When Beloit College started its Mindset List in 1998, its creators could not have imagined how it would catch on.
It all started as a "witty way of saying to faculty colleagues 'watch your references,' " as the Mindset website notes. Yes, the list has its own site and the lofty, trademarked title: "The official home of the Mindset Lists of American History."
The site boasts more than a million hits a year, myriad requests and reprints in print and digital publications. There's even a book, by Mindset's Ron Nief and Tom McBride, that rounds up the wisdom of the last decade-plus in Mindset Lists.
Here are some highlights from that first list published in 1998 that caught the public's imagination, addressing children born in 1980. They graduated from college in 2002:
