9/11 is a pretty raw nerve right now, but what are the other historical moments that define your memory?
Before that, I’d say Columbine (it was local) then the Challenger Explosion (I was in highschool and pretty susceptable)
Princess Diana’s death is up there.
Some might say Reagan getting shot, but that didn’t leave much of an imprint on my psyche.
I could see, if I were older, that John Lennon and JFK probably would have left a mark.
What events do you remember changing you?
Yuri Gagarin’s space trip. My mother told me about that when she woke me up (I was 9) and I was pissed even then that they had beaten us.
Definitely the JFK assassination. That was the big “where were you” moment before 9/11.
I assume you don’t mean scheduled historic events like the moon landing, right?
I mean mentally scarring events. The ones that, afterwards, you’re not quite the same.
I remember when the Berlin Wall was built, surprising and saddening many people.
I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, specifically my father coming home from a trip through Arkansas where he saw the troop convoys on the road and the Titan missiles up out of their silos.
For pure shock, there’s nothing like being 11 years old and watching Lee Harvey Oswald being shot on live TV.
Important history that I remember being emotionally resonating:
When John Lennon got shot.
When the Challenger exploded.
When Nixon went to China (no kidding, I was really political as a kid).
The Kent State riots.
When Neill Armstrong walked on the Moon.
The Berlin Wall coming down is the first memory I have where I really understood that it was a significant event. The first time I sat down and read a newspaper was the day after the Kings Cross fire. I’ve got memories of 1984 strikes on the radio, but they’re very vague. On the other hand, they stuck in the mind of a four-year-old, which has to say something?
Challenger exploded the day before my 6th birthday. I was vaguely aware of that.
I was also vaguely aware of the Berlin Wall coming down. Or rather, I was aware of it, but only vaguely aware of the significance and history behind it at that point.
The '92 elections were really my first true awareness of the political process, and the Gulf War the first truly global event that I witnessed. We talked about it quite a bit in middle school.
I also remember when Jim Henson died.
High school was filled with a lot of non-news. Princess Diana (or was I in college then), OJ Simpson, Monica Lewinski… I think Somalia was thrown in there too, somewhere.
As far as single, significant moments that seem to have ‘rocked the nation,’ Columbine and 9/11 are the two that I lived through.
I have to admit, though, that none of these really impacted me that much. 9/11 left me in a bit of shock for a brief while, but I wouldn’t say it’s changed me or my outlook much.
I quit my job soon after the Gulf War began,was pretty messed up over it.
Freddie Mercury’s death upset me greatly as well,was going out to eat and saw the headline ,lost my appetite, went home and laid on the couch the rest of the day.
EonweI also remember when Jim Henson died.
Good one there. the funny thing is, I remember a bunch of stuff in highschool, and after college, but College was a blur. Yeah, the roommate was all over the Desert Storm stuff, but I was kinda indifferent to world events.
Thomas Sutherland was kind of a biggie, but only because he tought at CSU and we had countup posters all over. Sad thing is, I had to google to remember his first name.
Oh, well, none, then. I’m a pretty tough cookie.
I remember watching moon landings, but they didn’t change me (just too young). The first shuttle launch did - my dad is an aerospace engineer so every space event was big at our house, and the shuttle was amazing.
Challenger explosion, of course.
The first picture from Viking
Skylab coming down.
I remember Reagan getting shot, but didn’t really care (putting it mildly, kind of anti-establishment back in the day)
Oklahoma City, Waco, Columbine - All within a day of my birthday, I still avoid the news that day.
In order:
Watergate, I was little and found it annoying. It interrupted my Captain Kangaroo.
By the time Nixon resign I understood the President was not a good man and was probably a crook.
**John Lennon being assassinated ** and Howard Cosell announcing during MNF.
The Hostage Crisis and the failed Helo rescue. I was in 8th grade and we were on the school trip to DC when it happened.
**The Falkland Island war **, I was very disappointed we did not provide the UK more support.
**Space Shuttle Challenger ** accident. I was in the Navy, on the USS Ranger and we were all stunned. Someone made a bad joke about the disaster and I cold cocked him with one shot. The last time in my life I hit someone. I did not regret doing it however.
Reagan’s bombing run on **Libya ** and the “accidental” bombing of the French Embassy in Libya. 
**Panama ** and using the song “I fought the Law and the Law won” to force Noriega surrender.
Tiananmen Square, for one brief day I thought the world might turn rational. I actually thought the Communist Party might step down to the peaceful protests. I was sadly very naive and very mistaken.
The fall of the Berlin Wall - 'nuff said
Operation Desert Storm- I had just got off the Ranger and after getting lectures about how and why a carrier would not operate in the Persian Gulf, there were my friends in the Persian Gulf. One of my friends was on a Helicopter that was just scouting; a small Island surrendered to them. They had to radio for help to take the prisoners.
The Bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. My fiancée now wife used the path train everyday. I was thankful to find out she was working late that night and the company was giving her car service over to Hoboken.
Jim
i remember exactly where i was standing and what i was doing when the news came out that jfk had been shot.
I remembering being upset because they replaced the president with someone with less hair.
The only ones that I can remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard:
I somewhat remember RFK’s assassination - well, actually his funeral. I was too young to know what exactly was going on but I remember watching his funeral on TV, the first funeral I ever experienced. I remember thinking how sad it was that his family couldn’t be left alone for something so personal.
I remember watching Nixon resign. My friend had come over to ask me out to play and I said I had to watch the president resign first because it was history in the making.
I was always kind of an old kid.
I remember the Challenger disaster. I was at work and my boss made a comment about the teacher dying and I thought he was just making a bad joke and didn’t believe him. I went home for lunch and saw the news. I went outside and I could see the clouds from the explosion which was on the opposite coast from me. That made it even more real.
and of course, 9-11
Maybe it’s because I grew up with My Lai, Kent State and Jonestown that 9/11 really didn’t hit me very hard.
I was just a kid, taking a sick day, when JFK was killed. I knew Adolph Eichmann had been put in a bulletproof box for his trial, and I imagined somebody shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Then Jack Ruby actually did. I thought for a while I had had a premonition, but it was inevitable that somebody would do it. I became very cynical about politics.
I vaguely remember Princess Diana’s death. I knew about Princess Diana because I was fascinated with the fact she was a princess, but a little annoyed that she didn’t look like one. (she was old and had short hair! princesses are my age and have long hair. She looked more like a pageant queen to me.) I was about seven. I sort of hoped someone would take her place- someone who was a proper princess and sang songs and married princes (PROPER princes. the handsome kind and no old or blonde ones.)
I also vaguely remember, but don’t remember how old I was, Bill Clinton getting on TV to tell the country whether or not we were going to war in Kosovo. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew about war and was afraid they were going to draft my dad and my friend’s big brother. After that, my idea of war changed- from redcoats and civil war soldiers and nazis long ago to dads and brothers in the desert.
I remember Columbine, of course. I must’ve been eight at the time and it was one of those things that just should not happen. Like stories on the news of parents suspected of killing their children (I store most of those away in my mind as fiction. The thought of parents being able to kill their children scared me too much to accept. I figured anyone who thought a parent killed their child was wrong.) Children were safe in school, right? And… and kids don’t kill people unless it’s an accident or unless they are very bad and very angry and they kill their parents (somehow that seemed plausible to me.) but they don’t kill their friends. Children are not supposed to be murdered, and the idea of someone I knew coming into my classroom and just mowing down hordes of children… Unlike stories of parents killing children, there was a stark and undeniable reality to it. It was a wake-up call for my little mind- bad things happen to children and it’s not only mean people and strangers who cause them.
I remember the Berlin Wall coming down. That is, I remember images of it, but since I was only five years old at the time, I didn’t appreciate the significance of it.
Same general story with the Gulf War, Waco, Ruby Ridge and the '93 WTC bombing.
I suppose the first major event that I could actually appreciate the magnitude of was the Oklahoma City bombing.
Mr. Rogers’s death occurred when I was in high school, and it affected me a lot more than 9/11. I’m sure that that’s in very large part due to the fact that I didn’t know anyone who died on 9/11 (living in Kentucky has some advantages) and that Mr. Rogers was the one who got me interested in factories and the like. And now I’m an engineer. What I mean is that 9/11 was rather abstract for me, whereas Mr. Rogers’s death was intensely personal.