H. L. Mencken, who lived well into my lifetime, was born in 1880. When he was a little boy in Baltimore, there was still an annual parade of veterans of the War of 1812. (They cannot have been stepping very lively.)

My father was 12 at the time of the Wright brothers' first flight. At the time of the first moon landing, I happened to be visiting him in Vermont, and watched it with him on his little black&white TV.