You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without seat belts in cars.
In January 2016, Adrienne LaFrance wrote about why cars have become safer while gun safety has remained relatively stagnant.
Around the time you were born, Hussein bin Talal was crowned king of Jordan after his father's abdication.
In April 2013, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about how Jordan's King Abdullah II was responding to the social and political transformations reshaping the Middle East.
You were born in May of 1953. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 2 times as old as you.
The year you were born, Joseph S. Clark, Jr. wrote about how the American liberal movement could recapture the political power it had lost in the 1952 elections.
Bettmann / Getty
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
The Monkees was released in 1966.
NASA
At 16 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, NASA launched Mariner 9, a probe that became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
In June 1977, David Chandler wrote about the idea that some form of life exists on Mars.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after Macintosh computers.
In June 2012, Megan Garber wrote about how Apple computers, once thought to be virus-immune, can now get PC viruses.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
In 2006, Ben Bernanke, who was born the same year as you, began serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve.
In April 2012, Roger Lowenstein wrote about Bernanke's successful tenure as chairman, despite his status as villain.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute
When you turned 54, 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 67, 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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