You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without Disneyland.
In December 2008, P.J. O'Rourke wrote about Disneyland's vision of domesticity in the park's renewed House of the Future.
Around the time you were born, the U.S. tested the first hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb over Bikini Atoll.
In May 2011, Alan Taylor published a photo essay on the history of American nuclear-weapons tests.
You were born in May of 1956. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 3 times as old as you.
The year you were born, Ishaq Husseini wrote about the effort to reconcile the traditional religion of Islam with the realities of modern life.
Bettmann / Getty
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
Easy Rider was released in 1969.
NASA
At 13 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.
Around your 18th birthday, a Universal Product Code was scanned for the first time.
In June 2009, Edward Tenner wrote about the invention and anniversary of the bar code.
Peter Southwick / AP
In 1979, Larry Bird, who was born the same year as you, started his career in professional basketball for the Boston Celtics.
In September 2012, Conor Friedersdorf wrote about assembling a roster of the best basketball players of all time.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after The Oprah Winfrey Show.
In January 2011, Sharmin T.M. Kent wrote about Oprah launching her own television network, Oxygen.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute
When you turned 51, 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 64, scientists estimate it will no longer be possible to keep global temperatures from rising at least 1.5 degrees Celsius.
In December 2015, Robinson Meyer wrote about why scientists had accepted this fact.
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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