I don’t know if this counts. I remember being told about Concentration Camps at the age of maybe 3 or 4. It’s not unusual for Jewish families to tell the kids about the Holocaust at a very early age, and I believe this is a good thing. I was born the same year the camps were liberated (1945), so it was practically a current event even a few years later.
The death of Pope Pius XII, Oct. 9, 1958. I was 7 and in a Catholic school, so it was a big deal.
I do have a memory of the launch of Sputnik a year earlier, but it’s extremely vague so I can’t be sure.
After reading all this, and getting a little wierded out, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who lacks distinct childhood memories. I recall plenty if information and ideas I picked up over my entire life, but actual events from before 15 or so are few and far between. The earliest historical event which I can be sure I was aware of at the time it happened (as opposed to reconstructing the event from what others said about it years later) was actually 9/11. I turned on the tv just a little before the 1st tower fell. I remember watching the smoke billowing and doing this little mental calculation I do when I come across continuous news coverage where nothing is actually happening. I was trying to figure out how long I should channel surf before coming back to see what happens… then there it went.
Also, am I the only one who, a week later, was surprised people were still talking about it? Sure a lot of people died, and that sucks but the event itself hardly seemed important. Like it’s really some kind of revelation that religious nutjobs will kill thousands of people from time to time? Or that airline security is a joke? People were (and I guess still are) acting like the whole world changed. But it only changed because everyone thought it had.
I remember the early Mercury space shots, and even though I didn’t fully understand the details, I remember the tension as Glenn was in space for his three orbits and the re-entry.
I remember the JFK assassination in 1963.
And I’m not sure if it qualifies as a historical event, but I remember New Year’s Eve 1959. I guess it was a little bigger deal the normal because it was the end of a decade, but it seems like they were really pushing the angle of “the 1960s are the beginning of the future”, or at least the beginning of the space age. Even though I was only four, it seems like it was a bigger deal then any New Year’s Eve since, with the exception of 1999-2000.
The 1960 election. My parents were devastated that an Irish Catholic was elected president. The only thing worse, they thought, would be a Texan. The Sixties were not kind to my parents.
I remember most of the 1950s, but nothing happened. Well, there was Sputnik, but it was downplayed in the ultra-conservative hamlet in which I grew up.
Yes, you are.
Even before reading the other posts in this thread, I knew the answer: Sputnik. It wasn’t the launch, and I don’t remember which number it was, but I do remember my dad taking carrying me outside into the night and pointing to Sputnik, moving in the sky.
I seem to remember the news coverage of Princess Diana’s wedding, but I would have been 4 at the time so I’m not sure if I trust my memory on that.
some one’s I remember for sure are the 1984 olympics and world series, the challenger explosion and the bombing of libya.
Watergate hearings? Check.
Pissed about the pre-emption of Captain Kangaroo? Check.
For what, something about gates that held back water? Check.
Wuh? They’re not even talking about water, and for this they interrupt Captain Kangaroo to not even talk about water or gates??? Check.
Stoopid grown ups in their stoopid suits ruining my morning? Check.
Seeing my parents watch the 1956 presidential nominating conventions on TV. (I have some older memories, but none qualify as “historical.”) I’d have been too young to remember the '52 conventions–and I’m not sure that we had a TV in '52, anyway.
The 1994 general election here in South Africa - the first non-racial election, the one in which Nelson Mandela became president. I remember walking with my parents to the school at the end of the road, and waiting in a long line. I remember that they allowed me to go into the voting booth with my mother, and then she let me put the ballot in the box for her, which for some reason I thought was very cool.
I was six at the time, so I didn’t really understand why everyone was so excited. I mean, my parents (and most of the neighbourhood) where white, so there wasn’t the incredible excitement of voting for the first time; but even so, I can still remember the joyful mood of the crowd.
I can also remember big maps that we got in the newspaper showing the new provinces that the country was going to be divided into under the new constitution - that must have been shortly before the elections.
Funny coincidence that this should come up now, just after I voted in the general election last week, which was my first time. This time, though, there was no queue. 
I remember “voting” for Dukakis, because he had a cooler name and my mom liked him. I remember Tianamen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the USSR. Someone said this makes them feel old, those of us with earliest memories in the eighties. I understand, the few folks who’ve said OJ, or Lewinsky, or geez Louise, 9/11, make me realize I am not a kid anymore. And does your Mommy know you’re talking to grown-ups on the internet?
I’m kind of the opposite. My folks got their first TV in ’49, but didn’t get me until ’56. 
The election of Barack Obama. I’m 53.
Actually, it’s the admission of Alaska and Hawaii to the US. We had a ceremony in kindergarten where we got a new flag with fifty stars on it. I remember doing atom bomb drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Regards,
Shodan
You’re my age. I wish I had a specific recall like you do. I lived with my grandmother and the landings were extremely important to her, so I had no choice but to watch them. She was a voracious SF reader and Trek fan, even at her age. I’m glad she did have me watch them. I especially remember the ocean landing (maybe not 1969) and the news announcer remarking how the capsule looked like Mickey Mouse with the inflated cushions.
It also seems I remember several Presidential funerals and several renditions of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a very moving tune. Of course those “several” would have been two, Kennedy and Hoover.
I was totally unaware of the Beatles. I actually preferred elevator music till junior high.
The earliest “space memory” I can firmly establish datewise was Handshake in Space, a docking of the Soviet Soyuz craft with an Apollo craft in a NASA-Soviet joint project. It was much touted at the time (July 15, 1975). I remember that my family was going somewhere (don’t remember where) but my mother didn’t want to leave until she watched it, so apparently it was daytime. I remember the cosmonauts and astronauts floating through the docking entrance and shaking hands (in their spacesuits of course) and thinking “That’s it?”
The assassination of JFK, we were playing in the yard and my Mom came and got us.
Man walking on the moon, sat up with the whole family, late into the night.
Watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, we had company that night and their kids weren’t allowed to watch!
Not sure which came first, I think the Beatles.
My earliest historical memory was a warm August night when I was almost ten. There was no radio or TV in the beach house my family was staying, so my dad ushered us all out to the car, where we sat in the dark and listened to President Nixon announce over the radio that he’d be resigning the next day. “Pay attention,” my dad said. “This is important!” And it was.
Nope, President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The Beatles made their Sullivan show debut on February 9, 1964.
I was four years old when JFK was killed, but I don’t recall the moment, although my mother has often said that Mrs. Minnich (our neighbor at the time) came over and yelled at her to “turn on the TV – the president’s been shot!”
I do, however, remember when Robert Kennedy was gunned down. At the time I left for school the next morning, the latest available report had RFK clinging to life. When I arrived, my friend John asked if I had heard about the death. I said “He didn’t exactly die”, only to be informed that the senator had indeed been pronounced dead.
I don’t have any immediate memory of Martin Luther King’s death, but I do remember watching coverage of the Poor People’s March and having my aunt tell me that my grandfather (a United Church of Christ minister) was probably there. That would have been a month before RFK was gunned down in 1968.
Oh, I just thought of something that happened even earlier. I grew up in suburban Cleveland, and have memories of the 1967 election that installed Carl Stokes as the first black mayor of a U.S. city with a population of 200,000 or more. The Cleveland Press ran two stories on facing pages. One side was headlined “Great-Grandson of Slave” and featured a photo and biography of Stokes. On the right (fittingly enough), “Grandson of a President” heralded a discussion of Republican Seth Taft.
I have one vivid memory of me standing in my crib, looking down at my teddy bear, and wanting to get out. I described it to my mom and she said I was correct about who else was in the room, the color of my bear, the color on the walls, and where the crib was located in the room. That’s the earliest memory I’ve ever heard of. I also have a vague memory of learning how to walk, with a cousin letting me hold his fingers as he walked me up and down the hall.
But as far as historical events, I guess I had my head in the clouds for a long time. I was 11 in 1978 when the first test-tube baby was born. That’s the first “big” thing I remember understanding. I didn’t like watching the news when I was little, but I do remember mentions of Vietnam. I didn’t know there had been a war there until I was a teenager.