Another moon landing here. I was three. I knew it was important because everyone was gathered around our tiny little black and white TV and was making a big deal about it. I remember adults kept asking me if I understood that men were walking on the same moon that we went out and looked at in the sky. I understood what they were saying but it was much later before I fully understood the significance of it.
I remember watching the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, two months before I turned 5.
The Gemini space walks. I was too young to remember Kennedy’s assassination, but I distinctly remember watching the first American astronaut leave his spaceship on TV when I came home from nursery school (it pre-empted my mom’s soap opera).
I have a very vague memory of the fall of the Berlin wall, which occurred just after my 5th birthday. Oddly, I don’t remember the breakup of the USSR.
Krakatoa.
I was pretty shook up.
One of my earliest memories ever is riding with my dad onto the UGA campus and passing a big group of Vietnam war protesters. Dad had taught me how to make the peace sign and he told me to show the people as we drove past. I flashed the sign and was rewarded with lots of appreciative cheers. I think I was not quite four at the time. Born in '68.
That I can specifically remember the year of, 1986, the Challenger explosion and Hurricane Gloria. Were there any other notable historical events a kid would be aware of between 1974 and 1986? Possibly earlier than that but only relevant in NY were the student housing protests and “Tent City”.
Nixon’s resignation. I was a few weeks shy of my fifth birthday. I asked what we were seeing on TV, and my mother said “That man was the President of the United States, but he’s done a very bad thing and he can’t be President any more.” Which made sense to me. I didn’t have the slightest idea what a president was, but if you did something bad, you got punished, this much I could follow.
There may be other, earlier events if I really thought about it but the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion is the first news event I clearly recall. It was in July, 1988 so I was 6 years old.
The Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember my mother preparing a bag of things and telling me “We’ll take it with us in case the bombs fall and we have to run to shelter.” Being very small, I had no idea what bombs or shelter were, but it was obvious that Mom was very worried about something. Now I know, of course, but it was my mother’s fear and preparations more than anything else, I think, that made the event stand out in my memory.
Alaska becoming a state. I was six. My mother told me “Alaska is now a state.” I asked, “What was it before?”
The earliest historic event that I can remember is the Festival of Britain, held in 1951, because I went to it at the age of 6. The next events were on the same day (2nd June, 1953): the coronation of Queen Elizabeth (which I saw live on TV) and the news that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had climbed Mount Everest.
The moon landing when I was about 4. It’s not a very distinct memory, though; just some guys in white suits and helmets wandering around in a barren gray-white desert. The significance of the event completely eluded me.
I DO clearly remember when LBJ died; the funeral procession passed by where we lived in Austin, TX and people lined the streets to watch it pass. I remember asking my mom what was going on. She told me that the man in one of those big, black cars was the president of the country for a while, but now he was just a dead guy.
If sporting events count, it would be Linford Christie winning gold in the Men’s 100m sprint at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. I had just turned 7.
The first historic event that I remember was JFK getting shot (I turned 3 the next month). A few months later, the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show – (I recall my grandmother remarking about their good looks and long hair.)
This. I was just over 2, and I don’t remember the landing itelf so much, but that several neighborhood families gathered at one house (the folks with the biggest, bestest TV) for the event, and that my sister was trying to hold me in place to watch it, when I wanted to get out and run around and have fun.
FDR dying (1945) and walking to school the next day talking about it with my friends. I was 6.
The Challenger explosion. My third grade teacher brought in a TV so we could watch news coverage. He had tears in his eyes. It was a sad day.
The Challenger explosion in 1986. I was 7, and it was the day of my elementary school’s talent show.
I feel like I might also have vague recollections of Charles & Diana’s wedding, but I was only 3 when that took place, so maybe not. Sometimes it’s hard to know what I remember because I saw the footage the first time around, and what I’ve seen so many times that it just feels like I remember.
I guess it would be John Glenn’s first space flight (I was six). I remember we traced the orbits on our globe.