Instead of a history that spans time, and details the evolution of a person, idea, or nation, the "History of a Moment" movement attempts to document precisely what was happening everywhere on the globe at some specific moment, and exhaustively document it. (I nominate 10:30am EST, Oct 20th, 2001.)

Starting by getting every local newspaper from that day (and a few days surrounding it), interviewing people about what they were doing, getting public records (who was getting their drivers license then? Who was getting married?), getting archival videotape (what was on TV?) and audiotape (who was calling talk radio stations?) a comprehensive picture of the planet at one specific moment will be created.

Note just a one-shot project, specialized PhDs in Oct20thism will continue to study and debate the events of that moment.

The project should spawn Oct20th Magazine, with human interest stories about people's lives on Oct20th, a series of maps, and web sites about specific aspects of life on Oct20th.
-- tspyz, May 07 2002

Archive of the Internet http://web.archive.org
Not quite the same thing, but similar [lubbit, May 08 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

A Day in the Life of... http://www.amazon.c...detail/-/0971802106
Baked into coffee-table-book-form since 1986. There's a whole series of photo books called "A Day In the Life of..." where hundreds of photographers take pictures all over on one day, usually focusing on a particular topic. This latest one is on Africa and just came out, but the one on America was published back in 1986. I think they did one on the Internet a few years ago. [krelnik, Oct 16 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Almost entirely pointless.

I love it.
-- yamahito, May 07 2002


Perhaps a moment in the future will be better and easier to co-ordinate.
-- [ sctld ], May 07 2002


I've seen this done for a specific day, but nothing shorter than that. If you planned it ahead, I would think that the history would show that everyone spent that moment recording the history of what they were doing at that moment.
-- waugsqueke, May 07 2002


Fantastic! Problem solved.
-- [ sctld ], May 07 2002


I vote for September 13, 2001, the day bliss actually joined the half-B even though you can't tell it from her profile these days ;-)

It may also be an interesting day to study b/c so many people were still in shock from the event two days earlier.

This all leads to my big question: How can you stop at just one day? Someone won't be happy with Oct 20th and you will get people who study May 22, 1992 5:00pm just to be different. Then you will have warring PhDs over whose day was more significant and shows a truer picture of life....

Then, of course, the radicals will join in and declare October 20, 1995, 4 pm even more important and more interesting.....

(Have you ever heard a Civil War buff and a WW II buff argue over whose war was more interesting? Let's not go there with individual day/times)
-- runforrestrun, May 07 2002


Every moment will be famous for 15 minutes.
-- lubbit, May 07 2002


Assuming US time changes from Daylight time to Eastern time, and taking for granted that on October 20 at 2:00 a.m. EST all the clocks in the US would have been turned back one hour to 1:00 a.m. EST from 2:00 a.m. DST -- in 2 hours and 20 minutes, somewhere in the world, the time would be 4:20 a.m. and would stay that time for two entire US hours!

Damn, that's mindblowing!
-- reensure, May 07 2002


Bliss: I was sure you were here before then, time passes so quickly.

I have a book recording the year I was born (I haven't read all of it yet) but it would be very interesting to pin-point the most important things happening around the world at that exact time. Must have something to do with your personality star sign also.
-- arora, May 08 2002


Not all of the US is on Daylight Savings Time. Indiana for one state refuses.
-- RayfordSteele, May 11 2002



random, halfbakery