On His Birthday, Steve Harvey Looks Back Over 60 Years of American History

Steve Harvey celebrated his 60th birthday on Tuesday and took time out of his show-long celebration to look back on six decades of life, or at least the biggest news stories. He began in the year of his birth, 1957, in which apparently the biggest news story was singer Jerry Lee Lewis marrying his 13-year-old cousin. Harvey quickly moved on to Chubby Checker and the twist, just a few years later, then jumped to the invention of the Ken doll, the moon landing, and Woodstock.

After completely skipping the ’70s, Harvey moved on to the question that captivated the nation in 1980: Who shot J.R.? Harvey noted how much time people spent discussing what would happen when Dallas returned, but his uncle had been shot that same year and nobody seemed to care. Moving further into the ’80s, he couldn’t help but say how happy it made him when evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was caught with a prostitute in 1988.

The first major story of the ’90s happened in 1990 when Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was busted for smoking crack. But no other year in Harvey’s life was as eventful as 1994, at least not that he mentioned. It was 1994 when figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked before the Olympics; the East Coast/West Coast battle began; and O.J. Simpson was arrested for murder. The only other news story of note for Harvey in the ’90s was a little affair between the president and an intern.

Of all the major news stories that Steve Harvey has been alive to witness, maybe the biggest came in 2008 with the election of Barack Obama, America’s first African-American president. This was also the story that got the biggest reaction from the crowd, which Harvey let wane before moving on and looking forward to 2017.

Check out Usher’s incredible birthday gift for Steve Harvey:

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