When this day began, Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman were alive. Goldman was almost unknown outside his family. Brown, if she was publicly known at all, was known as the 2nd ex-wife of O.J. Simpson.
Just a few months before, Donald Trump had married Marla Maples. Both President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton attended as invited guests. No one thought it odd that Trump had invited them.
The idea that Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jesse Ventura would get elected to any office was ridiculous.
Hardly anyone outside of the Los Angeles metropolitan area had heard of anyone named Kardashian, but Robert Kardashian, a lawyer who had given up his practice to become a record company executive, and O.J.'s best friend (or so we've been told), was about to become part of O.J.'s "Dream Team."
While doing research for this post, I just found out that Al Cowlings -- teammate of O.J.'s in high school and junior college, and with USC and the Buffalo Bills -- was the ring bearer at Robert Kardashian's 1978 wedding to Kris Houghton.
And those of us who knew O.J. as a football legend, when we heard the word "Bronco," the colors that came to mind were the orange and blue of the Denver team, not the white of the Ford SUV that Cowlings would drive O.J. in on that weird night (still daylight in California) of June 17, 1994, when NBC went to a split-screen: Game 5 of the NBA Finals, and the police chasing the Bronco.
"The Trial of the Century"? It had previously been used to describe:
* Harry Thaw, for murdering architect Stanford White at Madison Square Garden in 1906. After 2 mistrials, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1908.
* The Hall-Mills Case, Frances Hall and her brother Henry Stevens, for killing Frances' husband, the Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall, and his choir singer and mistress, Eleanor Reinhardt Mills, in Franklin, New Jersey in 1922. They were found not guilty at the Somerset County Courthouse in Somerville in 1926.
* The Leopold-Loeb Case, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, for kidnapping and killing 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago in 1924. They were found guilty, but the words of their attorney, Clarence Darrow, the leading American defense lawyer of the day, saved them from the death penalty.
* The "Scopes Monkey Trial," John T. Scopes for breaking State law that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools, in Jackson, Tennessee in 1925. He was found guilty, but the penalty was a mere $100, no jail time, the American Civil Liberties Union had promised to pay it if he lost, and they kept their promise. Scopes was also defended by Darrow, who, like the ACLU, wanted to show that the law was ridiculous. It was later repealed.
* The "Lindbergh Baby Trial," Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of toddler Charles Lindbergh Jr., son of the famed pilot, in East Amwell, New Jersey in 1932. Although the mailing address was in Hopewell, which is in Mercer County, the house is in East Amwell, in Hunterdon County, so the trial was held at that County's Courthouse in Flemington. Hauptmann was convicted -- probably wrongly -- in 1935, and executed in 1936.
* The "Manson Family Trial," Charles Manson for ordering several murders in Los Angeles in 1969. He was convicted the following year.
Calling Simpson's trial a "circus" would be offensive to circus performers, whose intent is to bring entertainment and joy to "ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages."
I was one of millions of 1970s kids who admired O.J., as a player, a broadcaster, and an actor. I didn't want to believe he could have done it. Who among us knew what he was really like?
When O.J. was found not guilty on October 3, 1995, the verdict was legally right, because the prosecution's case was fatally flawed; but morally wrong, because later evidence came forward that made it all but impossible that the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman could have been anyone but O.J. Simpson.
It many ways, we will never be the same. And few of those ways are for the better.