# What's the Earliest Historical Event You Can Personally Remember? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 17, 2009, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378 "2009-04-17T03:49:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/21 "2009-04-17T07:21:11Z")
The Iranian hostage crisis…The death of Elvis. I just turned 40. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/22 "2009-04-17T07:37:06Z")
The 1980 election. I’m 33. ---
**Author:** ![Khan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3ab097/32.png) [@Khan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khan)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/23 "2009-04-17T07:44:50Z")
I remember my parents taking me with when they voted in the 1984 election. I have more vivid memories of news coverage of and my sister’s talking about the Challenger disaster. Specifically, that people were talking about Christa McAuliffe having been a teacher. ETA: I’m 27. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/24 "2009-04-17T07:48:02Z")
I remember my father pointing up to the moon and saying there were people on it. Probably the last moon mission. I remember the 72 elections and Nixon winning I remember the Munich Olympic hostage crisis but didn’t know about all the deaths until years later. ETA I’m 41 ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/25 "2009-04-17T08:18:45Z")
The Bicentennial celebration. I was 5. ---
**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/26 "2009-04-17T08:23:01Z")
The fall of the Berlin Wall. Nine at the time. (I kinda remember the Challenger explosion, but not really). ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/27 "2009-04-17T08:35:00Z")
The death of John Lennon is the first clear historical memory that stands out for me. I was nine. I remember seeing the surgeon come out of the operating room with tears in his eyes to face the press. I remember thinking, “Wow, why’s he taking it so hard?” I was just a kid and didn’t appreciate JL’s impact on society. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/28 "2009-04-17T09:29:26Z")
The Gulf War. I remember I thought it was called the “Golf war” when I was a little kid. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/29 "2009-04-17T09:38:15Z")
I remember ongoing things like the bicentennial and commercials for Ford vs. Carter when I was seven. The first real Event though was when I was eleven, during the Iranian hostage crisis, when my homeroom teacher announced that the Desert One rescue mission had failed. Hmm, maybe Mt. St Helens blowing up was a little earlier, that same year. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/30 "2009-04-17T09:41:02Z")
Jack Kennedy’s funeral. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/31 "2009-04-17T10:21:41Z")
I remember my parents taking me out to see Halley’s comet one night, but it was too cloudy and I didn’t get to see it. I remember Jessica falling down that well, if that counts as historical. Not too long after, I recall my friend (whose father was and still is an avid hunter) telling me that Dukakis would take everybody’s guns away if he got elected instead of Bush. ---
**Author:** ![Marienee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Marienee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marienee)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/32 "2009-04-17T11:02:06Z")
I think for a lot of people around my age it was the moon landing. Dearly Beloved remembers it because his folks went a bought a TV to watch it; prior to that they didn’t have one. My folks bought a TV to watch it also, not that everybody else didn’t have one. My mother did not like TV so we didn’t have one. My grandfather, who lived in an apartment in the basement of our house, had a TV down there and I have confused and frightened flashes of memory of about the same time of watching a grown man crying about killing children, Walter Cronkite, the numbers rolling across the screen and realizing that was numbers of _dead people_, and my grandfather being very angry. My mother says I was unhealthily interested in the My Lai incident when that story broke and it would be the right time frame so it may have been that. It may also just be a hodgepodge of media images and reconstructed memories. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/33 "2009-04-17T11:42:47Z")
It was a sunny day and I was having lunch from a bottle, when they announced Kennedy was shot. I’ll never forget where I was and what I was doing when he was shot. That’s pretty much what the Cuban Missile Crisis was like for me too now that i think about it. I sucked on a nukie while the world almost nuked. ---
**Author:** ![RunSilent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e0b2c6/32.png) [@RunSilent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RunSilent)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/34 "2009-04-17T11:45:27Z")
> [@SandyHook](#): > > Dwight Eisenhower’s election in 1952. I was 5. Hey, me too! ---
**Author:** ![Wargamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Wargamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wargamer)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/35 "2009-04-17T11:50:08Z")
Apollo 13. My Dad tells me he woke me up and made me watch Neil Armstrong step on the Moon, but I have no memory of that at all. But I do recall Apollo 13(Born in '64 btw). ---
**Author:** ![Southern\_Yankee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/southern_yankee/32/2800_2.png) [@Southern\_Yankee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southern_Yankee)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/36 "2009-04-17T12:08:29Z")
Probably the “Son of Sam” murders. I was 10 and although we lived in the suburbs, 25 miles from NYC, I remember being nervous that a crazy killer was on the loose. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/37 "2009-04-17T12:21:34Z")
Sometimes I forget how young many of the Dopers are. For me it would have to be Robert Kennedy being shot. I don’t recall hearing about Martin Luther King, Jr, although I must have heard something about that. I turned six years old shortly after. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/38 "2009-04-17T12:25:51Z")
> [@ghardester](#): > > I was also in the second grade that day. I remember the teachers were crying and we were standing in line because school was being let out early. There was a sense of fear and urgency. > > Eric S. was peeing his pants and the pee was running across the wood floor of our school room. I can see it in my mind as clear as day. Same memory, same age. We went home early and my mom was standing in front of the tv crying. For that entire weekend, no one on our block had parents. They were glued to the TV, paralyzed with grief. And when Oswald was murdered on national TV, well…that pretty much did it. The shock of the whole thing was like a massive slap in our collective face. The whole thing was surreal. We just kind of fended for ourselves. None of us had ever seen our folks in that kind of pain. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/39 "2009-04-17T12:42:50Z")
I remember the Kennedy-Nixon election in general; as a specific event, I remember JFK’s inauguration – I drew a picture of him in his top hat. I was 6. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2009, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378/40 "2009-04-17T12:45:04Z")
Another one for the Bicentennial. I was 6. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-earliest-historical-event-you-can-personally-remember/493378.md?page=3)