The 1993 World Trade Center bombing. I was living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the time, and scheduled to move that day. My TV was already packed, phone was disconnected, and I was sitting there waiting for the movers. Unfortunately, they were coming from Brooklyn, and all the bridges were closed. I had no idea what was happening till I went down to a laundromat and called them on a pay phone (at least that was working).
But I got the 2001 attack in full (as well as most other things in this thread).
I unfortunately got to watch the OJ chase, but only because it interrupted game 5 of the NBA finals, Houston v Knicks. :mad: I kept screaming at the TV, you must be kidding you’re showing this slow motion bunch of cars on a freeway instead of Olajawan and Ewing.
I think a lot of folks missed watching the actual impact of the second plane in 2001 and almost everyone wasn’t watching the initial announcement of the first one. I was in a library working at the front desk and I actually missed the first building falling down. I went to the back to go to the bathroom and a female co-worker told me, “The first building fell down.”
I dismissed what she said. I said, “What do you mean? Like…it fell over?” She said, “No, it fell down like it had been imploded. Straight down.” I will walked in to a little room where they actually had put a TV and turned pale for one of the only times in my life.
Hey, we were watching and thinking the same thing 21 years ago! I also was watching the game and thinking that the game was more important.
How about a near-miss? I was in Costa Rica on vacation when Obama announced the killing of Bin Laden. I was at an outside bar, on a mountain, with a view of a bunch of clouds covering a volcano. There was a TV on in the other room that I was glancing at occasionally.
I see Obama pop on the screen, and some words in Spanish on the screen. I don’t speak Spanish, but I remember something about Bin Laden and a word like “history”…and I thought “Either they’re doing an odd retrospective of 9/11, or Bin Laden is dead.”
I didn’t get to see the 9/11 attacks at all - I was at work and we were listening on AM radio. We had images in our head of what it might look like, but no TV. Then we heard the radio say, “it gets worse - the Pentagon has been attacked.” One of my co-workers looked at me and said, “we’re at war now…” But none of could accurately imagine what it looked like.
Then I got home that evening, started watching, and lived through it all over again.
In retrospect, we couldn’t have known it was one of the biggest news stories of that decade, but I’ve always wondered why these was such interest in OJ at the time.
Let’s say some former sports star with some funny acting credits has his wife murdered right now and the cops suspect him. He goes on a slow speed chase to his house where he comes out after a few hours of standoff. Would that really warrant a split screen to the NBA finals? What if Lebron and Durant were battling each other? I don’t see ABC or ESPN cutting away from that much less doing a split screen to cover a slow speed chase. Why did people feel it was such big news at the time? Am I just underestimating OJ’s popularity back in 1994? Was it just because it happened in LA and we’ve got a lot of networks here? They could have mentioned it in the broadcast and do a special report after the game was over.
Worked during the Challenger explosion and 9/11, though I went home at noon on 9/11 as concentration was impossible.
Was very much tuned in for the moon landing. Remember watching all the tv coverage as it was summer vacation before my sophomore year in HS.
Had one didn’t miss moment- I actually saw Oswald shot live. I was lying on the floor looking up at the tv and remember the chaos that followed quite well.
He wasn’t just a former sports star. He was a hall of famer with the single season rushing yardage record, a squeaky clean image and TONS of charisma. Everyone loved OJ.
It’d be like Cal Ripken or Joe Montana or Jerry Rice.
Didn’t everyone know he had some domestic abuse issuse? Or did all that come out after the trial? I don’t remember anymore, that whole thing tended to just blend together
I only remember it happening in the first episode, and I’m not sure if it was at the beginning or the end. First, they put up a card that quoted the immigration law that states that it’s illegal to marry a US citizen solely to obtain citizenship. Then a second card came up that said “Do not try this at home.” <Big laugh>
I think your memory is better than mine. I took a shortcut in the first post: I thought it was just a voice-over announcement at the beginning of each episode. I cheerfully retract the statement.
“Do not try this at home,” is pretty darn funny, alright.
(Did you vote in the poll? If so, thanks. If not yet, get in there and tie the score. Our reputations are on the line. Go Team Dora.)
Do you remember what they said to you when you asked where they were?
Missed the final MASH & the final Newhart. Thanks for the reminder to YouTube them.
Didn’t see any of the WTC coverage live. I work in a steel frame building where they claim that’s the reason we can’t get TV reception here, and of course Google et. al. were impossible to access.
Fell asleep for the moon landing. Upstate NY, and as I recall it was pretty late for someone who’d worked all day starting at 6a.
Did see Oswald get shot. So bizarre in that it looked like an old cop show.
There was this miniseries thingy when I was in college. First I hadn’t heard of what a miniseries is, and I didn’t think I wanted to spend several nights watching this thing called Roots.
