The JFK assassination. I was in school. I think I would have been in 1st grade. They sent us home early, as I recall.
I would say the Cuban missile crisis, but I wasn’t really aware of it as such. I just remember that we had air raid drills at school for some reason for a week or two and then they stopped. In hindsight I’ve assumed it was the missile crisis.
Oh, I forgot, also I remember the Oliver North trials very well because those bastards interrupted my Scooby Doo!
Challenger. We were walking somewhere in school, in single-file, and they announced it over the loudspeaker. Ever since then, whenever I heard the loudspeaker switch on, I wondered if it’d be bad news.
Another for the Gulf War. I used to sit and watch the news at my grandparent’s house to see the night-vision videos of bombs exploding and tracers going across the screen.
First Moon landing, I was just past my 4th birthday. I don’t really remember much about it other than that the grown-ups were pretty excited about it, and we were sent home from kindergarten to watch it on TV (it was afternoon here as it happened).
The next major news item (here in Melbourne, anyway) I can remember is the Westgate Bridge collapse in 1970.
I can also remember the 1972 Munich Olympics/massacre, and quite a bit from the mid-70s.
Yup, me too, first grade. I remember someone coming into class to tell the teacher about it. I have a vague memory of seeing Kennedy speaking on TV, sometime before the assassination, but not what about. It might have been the missile crisis, but I have no way at this point of knowing.
Ditto basically but it was the shooting itself. I had just gotten home from school and a neighbor yelled across to us. We turned on the radio and that was basically it for the rest of the day.
The first thing I thought of was the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981. Then I remembered that I was home sick on Reagan’s inauguration day, so I watched it on TV, so I also saw the news that the American hostages were released from Iran. But then somebody mentioned John Lennon’s death, which was not quite 2 months before that.
It was a Monday, which meant that our next-door neighbors came over to watch Monday Night Football; Howard Cosell announced the news. I only sorta kinda knew who John Lennon was, and had heard of The Beatles but didn’t really know that much about them. I wound up listening to an all-night tribute on one of the local radio stations, and that night marked my introduction into the world of music.
I do have a (mostly) clear picture in my head of me sitting on the floor in the living room watching one of the moon landings on our old black and white console TV, but I have no idea which one it was. I was just short of 2 in July of '69, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Armstrong and Aldrin.
Challenger Disaster.
I was in 4th grade, nine years old. It was a huge deal because they were putting a teacher into space and there was so much hype about the whole thing. We were eating in the lunch room when my teacher came in and announced that the shuttle had exploded. We were taken back to the one teacher in our grade’s room with a small TV and basically watched the news coverage for the afternoon. No rolling cart, she had her own tiny 13 inch TV in the room.
The 1993 Russian coup d’etat. My only real memory of it is Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank.
First was when Reagan was shot. I was at a day-long job interview (at IBM), and they made an announcement on the loudspeaker that he’d been shot.
Oh - and I nearly posted this in the “most painful thing” thread by mistake :smack: (though in fairness, Reagan himself probably found it QUITE painful!!).
I guess my next one was the Challenger explosion. I was working in a building for a company that had several locations, and ran a shuttle bus between them. I heard someone talking in the bathroom but didn’t follow the conversation, then I got back to my desk and one of my co-workers said “THE SHUTTLE EXPLODED”. My first thought was “the shuttle bus??? that’s HORRIBLE”. Just took me a split second to realize what he meant.
Reagan being shot. I would have been in the 5th grade, I believe, and I got sick in school and was being sent home. My mom picked me up and told me the news as soon as I got in the car. We went home and watched the news for the rest of the afternoon.
Oddly enough, I was also home sick from school when the Challenger exploded. It’s a good thing I didn’t get sick more often. For the good of the country.
Kennedy assassination – sitting in class and being played radio reports over the intercom. I also remember the Ed Sullivan Beatles show a couple months later. Didn’t think that much of it, and didn’t find out that the drummer’s name wasn’t pronounced RING-OH till the next day at school.
Challenger. I was 8. We didn’t watch it at school and there was no announcement or anything. I heard it from another kid while walking home that afternoon.
I was not quite six years old when there were two assassination attempts against Gerald Ford in the span of a few weeks in September 1975. I remember watching a TV news broadcast with my brother, but I’m not sure which incident it was. I very vaguely remember one of the times that Ford fell down while descending the steps from Air Force One. I think that was a few months earlier (June '75?), but I don’t remember where I was when I heard about it. The first news story that I remember the exact whats whens and wheres of is the inauguration of Jimmy Carter in Jan. 1977.
Since Challenger had the first teacher in space, many American elementary and high schools made the lift-off “required” viewing. I’m not surprised that it’s being mentioned so often.
JFK’s assassination. I was 9, in the 4th grade, and I remember the principal announcing the news over the intercom. In those days, I believed you were elected president because you were the best man in the whole country, and I was shocked that someone would kill the country’s best man… I think it was my first really big dose of reality.
The Challenger for me. I was 8, and was in probably the only elementary school classroom where we weren’t watching it. Another teacher ran into the classroom and told my teacher “The space shuttle exploded!” My teacher said “With the teacher on it?” in complete horror.
I don’t really remember what happened after that. I don’t think I even saw it until I got home.
Earlier than that, though, and more personal…I remember when my mom got into medical school. I was about six years old, watching cartoons, when I heard my mom SHRIEKING in the kitchen. My aunt Ana ran down to see what the fuss was about and the next thing I knew, Ana was shrieking too. Eventually they moved the celebration into the room where I was, picking me up and spinning me around, and I was able to make out the words “I got in!” This is probably my happiest childhood memory.
Same event, around the same age, different location. I was in PR when that happened. I remember the banner headlines in all the local papers. Pretty much the whole country was in mourning. Real shame, seemed like a nice guy.
In college, I went to see an outdoor broadcast of an Academy Awards-themed morning TV show. John Hurt was interviewed about his nomination for The Elephant Man. I was walking on clouds because I’d been able to chat with him and get his autograph. I was brought back to real life when I got to my first class and the prof announced Ronald Reagan had been shot. No one knew how serious it was or whether he’d live. It was a very nervous time for the country.
9/11/01: Although I was not directly affected and knew no one who was killed, it is still too painful for me to talk about that day. The only thing I’ll mention is how eerie it was during the no-fly period to drive on the highway under the airport’s flight path and not see any planes at all. And it was nerve-wracking to realize that if one did see a plane, it probably meant a Very Bad Thing was about to happen.
JFK assassination, I was in the second grade. We had all gone to see him fly in by helicopter earlier that year, in the Spring, I think, to a local Naval base for some reason I don’t recall. The bus drivers put all the boys up on top of the school bus to sit so we could all have a good view. Sure wouldn’t get away with that today.
On the day of the assassination the teachers came into the classroom and were obviously scared and had been crying, and told us all to line up because the buses were coming to pick us up and take us home.
While we were standing in line Eric Swedburg peed his pants and we stood there silently watching this little stream of pee running across the hardwood floor. No one giggled or said a word.
That is what I remember, a little stream of pee on a hardwood floor and crying lady teachers.