie Phone. Want to go to the movies? Call Movie Phone, where the man's velvet recorded voice guided you through the movies showing that day. Push a number for the theaters, another for the movie and again for the times.

Or find the week's showings in the newspaper.

Sometimes you found out once you got there the movie time was sold out so you got to decide on seeing something you didn't know about, buy tickets for a later showing and occupy yourselves in the meantime or go find a pay phone to call Movie Phone again.

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#40

You manually defrosted your refrigerator's freezer. Scraping the ice out.

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ScarletRos
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Good times of dragging large sheets of ice from the freezer then dropping them on a siblings head.

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#41

Where we lived, Connecticut, all forms of birth control were illegal. The US Supreme Court overthrew the law in 1965, but the decision explicitly referred only to married people. We young people had sex, but it was illegal to do so responsibly.

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#42

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook If you misbehaved in school, the teacher could and would dish out some corporal punishment. I had a couple of teachers who absolutely loved hitting kids on the a*s with big wooden paddles made by other students in wood shop class. They had a system. The students wanted to make the most gnarly and painful looking paddles, not even thinking about WHY they are making them.

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AnnaRachelle
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Even though at age 11 teachers couldn't hit you anymore,we had a teacher who would throw a blackboard rubber at anyone who spoke when they shouldn't (1989)

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#43

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook There were racks of free maps in gas stations.

Nobody bought bottled water.

The coffee was terrible.

They sold DDT infused wallpaper

You could hang up a No Pest Strip in your house and all the bugs would die

When the TV acted up (often), you took the tubes to the drugstore and tested them and bought replacements

Threw your trash out the car window

Emptied the ashtray right in the street

Piles of burning coal to thaw frozen streets for repair

Everyone burned their trash right on their property

Many buildings heated with coal, the cities were a grubby dark grey

5 Day Deoderant Pads

Saturday was Bath Day (with shared bath water)

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#44

Kids could leave home, and people didn't bat an eye about it. My grandfather was 8 when he left home and made his way in the world. He had no education, worked jobs for people, etc, and no one even questioned why an 8 year old was alone. He signed up for WW2 when he was 17 because no one checked for identification.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My grandmother was 12 when she started cooking for lumberjacks. She lived in the forest for months at the time and was responsible for cooking, cleaning and making sure to order all the tings they needed weekly. One of the men carried the water to the cabin because they were afraid she'd fall into the creek, but everything else was up to her. My MIL was 11 when she was sent to the opposite end of our country to work at a textile factory. She was 13 when she gave birth to her first daughter after the factory owner had "acted inappropriately" with her. The daughter was given up for adoption and she lost her job. She got a new job as a maid and gave birth to her second daughter when she was 15. The master of the house was the father. The daughter was given up for adoption and she lost her job. She worked her way home. Moving one town at the time, taking odd jobs. She didn't tell her family or anyone she knew about the daughters because that would have made her an outcast.

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#45

We had a fire department call box, down the road, If your house went on fire, you run to this red box and pull the lever.

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#46

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook I remember that you couldn't know the sex of your kid until the baby was born. Apparently, there were ways to tell, though. I remember my mom's friends would hold a necklace with a weight over the woman's belly. They thought that you could tell the sex by whether the necklace swung up and down or back and forth.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Because the chances are about 50/50, people guess correctly about half the time. Two correct guesses is enough to make people think they have a working system. So there are a lot of people who are absolutely convinced they can tell.

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#47

On the evening news every night they would show the Doomsday Clock. An analog clock that when it hit midnight, we would be in nuclear war. It was usually very close to midnight, like 5 minutes til midnight.

Imagine having the very real threat of nuclear war looming over your head every, single, day.

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#48

Fallout shelter under our Jr. High School.

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#49

TV stations went “off the air” after midnight and played “The Star Spangled Banner”. Then they showed a test pattern.

Ask me what a test pattern was.

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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I am 100% certain "The Star Spangled Banner" definitely was not played on Australian when TV went "off the air".

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#50

35 Trivia-Worthy Facts About The Past That May Leave New Generations Shook Seat belts weren't taken seriously by most people until the 90s.

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Isa
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We( my parents, my brother and I) survived a car accident in the middle of the desert ( I was born in Angola, and that happened in the desert of Mocamedes)...no phone to call, no one around...luckily a truck driver was passing by and saved us...wild times...

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#51

"Credit scores" were invented in 1989. People who already owned their homes and cars and got their educations before then, got those loans without having their credit checked.

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9 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not quite. There was certainly a credit check system in the UK (and elsewhere, I'm sure) a long time before that, even if it relied on manual bank records. "Credit Score" was just a new newly invented more accessible way of doing so ,and is still not universal. I've bought houses and had other loans and credit cards in several countries since those times, and never actually known what my Credit Score was or if I even had one.

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#52

That breadboxes were a thing cause a loaf of bread came wrapped in paper or cellophane.

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#53

You could register an automobile without any insurance.

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David Paterson
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It differs from country to country. Compulsory third party insurance came into force in the UK in 1930, in Ireland in 1933, in Germany in 1939, in Indonesia in 1964, in Italy in 1969, in Malaysia in 1987, and in India in 1988.

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#54

Party lines.

God am I old

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#55

911 wasn’t ‘invented’ till the 70s, I think…. Before that, you’d call your local police. And they came…

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AnnaRachelle
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

For the UK the first 999 emergency number was introduced in 1937. It was after a horrific house fire

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#56

Jim Fixx, author of the 1977 "Complete Book of Running" - every home with a jogger in the family had one of these - died of a heart attack. While jogging.

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tracy black
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

i had a friend in high school ( long time ago lol) that ran track in jr high all thru high school and college and had continues running every day regardless of the weather ate healthy was super fit dropped dead while running

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#57

I’m not that old….

But my mom said that when she gave birth (early 60s), hospitals had no AC…

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Jamus Foley
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Born in the 60s but "not that old"? I hate to be the one to break it to you...

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#58

you could dial 555-1212 to get the exact time

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#59

you were sick, and got a appointment at your village GP The same day... well you waited for 2 hours will a waiting room full of sick people, and your GP didn't believed you. but you still have your appointment the same day you called.

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censorshipsucks
censorshipsucks
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9 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I am so old that i remember when doctors came and did housecalls, complete with the black bag that opened at the top with a clip.

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#60

The very first Grammy Awards were in 1959.

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