You're one of the first people who's never lived in a world without G.I. Joe action figures.
In December 2015, Nolen Gertz wrote about adults' identities and the action figures they grew up with.
You were born in August of 1965. This year, The Atlantic celebrates its 160th birthday, making it 3 times as old as you.
The year you were born, Robert Manning wrote about his 1954 visit with the Nobel Prize–winning author Ernest Hemingway in Havana, Cuba.
Around the time you were born, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibiting racial discrimination in voting law.
In August 2015, David A. Graham wrote about the VRA 50 years in perspective.
Bettmann / Getty
This is what Hollywood thought teenagers looked like the year you became one.
Grease was released in 1978.
Around your 18th birthday, Thomas Sankara became president of Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso.
In October 2014, Alan Taylor published a photo essay on civil unrest and protest against the government in Burkina Faso.
Patrick Hertzog / AFP / Getty Images
At 24 years old, you saw the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
“It was thought that all borders between men had similarly disintegrated, and we were all destined to be free and empowered individuals in a global meeting place,” wrote Robert Kaplan 20 years later.
Your life can be divided into two halves: before and after the World Wide Web.
In October 2015, Adrienne LaFrance wrote about the disappearance of published content—including a Pulitzer finalist's 34-part investigative series—from the internet.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
In 1997, J.K. Rowling, who was born the same year as you, released her first book in the Harry Potter series, launching her career as an author.
In July 2007, Melissa Giaimo wrote about Harry Potter becoming a classic of children's literature.
Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
When you turned 45, you saw the rise of the Arab Spring.
People across the world rediscovered the power and peril of revolutions, as Laura Kasinof found in Yemen.
By the time you turn 66, the collective GDP of the four leading developing countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) is likely to match that of today's leading Western nations.
In February 2012, Charles A. Kupchan wrote about the world's emerging economies, and how the world will look by 2050.
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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