That is, the first thing you remember watching happen on the News? Mine is watching the results of the Reagan/Carter election with my Parents. I remember the map lighting up as states were called (Bonus trivia. Blue for Dems and Red for the GOP was not the standard at that time. That didn’t happen until 2000 when the dragged out Bush v Gore debacle burned the colors into popular media. Originally the networks did whatever they wanted, then they consolidated to having the same as each other but who was blue and who was red alternated each time then in 2000 the colors got cemented in).
Mine is yours, only a little earlier: the news that day was that Jimmy Carter, President of these United States, would be running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, who, y’know, had been a Hollywood movie star, back when.
They didn’t mention the “Governor of California” part; just the “Movie Star” part. And my reaction, as a little kid, was, basically, wait, what?
I was going to say a moon landing. Given the timing I’m assuming it was Apollo 17 the last moon landing. But that was at the end of 1972 and I remember several things from earlier in the year. I do remember the presidential election. I do remember very clearly looking at the TV and seeing the terrorists at the Munich Olympics. That’s probably the one.
November 22 1963. I was in the car with my father, and I saw him listening intently to the radio on the way home, and I asked what was going on. The President’s been shot.
After getting home, the family was watching the news. One report on the capture of Oswald showed an investigator (FBI?) who had been interrogating him leave the room where Oswald was being held, and it was simply an everyday wooden door leading into a hall; it confused my impression of what “jail” looked like. I was quite young.
My next specific memory that I retain is the moon landing on July 20 1969. While my father (and later, I) worked at Cape Canaveral, we were vacationing in Miami Beach for some reason, and I vividly recall watching on the tiny hotel TV.
Yeah, Watergate. I recall hearing something about it on the radio and trying to connect it to the large water main behind our house. I had no idea what it was all about.
Born in the late 70s. The first specific thing I remember seeing on the news was something about Central American (Iran-Contra?) guerrillas. I remember it because I remember wondering why we were fighting “gorillas.” What did they do?!
I know this is after the Challenger disaster, which I do remember, but not as a news story, it was just something that happened that people were talking about.
I think it was the assassination attempt on Gerald Ford in 1975. I recall being in the car possibly driving to Houston. I also remember getting it mixed up and thinking it was Nixon rather than Ford.
Kennedy’s election. Not that I followed the news that closely when I was 6, but being from a Catholic family, the first Catholic being elected was a Big Deal.
The signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty in 1979. I don’t remember the exact date, but I remember it was during school hours and the school had an assembly in the auditorium and wheeled in a large TV for all of us to watch it.
It wasn’t alternating per se but rather incumbent red, challenger blue. Back then we’d alternate parties for president a lot.
I don’t know if you could call it ‘remembering a news event’ but I remember Eisenhower holding a press conference and thinking how ancient he looked. I was eight or none.