How do you capture history?

The last time Tiger Woods won the Masters you couldn’t live stream it online and you couldn’t tweet about it. But, last Sunday I sat, like everyone else in America, and watched history unfold in front of my eyes. I found it interesting, though, how this historic moment would be captured and archived for the future.

I thought about what any golf enthusiast would want to remember and relive from the day as I noticed people were already trying to sell their Sunday tickets on eBay for double their face value.

Then, Tiger stood over his two foot putt on 18 and he sank it. The crowd erupted, the comeback was completed, and we all saw the iconic Tiger Woods celebration. We all watched in awe as thousands of people raised their hands in unison and CBS showed a split screen of Tiger hugging his father in 1997 and Tiger hugging his son in present day.

That moment. That 5 second video clip is how we will remember and relive that day, over and over again.

I’m not suggesting that artifacts, his red shirt, his driver, and his green jacket don’t help tell a holistic story of the day. But, I believe you can’t tell the story of the weekend without the video, without the sounds of the crowd, without the tearful whisper of Tiger’s mom saying, ‘I’m proud of you, baby.’

History is typically best retold, no matter the story, through a variety of media. Newspaper clippings, tangible items, audio clips, you name it.

This Sunday was a prime example of how that media mix is continually evolving. The online newspaper articles show congratulatory tweets from Jack Nicklaus and Barack Obama. The tweets are showing the physical copies of the newspapers and their headlines. GIFs are available, in the thousands, of Tiger’s celebratory fist pump. Is your head spinning yet?

It shouldn’t be. Be excited that we have so many ways to capture history and share it with our audiences. I have a feeling we’ll be talking about the history made on Sunday for quite some time.