Every day beyond 40 is Grace

I have studied history enough to know that in 1815 40 was what you could expect if you lived to be 20 here in the U.S.

and 1900 one could expect maybe to live until 60 if they survived to be 20.

70 was something people started to expect more by 1950 but not really before then.

80 was something more and more people started to expect by 1970.

90 was something people started to expect more by 2000

In 2010 there were 53,364 people over 100 years of age which is a lot and more than ever before in the U.S.

There likely could be as many as 70,000 people over 100 now  here in the U.S.

A growing number of Americans are living to age 100. Nationwide, the centenarian population has grown 65.8 percent over the past three decades, from 32,194 peoplewho were age 100 or older in 1980 to 53,364 centenarians in 2010, according to new Census Bureau data.Jan 7, 2013

What People Who Live to 100 Have in Common | Retirement | US News

https://money.usnews.com/money/.../what-people-who-live-to-100-have-in-common

Let me share something about the 1950s:

Most people I knew then as a child growing up had lost 1/2 of their teeth by age 40 and 

all of their teeth by age 60 (maybe one or two were left to hold their dentures on with.)

People by age 30 in the 1950s seemed like 40 to 60 year olds do now. They were so serious that they 

seemed so stiff I didn't want to grow up to be like them. They all seemed to suffer so much.

70 year olds now seemed like the way 35 and 40 year olds were in the 1950s.

These are my observations that I saw in my life growing up in the 1950s.

And most white people I met in the 1950s were much more racist than now but it wasn't like most people 

think at all. It was I would call this being "Defensive against any other family or race or ethnic group". 

It wasn't just being racist it was being anti-ethnic of any country but their own. For example, Scottish and Irish

people might get their houses burned down because they were immigrants in the 1880s and 1890s. This

was especially true on the East Coast.

People weren't educated very well and most people I met hadn't even finished High School. In the 1950s

finishing High School would be like now getting a 2 year degree from a community college. And many 

many people could not read then at all. So, imagine just how ignorant about things most people were then?

This is one of the most important factors in why people even of different families or ethnic groups killed or maimed

each other more before the 1960s than they do now. It was because they were deathly afraid of anyone

different than they were in ANY way. So, you REALLY had to be careful what you said to ANYONE in the 1950s

so you didn't wind up dead or maimed even if you were already white.