By Ben Hebert ‘17

On Tuesday, U.S. will celebrate the 125^th day of its 125^th year. A lot has changed not only in the school, but also in the world since our inception in 1890. First, the U.S. that Newton Anderson opened was on the corner of Hough Avenue and East 71^st Street in Cleveland. Thirty-six years later, in 1926, our Peters house namesake moved the Preppers to Shaker Heights. It wasn’t until 1970 that the building in which most readers are viewing this article was built. Throughout three different campuses, three different centuries, twenty-two different presidents, and two world wars, there has survived a group of high schoolers who still think of themselves as “Preppers.” Undoubtedly the Preppers of 1890 were a bit different than the Preppers of 2016. As a celebration of U.S.’s longevity, let’s take a look at this world that the first U.S. Preppers called their own. 

The world population in 1890 was just under two billion. For those of you who live under a rock, the current world population is more than seven billion. The United States population at the time was about 63 million. Today, we are at about 323 million. Not only were there a lot fewer humans on earth, but the humans that were around were a lot dumber.

Albert Einstein was eleven when U.S. first opened. That means there was no E = mc², and no space-time continuum. There was no Big Bang Theory, and people did not know that the universe was expanding. Though scientists had discovered DNA, they did not know that it represented our genetic code. Radioactivity was yet to be discovered, and no one knew about continental drift. The Milky Way was the universe’s only galaxy, and the neutron didn’t exist. Fermat’s last theorem would have to wait more than a century to be proven. Undoubtedly, there was some incorrect science that Mr. Anderson’s first teachers taught their students, but what is more surprising is who those students were, or more specifically, were required to be.

U.S. of 1890 was, not surprisingly, an all white institution. It would be 64 years until Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation at U.S. public schools. Racial discrimination was commonplace. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not be born for another 38 years. As the American Civil War had ended only about 25 years earlier, all of the first U.S. students’ parents and grandparents had grown up in an era when slavery was legal in the south. In fact, in 1890, slavery was still legal in many African countries, as well as in China and Korea, and the superficial term “indentured laborer” that was given to some Indians by the British Raj made slavery in India legal during our school’s inception.

In 1890, basketball hadn’t been created yet. There were no Cavs, Indians, or Browns. Children worked long hours, and there was no minimum wage. The Andromeda Galaxy was about 270 billion miles farther away from its collision with the Milky Way, and Mount Everest was about a half a meter shorter.

There were no computers, video games, iPhones or social media sites. The cars that were around were kind of trash. But even after 125 years, the U.S. name has prevailed, and all of us are here to witness it. It truly is a beautiful thing. The halls we walk through every day are representative of a profound history dating back to another world. So when you are going through a rough part of your life, when you fail a final exam, when you are denied by your first choice college, and you feel awful about life, find reassurance in knowing that the school you attend is very very old.