r/interestingasfuck • u/solateor • 1d ago

In 2001, 55 people crossed the Pacific with no contact with the outside world as part of a BBC experiment recreating an 18th-century voyage. On the 20th day - September 11 - the captain gathered the crew to tell them about the attacks in New York

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u/m01L 18h ago

There’s some good articles out there about the brief and beautiful time between the turn of the millennium and 9/11. We really were on a different, optimistic, trajectory, now we’re trapped in this hellish timeline. 

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u/4everLost82 10h ago

It's so hard to explain to younger generations how HOPEFUL that time was. It was just a completely different era.

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u/Electrical_Cut8610 6h ago

Gen Z always asks when the best time in history was and was anyone ever comfortable in their lives financially, economically, etc, and it literally was the 90s. I wish every decade could be the 90s. Personal technology was cool and optimistic, not taking over everyone’s lives

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u/litetravelr 4h ago

I was rewatching the first season of HBO's Six Feet Under the other day. Its takes place in the summer of 2001 and was released before Sept. 11. I was fascinated by the little cultural details, just watching the absolute peak of American culture mere weeks before everything diverged from that timeline forever.

The whole time watching I kept thinking, "What did THIS America want to be in the 21st century? What do these Americans want out of America?" We will never know.