I’m not looking for things that happened to you personally, like the death of a parent or sibling… I’m talking about something that happened that would be known to a large number of people. A significant event for your region, your country, the world. Because of this event, you remember where you were when you heard the news, how old you were, etc.
And it doesn’t have to be a tragedy. For example, if you were 9 or so, you may not remember the JFK assassination, but you might remember the moon landings.
Or it could be something a bit more localized to your area, like a hurricane or tornado that affected you greatly. And as a result, you remember all the key elements of that event, like where you were, when in the day, etc.
Mine is localized to my area and what was important to me at the time.
Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate right fielder, dies in a plane crash on New Year’s eve, 1972. I was a kid in Pittsburgh, a big Pirate fan, and remember this day incredibly well. The detail I have retained is amazing, from where I was when I heard the news (at home), my reaction (immediately got upset, and ran into my parent’s bedroom), and talked to my mom while we watched the news together. This probably doesn’t register at all for her, but for me, it was a BIG deal and I remember that sickening feeling I had just like it was yesterday…
Your first “I remember where I was when …” event?
I was 15 at the time (November 1963) and the JFK assassination was my wake up call to the realities of life. I was in English class in my first my first year of high school (a 3-year school) and both the teacher and fellow students were just reduced to silence. It was the end of innocence and the beginning of the “real world”.
I remember arguing with my brother over the newspaper pictures showing a dog-like animal watching the landing craft. He, being a smug six year old, had read the caption saying it was a made-up animal.
The next was probably in 77, I was twelve and Elvis died.
Franco’s… well, not death, his agony. I was 7. I remember watching the TV at my maternal grandparents’ in early November, and Dad and Gramps agreeing that “they’ll probably keep him hanging until they can make it the 20th :rolleyes:”. Which ‘they’ did, the 20th being the anniversary of the death of Falange’s founder.
The news that the plug had finally been pulled weren’t so much an anticlimax as an “about bloody time”. By the time that happened, we were back at home.
The Kennedy assassination. It was Saturday morning here. My mother was in the laundry boiling up sheets in the copper and I was trying to tune the radiogram into another station.
It has to be the JFK assassination, or at least his funeral. I was at my friends house and our cartoons were preempted by coverage of the service and procession
My first memory was of my mother reacting to news of Bobby Kennedy’s murder. Her sister called her on the telephone and I remember standing next to the telephone (a pink rotary dial wall model) and wondering why my mother was crying.
Princess Diana’s death, 1997. I would have been 8 years old and I can remember being annoyed that the news was interrupting me watching The Simpsons on Sky 1 at around 8am, the panel with the news running across the bottom was blocking too much of the screen.
Tiananmen Square—and, as I noted at the time, I accepted that it was important, but couldn’t understand why everyone involved couldn’t just hold off until the next day, when they wouldn’t be interrupting any Saturday morning cartoons. Just simple consideration, really.
And I don’t remember it myself, but apparently Mom and Dad realized 3-year old me was absorbing a lot more from the TV news being on all the time than they expected when I presented a new crayon drawing—a big, swirly cloud, with seven distinct little squiggles, and adamantly told them “no more space shuttles!” :eek:
Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in elementary school, and one day TPTB decided the attacks were imminent. So imminent that we should leave the nuclear-hardened, radiation-shielded schooldesks we were drilled to hide under…
I remember being on our screened in porch thinking “This must be important”…the Watergate scandal was being covere on the news. Not sure theexact date, as the process was a lengthy one…but somewhere in 1972.
The first exact date I can specify was the finale of MASH. I was at a required theater rehearsal that night and, in the age prior to any sort of TV recording device, I missed it. I was left out of a lot of conversations the next day at school.
