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COVER STORY
an Atomic Bomb mushroom cloud]]
He Said
Hiroshima
Story of the Century
She said
Penicillin
[[image: black & white photograph of a syringe]]
She said
Penicillin
6 USA WEEKEND * Dec. 24-26, 1999
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Illustrations for USA WEEKEND: 3:D graphic on cover by Studio Macbeth; original art above by Barbara Kruger
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RESULTS OF AN EXCLUSIVE SURVEY
Challenged to identify the most important news of the 20th century, men and women point to dramatically different events.
A revealing USA WEEKEND - Newseum survey.
By Eric Newton
NEWSEUM USA WEEKEND
1900 STORIES OF THE CENTURY 2000
A joint venture by USA WEEKEND magazine and the Newseum.
Exclusive results:
[[3 column format]]
The top 10 stories | How men ranked them | How women ranked them
1. U.S. drops atomic bomb (1945) | 1 | 4 (tie)
2. Japan bombs Pearl Harbor (1941) | 2 | 3
3. Men first walk on the moon (1969) | 3 | 4 (tie)
4. Wrights fly first airplane (1903) | 4 | 2
5. JFK Assassinated (1963) | 5 | 6
6. Antibiotic penicillin discovered (1928) | 6 | 1
7. U.S. women win right to vote (1920) | 15 | 7
8. U.S. stock market crashes (1929) | 7 | 9 (tie)
9. New polio vaccine works (1953) | 11 | 8
10. DNA's structure discovered (1953) | 10 | 11
Complete results, page 10
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The non-scientific survey was conducted from March to October 1999 as a jooing project by USA WEEKEND magazine and the Newseeum, the news museum in Arlington, Va. 36,151 people took the survey in USA WEEKEND, online and on ballots at the Newseum. The list of stories consisted of those selected in an earlier survey of journalists and historians. The rankings are based on a weighted scale. A story voted as No. 1 was assigned 10 points; No. 2, 9 points, etc. The stories were then sorted in descending order by total points received. The survey results reflect the opinions only of people living in the United States.
[[article]]
IN A YEARLONG VOTE, Americans selected the defining news stories of this century. The most significant event: the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, the event that ended World War II and heralded the ominous start of the Atomic Age.
In the survey, conducted jointly by the Newseum and USA WEEKEND, Americans were asked to choose the top 10 news stories from a list of 100. More than 36,000 people voted. The results are reported exclusively today in USA WEEKEND.
The results reveal as much about how Americans see themselves on the brink of a new millennium as how they view the past 100 years. There is broad agreement about which events most shaped the century: a cataclysmic world war; scientific breakthroughs in medicine and flight; the economic disaster of the Great Depression.
Remarkable, America's current fascination with high tech didn't make it into the top 10. Voters consider the Titanic disaster (No. 13) more momentous than either the patenting of the computer chip (No. 17) or the rise of the World Wide Web (No. 22).
Most significantly, the survey shows that what is important differs vastly depending on who is asked. The choices for top stories differ dramatically when broken down by voters' sex, age or race:
* Men agree impressed by news stories about war and technology, but women name stories about medicine and social issues as more important.
* Civil rights dominates the choices for black voters but does not make it into the top 10 for white voters.
* Younger voters tend to be more influenced by the popular media. And for the most part, people seem to define "history" as the events they lived through.
"What people value in the lives they are leading now gets projected back into time," says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. "It's the prism through which they see the world."
Both news and history, it turns out, are in the eye of the beholder
Major differences between men and women
One of the survey's most stunning finding is the difference in the women's and men's lists of most important stories (see chart, above). The survey results show deep differences in the way the sexes view the past. Men chose the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 as No. 1; women named the 1928 discovery of penicillin.
"It's a miracle drug," says respondent Bonnie Shor of Annandale, Va., a real estate agent and mother of two. "Two of my great-grandmother's children died from strep. [If] my kids get it today, they miss a day or two of school."
Deborah Tannen, the best-selling author of You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation and other books that chronicle the differences in the way men and women communicate, says the varying responses reflect her view that men "approach everything through the war template" while women "focus on people and what's happening in their lives."
John Gray, another observer of the sexes and author of the best seller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, believes the differing results are rooted in biology and influenced by hormones. "The male is the protector," Gray says. "The female is the nurturer, taking care of the family, interested in health and social issues."
Controversial feminist author Susan Faludi, author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women and Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, asserts that there's more to the differences than biology: "Men are voting for things that are putting them out of business. Women are voting for things that help them. It reflects the up and down escalators of men and women in society."
For the young, the Titanic's sinking ranks high
Like older Americans, younger respondents see the past through the lens of p resent-day eyes. those under-35 voters boosted a few stories into the top 20 - notably, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the World Wide Web. On the other hand, they voted strongly for the sinking of the titanic in 1912, which rose to 11th on their list; it seems younger Americans wee influenced by 1997's blockbuster move. "The
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USA WEEKEND * Dec. 24-26, 1999 7
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