The history you remember

In My Humble Opinion
21

The death of Franco.

The ruckus in those years ('73-'78), between Nixon, Vietnam, liberalization in Spain, the “destape” (movies where the actresses showed their tits), the arguments about the Constitution, people being angry that the King wasn’t swearing loyalty to the Fueros (the “Constitution” of Navarra). The jokes at home about how proud our Madrid relatives had been when one of the cousins there married Adolfo Suárez, “such a good falangist boy”.

The wedding of Mr Ears and that pretty blond chick, up there in England. The messes that came after that.

The Iron Lady.

Tejero.

Rumasa.

Some guy running for president in the States and being called a “peanut farmer”. He got elected and supervises elections elsewhere now.

The Black Sanfermines, where ETA’s threats managed to scare everybody away.

The Punky Summer, when punks discovered about the summer-long fiesta calendar in Navarra and nearby areas and the whole tribe converged here from the rest of Spain.

The whole economic debacle that was the Socialist years. Economists are finally starting to talk about how bad Spanish economy was at the time (what, you mean that 24% unempolyment, not counting recent graduates, is bad? According to the Socialists, we were just a bunch of whinnybabies). At home we have the theory that this is because those recent graduates are finally reaching positions of power.

This short moustached guy who didn’t move his lips while talking, being asked on TV whether he wasn’t too young to be running for president (in Spain you can take any elective office at 18; our youngest senator was too young to vote for himself but old enough to be elected because by the time he had to be sworn in he was already 18). His answer: “is that the only problem you could think of? I must be real good, then! Time heals that defect, you know.” JM Aznar later learned to move his lips somewhat.

22

Rabin’s murder (Nov. 5 1995) is at the top of my private list.

9/11 also makes the list, regardless of the time of year.

Yom-Kippur war, when for a while we weren’t sure we wouldn’t lose. I was 10 at the time. We dug trenches in the schoolyard, in anticipation of the Syrian tanks, I suppose… :eek:

… and a far-too-long list of major terrorism attacks. Dolphinarium, Park Hotel, the list goes on and on… :frowning:

23

I came up that escalator 30 mins before the Kings Cross fire.

I was in Lanzarote one year after some nutter shot up the roof of the Caudillo, and there were rumours that that there was going to be an anniversarial coup.

I was disappointed that I was due to fly back the day before it happened, but the aircraft was overbooked and, being staff, I was literally offloaded.

The Guardia Civil was out in force the next day - but slightly to my disappointment, nothing happened.

24

I should probably mention that I was actually there (at the Tel-Aviv City Hall Plaza, now called “Rabin square”) at the demonstration at the end of which it happened. But somehow only heard the news after getting home (there were over a quarter million people there, and I went off the other way)

25

Challenger, Columbia, OJ Simpson, Princess Di, 9/11 of course. Columbine, Oklahoma and the death of JKF Jr (simply because it bothered so many of the members at the golf club where I worked, and I was stationned at the bar buffet, directly in front of the TV all day!)

I remember the Berlin Wall, simply because it came down the year before we moved to Germany, and several of the people I met who were already there (military base) had managed to get small parts of it.

The Gulf War was a biggie for me. Since, as I said, we lived on a military base in Europe, the concern for people was that much greater. Several people I know and went to school with had parents sent off to “the war”. We had extra protection on base, complete with the occasional full sweep of cars for bombs and stuff (nothing like having to get out of the car while they ran mirrors under and dogs around it, before getting back in and doing the groceries or going bowling!). Our school buses had armed guards - two men (or women!) at the front, two at the back, with their large guns ready. For the most part they were friendly and talkative, but I had never seen a gun up close before, and it scared me a little. Troops of soldiers patrolled through the towns and PMQs, and their were dozens around our schools, at the gates, on the playground, on the roof. I remember doing a math test (long division!) and looking up at the small window at the ceiling of the class and watching army boots walk back and forth. The radio station played spoofs “Blame it on Hussein”, “Deck the Halls with Nuclear Weapons” and “Bomb Iraq”( bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb iraq, bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb iraaq! We should attack! Set our people free or your country’s history, bomb iraq! bomb bomb, bomb bomb iraq!) Funny what sticks in the head of an 11 year old! There was a HUGE “Stand-Down” party on base with food and music and fireworks and pony rides when the war ended and troops came home. I was (am) the daughter of a teacher, so a civilian, which is maybe why it was all so weird for me. All but 2 other students in the grade were military brats. That was the year they took us to the base to let us “learn” what “our parents” were doing in Iraq/Kuwait. We got rides on armoured personel carriers, played with field radios, saw the airport control tower, did an obstacle course (and played with camo netting) and…get this… disassembled and reassembled the guns (C7 I think http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/lf/English/2_display.asp?product=92)and got to fire them at targets! Only time I’ve ever held a gun, I was 11 years old. Fun, but freaky.

So that marked me, changed me, a lot. The rest… I remember. But that war was very personal, in a weird way.

26

I find it extremely interesting how little overlap in events there is from continent to continent. Don’t characterise it as ‘The American is surprised his events aren’t important the world over’, think of it as: this Planet is a Really Big Place with lots of stuff happening on it.

27

The first historical events I remember clearly are the death of Princess Diana and the return of Hong Kong to China. I remember being surprised how many people cared about the first and how few about the second.

28

Princess Grace’s funeral… first time I ever saw my Mother cry.

Before that I thought she’d no tear ducts or summat…

29

No, you MISunderstood that. I, being a more aware sixth-grader, understood that our great President was undone by treacherous political and journalistic forces, and that he should have burned the tapes on the White House lawn.

OK, earliest historical memory- I was six YO in 1968 & Bobby Kennedy was visiting my town. Mom & Dad, little bro & myself came out with the rest of the town to see him come through in his motorcade.

Then a few months later, I saw the news on TV that he was shot.

I was actually paying attention to the Presidential campaign that year.

30

Well, years later, I came to understand that of course. I was only 6 or 7 at the time. :wink:

I would still like to have someone explain to me why a citizen of the US was so broken up over Princess Diana’s death. I have never understood our fascination with the royal family the founders of this country threw off.
I understand Brits and Canadians being upset, but not Americans.
Is it just a fan thing? I was really broken up by the loss of Thurman Munson, John Lennon, Robert Heinlein and Jim Henson. I was fairly upset with Jimmy Doohan’s passing. If it was simply the upset of a fan over the loss of a well liked celebrity I guess I understand. Was it that or something else?

Jim

31

Bobbie Sands(IRA hunger striker) dying was pretty big in this part of the world. I remember people on all the bridges along the canals giving the clenched fist salute to all the cars and them all replying with their car horns, friends of mine with black armbands. There was a big march in Dublin.

I also remember watching the release of the Birmingham Six live on TV. My father and me had tears in our eyes looking at it. We were so happy to see those men so jubilant and free.

I strongly remember coming home early from school one day and turning on the TV, "We’re now going to go to Oklahoma as we are getting reports of a explosion and a down town building. I was 14 and had never seen anything like that before.

9/11 was the biggest though. I was scared, shocked and sad all at the same time. I reckoned there was probably 10’s of thousands dead and that it could be the beginning of WWIII.

32

The killing of JFK is my first memory of an historical event. The Viet Nam war was a big part of my youth, as was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil unrest thereafter and of course Robert Kennedy’s assassination.

Watergate was big into my teenaged years.

33

Operation Desert Storm was the first real history that I remember. We made leather bracelets for the soldiers overseas in school. All the TV shows I watched kept getting interrupted with ‘breaking news’ that didn’t seem very important to me.
I remember the '92 election too, and realizing that I actually had my own opinions about all the stuff they were talking about. That was quite a big deal to me. Opinions of my very own!

34

I’m one of the few people who watched that one live. I had the flu and was home from school that day. We had a satellite dish (my uncle was a tech buff.) I was utterly horrified.

35

From an old geezer (are there young geezers?):

The damned Great Depression, hunger, worry, fear…

Pearl Harbor Day.

Four years of WWII and its toll on us and others (I was in the army at the tail end of that)

Korean War (three years in the army)

Viet Nam War (fortunately missed serving in that, but the toll on the country was significant).

Other than those, everything was peachy. :smiley:

36

I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had just learned about communist countries in social studies in school a couple of years earlier, and it seemed from what we learned about communism that it wasn’t going away anytime soon. I learned then that things you learn in school aren’t always true, and that parts of the world that aren’t obscure and far away can change. (No, I’m not sure why eastern Europe seemed less obscure and far away for me than, say, Africa, but it did)

I remember hearing about the Iran-Iraq war when I was five, and asking my mom “why are they fighting?” She said they wanted to conquer each other. That explanation didn’t make sense to me- after all, doesn’t somebody have to be the good guy in every war? If they were both doing something bad, how could we know which one was the good guy?

I watched the Challenger explosion on TV. It really hit me hard, because I was very interested in space exploration and astronomy.

I didn’t find out about 9/11 until I came into work. I was supposed to be taking a class that day. When I got to the class, there was a TV in the room, and I had to ask a friend of mine what was going on.

37

First one was the fall of the Berlin wall. I was in highschool, and German was my first foreign language.

Other one was Lady Di’s death (heard it on the radio during the night/early morning, sounded quite horrible hearing this news alone in the dark… ; and I wasn’t a big “fan” of Lady Di, but it was really a strange feeling…)

And the 9/11 of course, was at work when it happened, strange afternoon too, looking at these videos…

38

The Kennedy assassination tops it all by far. My grandfather (staunch family patriarch) had just died the year before. I was a freshman in high school, and the world was turning upside down on me. All the promise of Camelot and the brightness of the future faded into the black jungles of Nam. The world has never been quite the same.

39

[hijack]

Mnemosyne – was going to e-mail you, but I couldn’t access your address in your profile. What base were you stationed at in Germany? I was also at an Army base in Germany at the time, and about the same age (9 when the Wall fell). E-mail me; I’m curious.

[/hijack]

40

Not an Army brat, I was stationed there. I was at Mainz-Finthen Army Airfield. And it is depressing to think that some on the Dope are too young to remember anything before that. I do have a piece of the Wall. And I went to Rodger Water’s concert in Potsdamer Platz.

Whatexit? I was pissed at Watergate because channel 7 in New York was having their monster movie week on the 4 o’clock movie and coverage of the hearings pre-empted them.

I remember hearing something on the radio about pulling out of Viet Nam and I asked my brother who won and he said “We did”.

I remember the 72 elections because walking home from school we took a poll and 3-4 parents were voting for Nixon. We then all knew he was going to win.

I remember Nixon resigning.
I was born in 1967.