For me, it was the USSR breaking up. I remember reading about it in my Weekly Reader in 1st grade (I think). They talked about how all the maps would have to be redrawn for the new countries. I can also remember footage of the Berlin Wall falling, but I didn’t really connect it to anything or understand its significance.
What about you?
The challenger exploding. I was in elementary school and I remember the teachers bringing in a tv. We watched reagan give his speach and then we saw the shuttle explode a few times.
It was sad.
I remember the Berlin Wall coming down. I also remember my dad calling Russians “pinko commies” and various other such nicknames and my mom did not like him using that sort of language around him.
The first news event I remember where I “understood” (in the CNN sense) what was going on was the Gulf War.
Watergate. I didn’t quite know what it was about, but the word was on everyone’s lips.
Anything about Vietnam. The network news broadcasts would post a total “body count” as the top story…shudder
When I was five and a half, I noticed my mom was crying while watching tv. “Why are you crying?” I asked. “Because the president has been shot,” she said. (That was Kennedy, not Reagan.)
Probably the 1984 olympics, which I remember because I was watching them on TV in London(my first time leaving the country). However, the first event that I remember vividly was, like Meatros, the challenger explosion. They had taken as all down to the library and we watched it on TV. It was horrible.
I definitely remember the Reagan inauguration, and vaguely remember hearing a lot about IRA prisoners and hunger strikes (not sure whether this was earlier or later … anyway, it all got mixed up in my head with Individual Retirement Accounts, and I spent much of my childhood in a state of great confusion).
Same asMeatros, The Space Shuttle Challenger 
I was about 9 or 10.
During that time, I remember an odd feeling of detachment-as if it wasn’t really happening. I think I didn’t understand that we had the capability to travel like that; I was young and had been on an airplane only once-it was a surreal experience, all I remember is “clouds”. So when I saw the tiny ship (it seemed tiny to me), I didn’t think that people actually were in it, after all the thought of going into space was utterly alien to me…
When I saw the pictures of the people aboard, that’s when it struck home that those people were no longer with us. That was a wierd feeling in and of itself…
Incidently, while at a college class, I got to rewatch the reagan speech (it was a communication class) and I had a horrible feeling of naustagia; I sat there remembering what it was like to be a kid, at the same time realizing that these men and women had lost their lives because of a 50 cent O-ring. It was such a tragic waste.
I was born in Oct. 73. While not a specific event, I do remember waiting in line for gas.
I remember watching Walter Cronkite talking about how many soldiers were killed in Vietnam every night.
Bay of Pigs. I remember my dad came home early from work to watch Kennedy’s speech. I was 4 at the time. The next one I remember is Kennedy being shot.
D’oh. I meant the Cuban Missle Crisis, not the Bay of Pigs invasion. fuzzy memories.
JFK funeral
November of 1952
The first hycrogen bomb.
Everyone said the world was going to end.
It didn’t.
Tris
I was born in September of '73 - I have no recall of waiting in line for gas (but that’s just me). The first news event I clearly remember is Mt. St. Helens erupting.
Iranian hostage crisis (circa 1979-1980, I believe)
Armstrong’s walk on the moon.
Haj