"...To date, nothing, no matter how significant, has been able to escape the past, which historians say has taken hold of episodes as momentous as the invention of the printing press, the execution of Louis XVI, numerous ice ages, the westward expansion of the United States, and the year 1995, among billions of others.
Presidential administrations, extinct species, ancient empires -- all have been claimed by a relentless past. There was some speculation that World War II would end history, but it didn't.
Neither did the moon landing, the signing of the Magna Carta, the formation of Pangaea, the extinction of the dinosaurs, the fall of the Ming dynasty, the breaking apart of Pangaea, or the discovery of the Higgs boson; the God particle. Indeed, these events have only served to make the past even larger.
Concerns over the expanding past were outweighed only by fears about the future, which is assumed to become vanishingly small with each passing moment."
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