Damn you people make a guy feel old.
I have no clear recollection of FDR’s death but I do clearly remember V-J Day. We were living at Ft Sam Houston, Texas, and my parents and the neighbors seemed awfully happy about it. Later I learned that my father and the neighbors were all scheduled to be in on the invasion of Japan. They were not looking forward to it.
After that the Berlin Airlift.
1984 Olympics on television.
I remember I wanted my dad to play with me but he was too busy watching the games on television.
Yeah, I’m not that old.
Somehow I completely missed the Challenger explosion a few years later. Doubly bizarre because I was WAY into space at that point.
I’m 36. First historical event I remember was the Iranian hostage situation. My third (?) grade class had a television brought into the room so we could watch the release of the hostages.
According to my mother, I watched Jimmy Carter’s energy speech and then spent the next few months turning off every light in the house. But I don’t remember it personally.
Well, I have distinct memories of TV reports about Michael Heseltine grabbing the mace at the house of commons. I’ve (as it were) remebered remembering this event from a very young age. However, I would only have been about one when it actually happened, so perhaps those memories are false. Why I would create a false memory of that particular instance, I’m not sure - and it feels as real as all my other memories.
After that, maybe the first London Marathon. My eldest brother was in it. I was 6, and extremely disappointed that he didn’t win.
The end of WW2 in Europe, I would be 4½ years old at the time and vividly recall all the parties in the streets and the bonfires with effigies of Hitler being burned
There was food that we never knew existed 
Strangely enough I don’t remember when Japan surrendered and the war came to an end
The Challenger Explosion, 1986. I was watching live. I remember very clearly it taking a minute or two for it to sink in what just happened. You keep thinking there all right.
Just for fun, I asked the rest of the gang here at Casaflodnak the same question. I found it interesting that, although they all grew up/are growing up in Norway, none of their answers concern events in this country!
Fella bilong missus flodnak, born 1957: The Great Train Robbery in Britain, 1963.
Flodjunior, born 1994: the US Presidential elections of 2000.
Totnak, born 2000: the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.
Ditto on both.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman!” I was three.
I also remember bits and pieces of the hullabaloo in Florida in the 2000 election. I was really pulling for Gore, and was kind of disappointed when he didn’t win.
But the first event I really remember is 9/11. I was in the second grade. I remember that when I was in elementary school, school started at 9:15 in the morning, so it would be about a half hour after the first plane hit. I was in second grade, and the teacher gave us all jobs for the week. Well, that week, my job was to return books to the library at the beginning of the day. So I went down to the library and saw a group of teachers huddled around a TV. Naturally, being a curious child, I walked over to see what the fuss was about, and I saw either the first tower burning, or the second plane crashing, I can’t remember which. About an hour later, the principal came on the air and told us about it, and sent us home early (about 10:30.) Me and my friend walked home that day. (I know, my location field probably brings up a :eek::eek::eek:, but it was only about a quarter of a mile.)
The O.J. Simpson verdict. I was in fifth grade when they wheeled in a TV so that everyone could watch the verdict.
Then came the Lewinsky scandal.
Next I remember the 2000 election when I was 14. Since then I followed politics pretty closely.
Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. I can remember the TIME magazine cover and the furniture in the room.
I skimmed through Wikipedia’s entries for the years of the early 80s, trying to pinpoint my earliest memory, and I think the earliest thing mentioned that I definitely, definitely recall was watching the 1984 Summer Olympics, around the time I turned six. I also see that the famine in Ethiopia, which made a big impact on my young mind, began in 1984.
I remember being aware of but not immediately understanding John Lennon’s murder - my parents told me that they were sad that a singer they like had died. I did understand Reagan getting shot being shown on the news a few months later, just before I turned four.
Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. This was '73-74, of course. I would’ve been 6-7 during this.
Though I have a very clear memory of Kasey Kasem introducing the new #1 single It’s Too Late by Carole King, which would have been 1971, when I was 4. But as to whether this is a “historical” event, I’ll leave up to you. Obviously it was to Ms. King. 
The assasination of JFK. I was in third grade, and when returning to school after lunch the other kids was talking about the president being shot while riding in his car. We hadn’t had the TV on at home. So we went into our classrooms, and a little later the principal comes around to each room, one by one, to announce the president had died. I remember how stricken he and my teacher looked, as if they wanted to cry. A boy at the next desk, Bradley Lillya(only classmate who’s name I remember)giggled, and I looked at him in shock. Later on I realized it must just have been nerves.
Watched the funeral procession on TV. My mother pointed out the riderless horse, and explained that custom for a military veteran.
The first Moon landing. I was 4.
I’d just turned 5 when JFK was shot. I don’t remember anything about it except the funeral pre-empted all the standard Saturday AM cartoons. *That *was traumatic; the funeral was boring & I didn’t watch it. I have no recollection of any public grief other folks upthread talked about.
On the personal front, I remember my Dad leaving to be at the hospital when my youngest brother was born. Mom had been gone for a day already & now Dad was leaving too. That was scary. I was 4-1/2. I also remember getting lost in a crowd at a shopping center at Christmas. I can’t say for sure when it was, but probably just after turning 4.
Another for the Challenger explosion. I was in first grade, and my school had two first grade classrooms. The other class was watching live. We had done something “bad” and were being punished by not being allowed to watch. Rumors spread through the school and by the time we went home it was played again and again on the TV, with Christa McAuliffe and the others walking out to the shuttle and waving…sad that I don’t remember anyone else’s name, huh?
I have very vague memories of the '44 election (I was in 2nd grade and my school was used as a polling station), very clear memories of Roosevelt’s death (it was a shock to everyone I knew), then the atomic bomb tests and dropping them on Japan and VJ day. I have no memory whatever of VE day, however. They were momentous times.
The earliest historical event I can personally remember is the Cuban Missile Crisis. My tenth birthday fell right in the middle of the two week crisis – October 1962.
I vaguely recall the 1960 election because of all the controversy about a Catholic possibly winning, which of course Kennedy did. But the Missile Crisis was my first true memory of a historical event.
My friends and I were convinced that nuclear war was going to happen. We thought Chicago might get targeted and wondered whether we were far enough away in Madison, WI to avoid radiation poisoning. We certainly knew that ducking under our schoolroom desks wasn’t going to save us, even though we regularly practiced it.
Ah yes. The memories of a Cold War childhood.