So much progress (I guess you can call it that) has happened in that amount of time. Telephones, electricity....television, Radio...and the ensuing stuff that came afer that. Indeed.

And those of us who have turned 60 have lived through over a quarter of it.

The place I just moved into is populated with seniors - I am the youngest one here (which is strange.) The 92 year old I as talking to yesterday told me when she started 'keeping house' they didn't have a refrigerator, they had an ice box. Just imagine...

I suppose you'd have to keep renewing the ice. I assume there were tradespeople who sold it.

They would cut the ice in the winter, store it somewhere with lots of sawdust and yes, there were tradespeople who sold it.

Great houses in the pre-modern era used to have ice houses- underground chambers which they filled with ice from their lakes.

right. And ice houses in the woods, too, right down from the spring houses....

It sure appears that long because there's been so much stuff that happened in the meantime. Technologically as well as socially.

I don't believe there's ever been an era which has seen more change.

As the others point out...they have been a very full and fast-paced 200 years. I still can't quite grasp how much has happened in just my lifetime.

Its been an exciting time to be alive- and who knows what's yet to come...

She's not quite 200 yet. I know that because I share a birthday with her. When I was very young, I remember us celebrating Empire Day on the 24th of May, which soon became Commonwealth Day and gradually disappeared and was moved to our present Queen's birthday and completely forgotten.

No one else seems to remember Empire/Commonwealth Day so perhaps I was born into a Victorian time warp in my bit of NE Manchester?

I see that Harold Macmillan- that implausible progressive- was the one who changed Empire Day to Commonwealth Day. I can't remember celebrating it under either name, but I suppose I may have done.