50 World Changers Turning 50

Products we still love

Super­market barcodes: The first item scanned, a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit, is in the Smithsonian, but as a facsimile — a shame, as it would likely still be fresh.

Meow Mix: Its wildly popular — and somewhat annoying — ad jingle consists solely of the word “meow.” Some say the CIA plays it on repeat to wear down prisoners.

Volkswagen Golf: Though it was called the Rabbit when first sold here, the phrase “multiplying like golfs” never caught on.

 

History was made

Richard Nixon’s resignation: In the first Gallup poll after Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, the new president’s approval ratings plummeted from 71 percent to 50.

Skylab: Three American astronauts returned after 84 days in the U.S. space station. When Skylab fell to Earth five years later, NASA was unsure where the debris would land. People bought bull’s-eye T-shirts and cans of “Skylab repellent.” A hotel in North Carolina painted a target on its roof and threw a poolside disco party.

Jerry Springer: Elected to the Cincinnati City Council at 27, Springer resigned after being caught writing a check to a prostitute — a scandal tailor-made for the Jerry Springer Show.

Ted Bundy: He killed at least 11 women in Washington and Utah that year. Earlier, he had been on Seattle’s Crime Prevention Advisory Commission.

Oscars streaker: Cohost David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor when he was rudely interrupted by Robert Opel. Niven’s ad-lib about Opel’s “shortcomings” got big laughs.

Patty Hearst’s kidnapping: The Symbionese Liberation Army, the far-left terrorist group that abducted William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter, took its name from the word “symbiosis” to encompass its plan to unify all progressive causes.

 

Blockbuster books

The Power Broker by Robert Caro: Though the biography of Robert Moses is almost 1,300 pages, Caro had cut it by 350,000 words.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin: Regina King won an Oscar for her role in the 2018 film version of Baldwin’s fifth novel.

Jaws by Peter Benchley Benchley: The struggling journalist got only $1,000 for the first 100 pages, so he wrote the rest in a converted turkey coop. We are all lucky this isn’t a book about being attacked by a wild turkey.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig: Phil Jackson, William Shatner and Tim Allen all said this was the book that most affected them. The bike Pirsig maintained is now in the Smithsonian.

All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward: The authors (and their Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee) kept Deep Throat’s identity hidden for 30 years. Their secret source was FBI associate director W. Mark Felt.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré: In the novel, le Carré popularized the spy term “mole” and invented others, like “honey trap,” which then continued as real terms used in the espionage community, as in “That honey trap has a mole in the strangest place.”

 

Culture-shaping launches

High Times: The magazine on all things marijuana was a truly blazing success.

Dungeons & Dragons: Nerd alert! Players include Stephen Colbert, Vin Diesel, Patton Oswalt, Drew Barrymore, Aubrey Plaza and Elon Musk.

Great Adventure: Three years after a Warner Brothers scion built this amusement park in New Jersey, it was bought by Texas’ Six Flags. (The “six flags” are of the nations that once governed Texas.)

People: The magazine was a spin-off of Time magazine’s celebrity-focused People page, which was written in the late 1990s by ... yours truly, Joel Stein!

Tommy John surgery: Following his innovative ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, John pitched until he was the oldest player in the league, tying the record for most seasons in the game. At least one in four major league pitchers now has the surgery.

 

Sports

Rumble in the Jungle is most-watched sporting event: Muhammad Ali debuted his rope-a-dope tactic in Zaire to beat the favored George Foreman by knockout.

Miami Dolphins win second of back-to-back Super Bowls: Larry Csonka carried the ball 33 times, ensuring that we all actually learned to pronounce his name.

Lou Brock breaks sea­son record for stolen bases: He also makes the umbrella hat, the Brockabrella, a hit.

Evel Knievel tries to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho: He does not succeed (though he survives). In 2016, stuntman Eddie Braun makes the jump successfully in a replica of the rocket Knievel used.

Frank Robinson becomes MLB’s first Black manager: In his very first at bat as Cleveland’s player-manager, he hit a home run.

 

Beginnings

Jimmy Fallon: As a kid, he and his sister, Gloria, would act out Saturday Night Live sketches with friends.

Amy Adams: An Army brat, she was born to American parents in Vicenza, Italy. Her mom was a semiprofessional bodybuilder; her dad was a nightclub singer.

Mahershala Ali: His mom and maternal grandmother were Baptist ministers; he converted to Islam. His father won $2,500 dancing on Soul Train.

Leonardo DiCaprio: When he was 1, his parents separated. They moved next door to each other in Los Angeles to raise him.

 

Endings

Monty Python’s Flying Circus: As the show ended in the U.K., PBS started airing it here, in the land of lumberjacks.

Duke Ellington: His son, Mercer, continued to lead the orchestra until he died in 1996. The group won a Grammy in 1988.

Mama Cass Elliot: Born Ellen Naomi Cohen, the singer from the Mamas & the Papas died, at 32, in musician Harry Nilsson’s apartment.

Ed Sullivan: His weekly variety show, which debuted in 1948, had been canceled three years earlier as part of CBS’s “rural purge.”