…your recollections of first hearing about much lesser events. Something - or someone - who nobody else 'round these parts would have any memory of.
I will start with this. For some inexplicable reason, I distinctly recall hearing of the death of Frank Sutton (Sgt. Carter from Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.).
He died of a heart attack at the young age of 50. Having been a big Gomer fan, I was shocked. This was 41 years ago.
You’re up.
mmm
ETA: Whoops, didn’t mean to post this in IMHO.
Let’s see… I remember seeing news footage as a small boy (3 yrs old) of an ammonia tank truck disaster in Houston..
In later years, I recall seeing evening news footage of the Jonestown Massacre and of the independence of Zimbabwe. I also recall a LOT of Falklands War news coverage a few years later.
I have a very faint memory of learning when Elvis Presley died. I was 3 years old and my dad was watching the news. My mom was in the kitchen and he called out to her “Hey <mom’s name> - Elvis Presley died.” My mom came and stood in the living room doorway drying her hands while they watched the news spot.
I also remember Elvis’s death. I came into the house that afternoon and my mom was crying–she had just heard it on the radio. Since she was a teen in the 1950s, it hit her a lot harder than it did 12-year-old me.
New Year’s Eve 1985. My mother had terminal cancer, and my sisters had traveled here for one last Christmas together. In the middle of all the celebrations that evening, we learned that Rick Nelson had been killed in a plane crash.
Late January, mid-1970s. Heard on the radio that Larry from the Three Stooges had died. It was a bizarre feeling – they were a staple of DC-area independent TV programming and it never crossed my mind that they were old enough to die in real (i.e., current) life – they were just forever frozen in black-and-white slapstick.
Earlier that month Jack Benny died. But someone it wasn’t as disconnected for me as poor old Larry.
Not that much of a lesser event, but I’ll always remember the date of the Columbine Massacre. April 20, 1999. That same day, my father died. (Unrelated, he was in Texas.) I remember watching big coverage on TV at Don Muang Airport in Bangkok while the shooters were still in the school. Then a long-ass plane ride to LA, and coverage still going on after I landed.
OK, I wasn’t super young, about 12 years old, but I clearly remember watching a TV news report in the electronics section of a large department store (likely Macy’s) in the mall near me, while my parents were looking at other appliances. The news report discussed the start-up of a new Railroad the next day - ConRail (this was March 31 1976, as ConRail began operations on April 1, 1976) I was already a railfan by then, so this news interested me. ConRail incorporated several of the then bankrupt North East railroads like the PC, LV, CNJ, EL, etc, and itself was split up in 1999 by it’s purchasers NS & CSX. In between events generated enough discussions to fill hundreds of volumes of books and thousands of web-sites, and launched incredibly heated arguments which make the typical BBQ Pit thread look like the recent Democratic Presidential debates…
I do recall the lunar rovers in action also, but not sure which Apollo missions I saw them during, so that doesn’t count. Yes, I liked Tang too…
I was lying in bed, half asleep, when I heard a loud, distant sonic boom. I said to myself, “Humm. I’ll bet there is going to be something big in the news today.” I looked at the clock and made a mental note of the time.
The sound I heard was the Space Shuttle breaking up during re-entry. Hard to believe, but it was the exact time and about the right place.
When we woke up (at a decent hour), I told my wife about it, then turned the TV on, and there ya go! The big news!
I ws six, in the back yard with my dad, doing something that I think was related to going fishing. Our next door neighbor came over and reported that he had just heard that President Roosevelt had died. That is the first recollection I have of having heard anything that today would be called “news”.
I remember being in a college classroom when I first heard about the Oklahoma City bombing. I, as well as several others, thought that hey, at least we won’t have to hear about the OJ trial for a month or so.
For some reason I remember the exact stretch of freeway I was on when I heard Lady Di died.
I was eight years old in 1962, when I recall hearing about the the execution of Elizabeth Ann Duncan in California. The radio carried live reports from San Quentin prison as the procedures for the execution unfolded. When she was finally executed in the gas chamber, I remember the announcer reported, “Ma Duncan is dead.” I think it was the first time I was aware of capital punishment, and I thought it was odd they were executing a woman.
It actually broke up shortly after passing near where I live. The sonic boom was it zooming toward it’s doom.
Anyway, It was creepy.
I was on the road driving to the local Blockbuster store (this alone gives you a hint of the general time frame) when on the radio, the announcer intoned, “We lost one of the great ones today. British comic actor Benny Hill passed away at the age of…”
I can’t remember if I let out a plaintive, “Nooooooo!” or a “Damn, damn, damn” a la Florida Evans but it was true, we had indeed lost one of the great ones.
My world hasn’t been the same since.
I remember exactly where I was when I heard that the Colts had been stolen out of Baltimore in the night by their pusillanimous owner whose name I still cannot bear to mention. I was in the kitchen when my mom told me. She was in tears. I cried, and my brother just sat on a chair saying nothing.
Yeah, it was that serious.
Standing in the electronics department of J.C. Penny’s, watching the US team beat the Russians in the Olympics. What was that, 1980?
My ex and I were on our honeymoon in the Smoky Mountains and we were pretty much completely off the grid. We drove into Gatlinburg to pick up some stuff and saw the newspaper headlines about the bombing.
The deaths of Princess Diana, Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jackson are all firmly in my memory because in all three cases I was stuck in a hotel room with nothing to do but turn on the boob tube. (Ordinarily I don’t ever watch live TV.) As others will recall, the coverage was endless in all three cases.
I remember seeing the newspaper headline “Harry Truman is Dead.” As a second grader I had gotten interested in presidents and was following his condition closely in the news.