In The (Baby Boomer) Beginning – 1946

Highlights From The First Year.

Rested And Ready In !946. The Tan Came Later.
via Wikimedia.com

The earliest Boomers came in a ground breaking year.

It wasn’t their world yet, but the adults had it set up for them.

An overview of 1946 shows how the times changed, and how they stayed the same.

Read on:

• ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator).

From about.com: “The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. It covered 1800 square feet of floor space, and weighed 30 tons.”

A massive first computer effort.

Was it more powerful than a smartphone?

• Japanese emperor announces he’s not a god.

Later, Eric Clapton tried to explain he’s not a god either, but Boomers disagreed.

The emperor is making a comeback, too.

•  NFL champion Cleveland Rams move to LA.

Then leave for St. Louis and the greatness they never achieved in LA.

Players still had normal jobs off-season back then.

Cleveland to LA to St. Louis? One doesn’t fit.

• President Truman sets up Central Intelligence Agency.

Later, Boomers encounter LSD and learn The Company used it as a ‘truth serum.’

Did truth set them free? Did the blotter help?

• North Vietnam elects Ho Chi Minh as president.

It’s eerie that Boomers born in 1946 faced Ho twenty years later.

History does that in the bigger picture.

• Weight Watchers began thinning down the American figure.

To hedge their bet, the company began on April Fool’s Day.

And it’s worked on many celebrities and regular people.

• In today’s ripped from the headlines style, Syria gains independence from France.

Oh, those French. They’re everywhere and nowhere.

Opening with Richard Nixon is another of those history tricks. He’s a main player in the Boomer timeline who never goes away.

What’s missing from ’46?

Leave your favorites in comments and plan on a NW Boomer history series.