re: What's the closest you or a family member has been to a part of history?

1996 starting at 10 o'clock at night, I started on a local culture pub crawl in Cairo Egypt. At 100 am we met up at an outdoor drinking joint engaged with Hosni Mubaraks [president of Egypt ] son. Identity was confirmed by drinking partner , head of the Kuwait airport. They can drink scotch. My next day was shear agony

A year later I sat at the project completion dinner table with Dick Cheney. Not a big deal, the table sat a hundred people and I was at the lower end