There are about eight billion of us. How many have done something that’s never been done before? I wonder.

***

In 1954, Roger Bannister was a medical student in London, England and a member of his university’s track team. On May 6 he and his teammates were in a mile race against Oxford University.

Four minutes had long been considered an impossible barrier. Roger ran 3:59:4. And there was a shift in consciousness on the planet.

***

During the 1968 orbit of the moon by the Apollo 8 spacecraft, astronaut William Anders took this photo, aptly named “Earthrise”. Suddenly A looking at B had become B looking at A. Millions of people just stared. And there was a shift in consciousness on the planet.

***

“Before 1966, the longest Amateur Athletic Union-sanctioned race for women was one-and-a-half miles.” In April of that year, Bobbi Gibb blew that idea to smithereens. She ran the Boston Marathon (26.2 miles) … and completed it. This despite the prevailing wisdom that “women are not physiologically able to run a marathon”.

And there was a shift in consciousness on the planet.

This from a recent Facebook post:

Bobbi Gibb hid in the bushes and waited for the race to begin. When about half of the runners had gone past, she jumped in. She wore her brother’s Bermuda shorts, a pair of boy’s sneakers, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. As she took off into the swarm of runners, Gibb started to feel overheated, but she didn’t remove her hoodie.

“I knew if they saw me, they were going to try to stop me,” she said. “I even thought I might be arrested.”

It didn’t take long for male runners in Gibb’s vicinity to realize that she was not another man. Gibb expected them to shoulder her off the road or call out to the police. Instead the other runners told her that if anyone tried to interfere with her race, they would put a stop to it. Finally feeling secure and assured, Gibb took off her sweatshirt.

As soon as it became clear that there was a woman running in the marathon, the crowd erupted – not with anger or righteousness, but with pure joy, she recalled. Men cheered. Women cried.

By the time she reached Wellesley College, the news of her run had spread, and the female students were waiting for her, jumping and screaming. The governor of Massachusetts met her at the finish line and shook her hand. The first woman to ever run the marathon had finished in the top third …

***

Now it’s 2023

I wonder what beginnings this year is hiding