Here’s a link btw: Rome and Vienna terrorist attacks .
Someone I know was flying in from Rome!
The evening of Margaret Thatcher’s resignation, I was in the gallery of the Albert Hall. Her husband, Denis Thatcher, came in, and got a prolonged standing ovation.
The best I can come up with are some massive eruptions from Kilauea back in the 70s and 80s. If you’ve seen pictures of massive fountains of lava well I was there. I can still remember the sound it make. I remember one day we were coming home and were shocked to find a new hill had been created on the horizon while we were at school.
Hmm, I also got to climb all over this place on Mauna Loa which is famous for measuring CO[sub]2[/sub] levels in the atmosphere. So I saw that machine making its measurements back in the early 80s. My mother was working for UH Hilo at the time. I visited again in1991 and that time I got to climb to the top of that tower.
Not disasters but things that will be remembered, at least locally. In a science class.
Since you ask: I was working at Kennedy Space Center in the '80s, and I was there when the Challenger failed to fly. I worked in the Launch Control Center (the big white blockhouse-looking building stuck off the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building) (well, actually, next to the VAB the LCC doesn’t look very “big”, but it is a pretty good sized 4-storey building).
At launch time, I was standing outside with some coworkers, as usual, watching the pad. We were mostly computer geeks, developing custom operating systems and other software, and had no duties directly related to the launch itself, so we always went outside to watch. Aside from a few rescue and security people, that made us the closest people to the launch site (about 3 miles). It was a very cool perk of the job. Usually, at least. That particular day was a very bad day at work.
I won’t go into the details of how it felt, or how it affected me (still affects the person I am now, I suppose). To say it was traumatic somehow makes it seem trite. I’ll just say it changed me, for reasons more personal than just witnessing the explosion, and in ways other than the usual “historic disaster” experience, and let it go at that.
Oh, at the same job, I also witnessed some other historic events: I saw the shuttle launch that first took an American woman into space. (“Ride, Sally Ride!”) Also the first black man to go up (“You go, Guy!”). And the first shuttle landing at KSC. (Landing from space, I mean, not on the back of its 747.) I met some astronauts, including Sally Ride’s husband (Steve Hawley) and Judy Resnick.
It was a very cool job.
(To go along with the baseball stuff, I saw Jack Morris hit a triple off of Nolan Ryan. But it was in a spring training game in Cocoa, so I don’t think anybody, including me, would consider it “historic”.)
I saw the last Saturn V blast off.
I was right behind the photographer when this photograph was taken. Later I was chased by a riot squad down this street.
The Shuttle stories remind me of the closest I’ve been to history: I saw the re-launch of the Shuttle after the Challenger explosion from Sarasota, but then again I’d say half of Florida who was in school at the time could say that.
Speaking of which, my mother’s closest claim to fame was that she was working at the school in Sarasota as an administrative assistant when the Ray brothers were attending. She periodically had to attend to them when they came in with medical issues and the resident nurse wasn’t present. I didn’t realize until typing this that back then it must have been frightening to many people to attend people with AIDS, since nowadays its no big deal. (Anyway my well-educated mom did not irrationally fear them.)
Colibri, panache45, the first Woodstock, tight? 
Pretty cool.
Nolan Ryan’s 7th no-no.
I was at the opening of the first Scottish Parliament in 292 years. Not in the chamber you understand, but in the street outside.
Also, though it’s not tremendously well known, what we participated in in Thailand last year was something very significant. I think in years to come it will attain some kind of “legendary” status. It was significant enough that someone made a documentary about it, that is now playing at international film festivals.
Almost forgot, I was in Atlanta for the Olympics, had just left Centennial Park and was on the balcony of my hotel 4 or 5 blocks away watching the street crowds when the bomb exploded. I heard it quite distinctly and could easily see the tower where it exploded. We sent that evening’s pictures to the FBI in case they contained any clues.
I shook hands with Jesse Jackson on a whistle stop in Great Falls Montana. I think this would have been one of his last runs at the presidency. I think I was 7. Got a standing ovation that night too. I wasn’t sure what the deal was, I didn’t know if he was just coming to talk, or if he was running for president. He was doing question and answer, and I raised my hand.
He came over, and asked me what my question was. I asked him “Are you running for president?” He laughed (as did everyone else there) and asked me if I thought he should. “Absolutely!” I replied.
Standing o. He beamed and shook my hand. It was pretty cool, though I wouldn’t vote for the guy if you paid me now. I was young!
I was there the night Cal Ripken played in #2130.
I was in London during Princess Diana’s funeral, and watched the funeral procession go by. Didn’t get to see much because there were so many people, but we did see the casket go by.
I helped tear down the Berlin Wall, does that count.
Even if it was about 3 weeks after the TV cameras left?
Even if it doesn’t count, I still have a box full of little pieces of concrete that I know came from the Berlin Wall because I chiseled them off myself.
I was in the audience at Milwaukee’s Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for using the Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.
I watched Ike’s first inaugural parade from atop the Evening Star building where my dad worked.
Was in the crowd when Martin Luther King spoke at the March on Washington, 1963.
Marched again in Washington in 1969 with a few people against the Viet Nam War.
I watched the launch of the first astronauts who landed on the moon…I was very close (comparitively) to the launch pad, and remember the awesome roar of the launch and the shaking ground as the moon shot rose from the pad. Wow!..
I watched the first free flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, and I was standing on the edge of the dry lakebed when the first Shuttle returned from space. (And I have some super-8 footage of it somewhere.)
I saw the flames from the L.A. riots after the Rodney King beating verdict
And of course I experienced the Northridge Quake firsthand. (I actually got out of bed for that one.)
I saw (from my dads shoulder) president Kennedy’s funeral…
I saw Roberto Clemente hit his 3000 hit…
I was part of the US evacuation of Lebanon in 1982.
In the navy I saw thing that sould, but will never be, part of history.
I, like millions others, watched WTC 1&2 fall…like a few others i also saw WTC subcum.
tsfr
subcum.? 