Something happened.................

Homo sapiens has been around for about 200,000 years, and for the first 198,240 nothing happened. And then something did, and the material condition of the human race was changed radically in an almost inconceivably short period of time. Sixty-six years passed between the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk and our landing on the moon. Sixteen years passed between the publication of The Grapes of Wrath and the opening of Disneyland. Ten years ago, no one had ever seen an iPhone. These changes did not happen because there is a law of nature demanding that Americans in 2016 be happy, well-fed, and secure. They happened because of ideas, habits, practices, culture, and political institutions that came from particular men in a particular time and place. 

-Kevin Williamson, as extracted from here

thanks craig