Diana, in part because of the way it was reported (on MSNBC I think). ‘Minor injuries’ for most of the evening, then suddenly she was dead. I watched so long Brian Williams started to look like Princess Di! Though it was also a late Saturday evening.
JFK Jr. FEARED LOST AT SEA headline on Drudge Report.
And PLEASE excuse me for this one…
white Bronco and not guilty
Knicks v Rockets and at school
I remember JFK, and the Challenger, and a few others. I also remember I was buying (underage) a six pack of beer at a Stop-n-Go at the corner of Drexel and Westheimer and the counter guy and I watched Neal Armstrong step onto the Moon. My friends out in the car wanted to know why I took so long.
In Dec. 1980, I was getting ready for school (5th grade) and the Today show was on and I heard that John Lennon was murdered. I had just started to get into music then and his songs were my favorites at the time–Watching the Wheels, Woman, etc. What really struck me about it was later, when the news programs showed all of the Beatles/Lennon fans holding a vigil with candles and crying, while “All you Need is Love” was playing. It was very moving and I realized how much he meant to a lot of people. When I “discovered” the Beatles in my late teens, I finally began to appreciate him for the brilliant songwriter that he was.
It’s a shame we’ll never know what kind of music he would have made in 1999. (Or Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin for that matter) Sorry to get off the subject…
JFK Jr.'s death was a tragedy, too, but since I didn’t relate to him, it didn’t have much of an impact on me, personally. Not to say it wasn’t sad. It was just a different kind of sad, like hearing about a “regular” person dying. My mother cried. She was at choir practice when she heard about JFK Sr.'s assasination.
RFK–I was only 7, and I remember my older sister saying when I got up the next morning “Senator Kennedy’s been shot!” I had no idea who “Senator Kennedy” was at the time.
Elvis–I was in my room at home, listening to the radio when the report came in.
Lennon–I usually slept with my radio on, and I got up that night with an upset stomach. Since I was up for a few minutes, I noticed that they were playing one “Beatles” song right after another. Then, after a while, the announcer said that John Lennon had been shot. (This was already several hours later when I woke up.)
Marvin Gaye–Much as with Lennon. When I woke up, I noticed that they were playing one Gaye song after another. Then the DJ gave the bad news. (I don’t remember what time of day Gaye was shot.)
The Challenger explosion–I was at work and a co-worker told me about it.
The crumbling of the Berlin Wall–I walked into a convenience store on my way in to work, and saw the banner headlines on the paper. I was in shock when I saw the photo of people standing atop the wall.
I don’t remember the first moon landing at all. Since that was during the summer, I was probably with my uncle fishing.
When JFK got shot I was in the hospital for a several month stay, so I was watching tv all day. I, of course, remember the initial reporting. IIRC, the Zapruder film surfaced pretty quickly. I did watch, live, Jack Ruby puttin’ it to Lee Harvey Oswald. A bit spooky. Tv hadn’t been there before.
I think I’ve posted this before; when the Challenger blew up my secretary told me immediately. I remember thinking (I just happened to be doing a weight drop problem at the time) that it’s over for them, but they haven’t even hit the ocean yet! At lunch that day I went across the street to a department store’s tv dep’t. where about 400 people stood scattered amongst 25 tvs silently watching endless replays of the explosion. By that evening the prohibition on showing the explosion had taken hold w/the networks, but that lunch hour will stay w/me. It shook me; I sent the Prez a telegram of condolence. I knew a lot of jokes by the weekend.
I remember the Challenger explosion very well. I was in high school, and there were about 100 kids gathered around the one television we had at my school (very small), watching the news reports on our lunch hour.
I was driving through some secluded part of Montana when I heard about the explosion of the federal building in Oklahoma City. I remember my husband yelling at me to find someplace to go so we could see some television coverage. Never did find anyplace that day. We were on our way to Calgary, and when we got there the next morning, even the locals were buzzing about it.
The moon landing in '69: I was sitting in my living room watching it on TV with my Dad; he made me stay up to watch it.
The Challenger explosion: I was at my parent’s house at the time. My uncle was staying with them, and I remember that he had a terrible head cold.
Fall of the Berlin Wall: I read about it first in a newspaper I bought in a 7-11; I was working at the time in one of those great new 7 million jobs that Reagan used to blat about creating; which payed, of course, about $3.90 an hour, with no benefits…
Start of the Persian Gulf War: I was watching the 6:30 PM news when it just sort of segued into war coverage; I ended up sitting there until about 3 AM watching the thing non-stop. I remember I was jumpy as hell all the time because I was still on reserve status, and I was sure they were going to call me back up active. They didn’t, though.
The blowing up of the Oklahoma City Federal Building: I was in college. I had just walked into the student lounge where there was a big-screen TV, and saw all this carnage, and I asked one of the math profs who was sitting there what happened. He told me that somebody had blown up a building in Oklahoma City, and my immediate thought was that it had to be Arabs. Shows you how wrong I was.
10/17/89-Loma Prieta Eartquake in Northern California- I was in the backyard, my mom was watering the lawn. rumble, rumble. I bolted for the door to get myself inside and under a table. Mom yells, “Jeff, Get back here!” We just embrace dfor the duration. We checked on our neighbors, opened teh garage door for Dad, who was driving. We slept in a tent that night, and saw Pres. Bush’s chopper go by.
Summer 1994-White Bronco- I was at home when it started, later at my Dad’s friend’s house. The Verdict- We all got to watch it during recess in elementary school in the big screen downstairs. (I now feel there is something wrong with that.)
Other possibilities- Last game at Candlestick, Oklahoma City, I kinda remember, watching it in my parents room. And by God, when the Giants win a Series…
JMcC, San Francisco
http://members.tripod.com/~weirdstuff/index.html
“Hear the voices in my head, I swear to God it sounds like they’re snoring”
Watching Monday Night Football and seeing John Lennon’s death scroll across the screen. A dark day for humanity.
Also, the shuttle explosion in college. A fraternity brother told me about it as I walked into the house. I also remember being completely digusted about the million times the footage was shown on television.
I was listening to the talk show host Michael Jackson when the Challenger exploded, and remember how stunned he was. And how he said, and all the callers agreed, that if NASA had let it take off, then the accident must have been something freak and unavoidable. NASA was held in the highest public regard almost universally before that accident and the hearings; seems odd to recall that now.
I walked in the front door from my job and heard about Lennon and my mom called to tell me about the luckless princess. I heard about Mother Teresa’s death on the way to work on the bus; the host I was listening to had just said he hoped there would be nearly as much fuss when Mother Teresa died as there was about Princess Diana – when the announcement came through. He was sort of flustered for a few minutes after that, but I can’t remember who it was – some substitute host.
Catrandom
I am too young for JFK (not that I care about some President of another country) and just a smidgin too young for the Moon landing.
My older sister cried for three days after John Lennon died. I didn’t even know who he was.
The Challenger exploding was just news, it meant little but spectacle. I heard about it on the way to school.
The Gulf War was different. Everyone was prepared for it, so it wasn’t the same kind of shock. Though awe and disbelief was part of it. I was at a friend’s house when it began, so we watched it on TV.
Just before that, in Nov 1989, there waas a mass murder in a small village just outside my home town. A madman with a gun killed 13 people. That affected our town (and country) like nothing else ever has.
In 1996 (I think) another mass murder happened in our town, this time a 20 year old killed his family. I was lucky to see him on the stand denying it, as I was doing some court-drawings for the local TV station. He was found guilty, though many don’t think he did it.
That was shock on a similar level as the above, as most people didn’t think our tiny town would house two madmen with guns within a decade of each other. (It’s the only place in the whole country to have ANY mass murders, let alone two)
Princess Diana dying hit me like a brick. I came home from work, flipped on the TV just as the news was starting, not having heard a thing all day. And they talked about the Princess of Wales dying. And I was thinking - there must be two Princesses of Wales, right? sigh I cried at her funeral on TV.
But the events that affected me more than anything were: my Father dying when I was 14, and my very very close friend dying in March last year.
“Vyvyan! Where did you get that Howitzer?” “…I found it.”
The Legend Of PigeonMan - updates every Wed & Sat
SPACE SHUTTLE EXPLOSION - Finished lunch and went to 9th grade History class. Mr. Rash was tuning into a radio near the windows. He said, “the shuttle exploded.” Not seeing what it looked like, and with the media still unsure about the possibility of people still alive, I held out hope. Ran home, saw the coverage on TV, and cried like a baby.
WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING - Coworker comes up to me (I’m working in Long Island at the time) and says, simply, “the World Trade Center is burning. Someone blew it up.”
ELVIS DEATH - My aunt (a nun, which I mentin only to amuse others) used to take us when we were young on Subway outings to Manhattan from our homebase in Hollis, Queens. On one of them, we were eating pizza somewhere in the city, and the news came over the radio. I barely knoew who Elvis was - I was only 8 - but my aunt quickly told me he was a rock star.
RANDY RHODES DEATH - I know, not catastrophic in the grand scheme of things, but still… I found out when I saw a bunch of metalhead friends of mine in school all contrite, and the girls were crying. I asked them why, they told me. I got to hug a girl who I thought was really hot, but that was secondary to the grief I felt.
KURT COBAIN DEATH - This is an odd one. I was reviewing a Pearl Jam show in Washington DC and a photographer was driving us from NYC down there. We listened to tapes the whole way, oblivious to what happened.
We get there. photog asks for his pass, and the person at the windowe says, “All photo passes have been revoked due to a death in the band.”
We were like, “Oh.” But then we thought, why is the band playing at all if someone died? So we asked who died, we found out it was Kurt, and we realized that both bands were friends.
We debated after the show how he dies - OD? Stalker fan? So we get to my dad’s place in Fairfax, VA and I tell him I need to turn on MTV for a second. I do, and immediately, we both learn about how he killed himself.
First words out of my mouth: “What a loser…”
I only vaguely recall where I was when Thurman Munson died, at school somewhere.
What I think is interesting is in the thread that started here about a plane flying by itself, I mentioned that Payne Stewart was on board first, so it’s possible that someone here will say that he fuirst found out about Payne Stewart’s death from Satan.
THAT will raise a few eyebrows!
Yer pal,
Satan
Challenger Disaster: I don’t remember this, but my mom tells me I toddled in and asked her why Sesame Street had been interrupted. (Hey, I was 5!)
Berlin Wall: I remember hearing about it in the kitchen of our home in Winnipeg on CBC Radio News:
War in Rwanda: back yard, same house, CBC Radio News.
Princess Di(ed): at the family cottage in Ontario, CBC Radio News. The next day the Toronto Star had a headline six inches tall saying “DIANA DEAD”. We expected to buy it the next day and have it say “DIANA STILL DEAD”.
Columbine massacre: CBC Radio News, on my walkman as I walked to my gay youth group.
Ecole Polytechnique, Tiananmen Square: I don’t remember what I was doing when I heard about either of these.
Funny, the first words out of my mouth when I heard Kurt Cobain killed himself were the same: “What a loser…”
I vividly remember Dec. 8, 1980. I was sitting on the love seat reading Pretty Baby, Dad was watching Monday Night Football and all of a sudden says to me, “hey, did you hear that?” Cosell had just announced John Lennon’s Death. I was in agony for weeks.
May 18, 1981, Mt. St. Helens went boom. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the local TV station was going to be showing A Hard Days Night and Help as a double feature, and I, despite my geeky 13 year old Beatlemania, hadn’t seen them yet. I was so sure they were going to pre-empt them for coverage of the volcano…didn’t though. Whew.
I remember the Challenger explosion quite vividly… many of you have heard me talk about this before… I was in 8th grade, outside in the field, looking up at the sky. Up up up… boom. We didn’t know what happened at first, til we went back inside and heard the news that it had exploded. I mean, that is what it looked like, but we all thought…it can’t be.
>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://opalcat.com
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions
I was passing a particulary spicy Mexican dinner when I learned that Judd Nelson had been fired from Suddenly Susan.
I remember hearing about the Challenger disaster when I was in school (Grade 10 - the teachers had posted a note (?) on the staffroom door) I don’t remember that it was all that traumatic, at the time.
Having been named after a Beatle (shudder) I grew up with a pronounced awareness of all things Beatle-esque. I remember by mother coming into my room in the morning, crying, to wake me up for school. She also came into my room crying when the dog died, so I have a little trouble separating the two - I was 10 at the time.
For some really wierd reason, I remember hearing that Elvis was dead, and that is the clearest recollection I have of this sort of event. I was 7 or 8, and I was playing on the rug of our cabin at the lake when I heard it on the radio. I’m not a fan, and I don’t think I had a real good idea of who Elvis was at the time, I just have a clear memory of it.
The start of the Gulf War was a good one, too, if only because I had a social psychology prof who thought the world was gonna end because of it. He asked us why we weren’t more alarmed, and we just stared blankly at him (a habit in any 8:30am class). He got supremely pissed, called us a pack of “apathetic assholes” and told us to “get the fuck out of his classroom.” Sorry, but Christ you 'boomers are an uptight bunch.
Wow, that was therapeutic, in a weird kinda way…
Z
I was about ten when Elvis died, I was listening to the radio in my room and after I heard the news I told my mom. She started crying, it was the 1st time I ever saw her cry, it was very unsettling.
To Kid_Gilligan: It’s posts like those that keep me coming back to this board! That was the funniest f**king thing I’ve heard since my brother said he wanted to smell Tori Amos’ piano bench! You are the man–I mean Kid!!
JFK was before my time, but I do remember a lot of the other stuff mentioned here, the most vivid being the Challenger explosion and the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was working at a newspaper, in what they called the “mailroom,” where the inserts were stuffed into the newspaper. The press stopped. Nothing unusual about that…the damn thing broke all the time. All of a sudden, one of the supervisors came through the room to tell us we’d be down for a while, because the space shuttle had exploded, and all on board were believed dead. We called him all sorts of bad names, for that was a very sick joke. The shock of finding out it was true took days to wear off.
I was working at the same newspaper, but in a different department, when the Wall came down. We had the radio on, and we were all listening to the point of completely ignoring the piles of work we had to do. I finally took a moment to call my fiancee, because he was half-German (his mother had emigrated from Bavaria) to ask him if he knew what was going on. He didn’t. I had the pleasure of telling him. He cried.