And it can’t just be a theatrical moment rebroadcast on television, and no looking up what others consider to be a WTF moment-This is personal remembrances, not fastest/bestest interwebber.
Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.
I was watching live when the Space Shuttle blew up.
I was watching live when the second jet struck the 2nd tower.
Both of these were absolutely shocking.
When I was 10 I was half asleep on the couch watching the 1968 election coverage and saw the shooting of RFK. Will never forget that.
Then years later in 1987 I was watching TV and witnessed Bud Dwyer shoot himself live at a press conference. Terrifying.
Oh yes I was watching Miles O’Brien on CNN that day when the space shuttle blew up. So shocking.
One time, I think about 1980, I was watching the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. They broke for commercial, but, instead of a commercial, we got hard core pornography. Marilyn Chambers was featured IIRC.
OMG. I just happened to see that live, as it happened. Boom. Pittsburgh news.
Turning the TV on in the morning on July 6 2013 and it was on a news channel from the night before. Seeing footage of the town of Lac-Mégantic in flames, hearing the details of that train derailment as it happened…I’ve been to that town many times, I’d gone camping there a couple of years prior. It was horrifying and definitely “jaw-dropping”.
I remember seeing that and assuming it was some freak airline accident. That morning I had a late start at work and happened to have the tv on in the background.
One year later (to the minute) I got a phone-call telling me a good friend had hung himself. .
In 1972 I was 14. I was babysitting neighbor kids. Their dad was a lawyer and was in his home office with “someone important” before the parents went out for the evening.
The father was with freaking Roberto Clemente doing paperwork for his trip to Nicaragua for humanitarian assistance. Clemente was my dad’s favorite baseball player. He had just taken me to Three Rivers Stadium where we saw Clemente get his 3000th hit! I was in awe meeting the guy.
When I went home late that night I was hyperventilating, telling my dad I met Clemente and shook his hand. A short time later Clemente died in a plane crash. I think it was the first time I cried hearing news.
ETA: I think I heard the news on the radio, KDKA AM, then saw it on tv later.
Saw him in person, heard about it on the radio, then saw the news on television? I don’t think it really qualifies.
hangs head in shame
Ditto for me. I was 14.
I remember my father telling my sister and me something like: I hope you’re paying attention to what is going on, this is history.
This, and watching the January 6 insurrection unfold live. Both shook me to my core.
Yeah, I was 11 and ran upstairs to tell my parents. Unfortunately that prepared me too well to be jaw-dropped by RFK, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, and the attempts on Ford and Reagan.
I was in my car when the Twin Towers were hit, so only heard the initial reports on the radio. When I got to work and saw on TV what was actually happening, it was much more than my imagination had put together from the first reports.
That was really a gruesome live shot. If I recall later rebroadcasts filtered out the worst parts.
In 1989 I was on a business trip in Brussels from my home in Sunnyvale CA. I was getting dressed one morning with the TV on but the sound off, and a news report came on showing some city in the midst of a major disaster: fires, collapsed buildings, etc. I was thinking, wow, somewhere in the world there’s a huge disaster going on. As I stepped to the TV to turn the sound on I was stunned when I saw the name “San Francisco” appear on-screen. It was the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake, whose epicenter was closer to Sunnyvale than to San Francisco. For several hours I wasn’t sure if I was going to have a home to return to.
Thousands of East-Berliners peacefully walking across the borders to West Berlin, with border guards just standing by and waving them through, people from both sides standing on the Wall and treating it with hammers and pickaxes, swinging champagne bottles and fraternizing, in the evening of November 9, 1989. It was surreal, like watching a dream unfold. Had someone told me in the morning of that day that 12 hours later this would happen, I would have thought they were crazy.
Yep! I told someone about seeing it unfold on tv live. I looked for the broadcast on YouTube and it was “cleaned up”.
Turned on the news and they showed live coverage of the 1999 Seattle WTO protests. I saw my mom’s building, and I thought she had gone to work that day and was there.
Found out later that she wasn’t there, but her boss was. He spent the night in the office.
It was the first time I saw my hometown occupied by protesters, who were who were accompanied by destructive anarchists.