Recall vividly turning on the radio and hearing that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. Was 11 YO at the time. And don’t yell at me for using this terminology. They are Japanese now, but back then they were Japs. I still can see in my minds eye the huge newspaper headlines
JAPS BOMB PEARL HARBOR.
And I can even remember (early in June of 1941, on the radio again) hearing a news broadcast announcing the death of Lou Gehrig. 1941 was a busy year.
A few more of mine.
Nixon’s resignation. My uncle took us all out for ice cream to celebrate.
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster: Was just pulling into the driving range when the new came over the radio.
Loma Prieta Earthquake - was driving out to ride my horse when it hit. So many stories for that one. Notably a friend missed being crushed by a chimney that came down on his weight bench. He’d been lifting weights when his cat freaked out. He got up to investigate and the earthquake hit. He slept under my dining room table for a few days. I did not go for my scheduled ride that day. My horse was completely freaked. Instead, several of us sat outside and did shots for a while.
I’ve talked about my memories of 9/11 here many times, and the random coincidence that I was even awake when it happened.
Additionally:[ul]
[li]The Northridge Quake: barely managed to duck the speakers I had on a shelf above my bed when they came down on my pillow. [/li][li]Challenger: we were watching it live at my elementary school on a TV on a rolling cart. I don’t feel like I really understood it at the time.[/li][li]LA Riots (Rodney King): I got home from high school shortly after the verdicts came down and watched the news from my living room as the neighborhood immediately around my school burned extensively, as did the area around where I’d grown up. We were out of school for three days.[/li][/ul]
I recall hearing about 9/11 at Wal-Mart. They were piping it through the radio that normally played in-store music. At the time, there was a great deal of confusion and all I took away from it was that terrorists had destroyed a plane. Sad, but not unheard of, so I didn’t give it much mind until I got home and turned on the TV.
On a lighter note, I recall learning about the time Mike Tyson bit off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear. I was in military training at the time, and the drills made us gather in formation so they could tell us all about it.
MLK Jr. assassination. I’m in second grade and have no idea who he is, but realize that this will be great to share in “show and tell” tomorrow at school. I make a conscious effort to remember the name.
Next day:
Me: “Um, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated yesterday.”
Teacher: “Yeah, nobody cares. Who’s up next?”
D’oh! I forgot to mention the Rodney King riots! (Thank you Asmovian)
We got married in LA during the riots. It had been planned far in advance, so we went ahead. Half the guests didn’t make it. Those who did talked about the tanks on the freeway. Smoke and fires everywhere. The hotel we stayed in after the ceremony was hosting law enforcement from all over the state who were there to help with the riots. Definitely surreal.
One more, although this is almost embarrassing: OJ’s slow speed car chase. I was working at a tech start up at the time. For some reason, it captured everyone’s attention.
I was asleep during Northridge. Barely woke up, then went back to sleep ~_~
IIRC, except for the JFK assassination and the moon landing, I was at work when I found out about most of the major news stories of my life.
JFK - on the playground. One of my friends told me the President was shot, and I didn’t believe it.
Moon landing - watched it live on TV, and then, like everyone else, went outside and looked up at the moon.
Nixon resigns - I was working in a factory to get money for school so I didn’t have to work in a factory.
Challenger explosion - they were having a party for me at work for my birthday.
OJ verdict - at work again. We gathered around a TV and watched that lying murderer get away with the slaughter of two people. I had to go out and walk around the block a couple of times.
Y2K - I was at home, but on high alert. Then as the night went on and nothing happened, I can remember thinking “My gosh - we did it!”
9/11 - at work, again. One of my direct reports came to tell me that the client had gone offline, so we went down to the lounge to see what we could find out. I saw the second plane hit, and realized that it was not a bad accident. It was a week or more before I learned if the guy I reported to in New York was alive or dead.
I don’t recall anything specific about the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I couldn’t care less about the death of Princess Di. I remember Elvis’ death, but only because I saw someone sobbing and clutching a T-shirt with his picture, and I thought, “Cripes, get a life”.
Regards,
Shodan
I always found the “Where were you when ‘x’ happened?” question interesting in that it’s a question that everyone likes to answer, but nobody really cares about anybody else’s answer.
John Paul II shooting - I was at school, and as a Catholic school student, it was a big deal.
Challenger - I was at home. It was a teacher inservice day for the Catholic schools in the area, so my older brothers and I were all home (along with not-yet school age brother). We didn’t watch it live, but my grandmother called my mother to tell her to turn on the TV.
I don’t remember the Berlin Wall - I remember it happening, but not watching it.
OJ Verdict - I was driving around Chattanooga, having moved home after college.
9/11 I was at an auditing seminar here in Atlanta, the first time I lived here. I don’t remember the topic of it, I remember the room very clearly.
I was asleep, in a non-US timezone, on 9/11. So my parents called me in the middle of the night and woke me up to tell me.
I thought, “Well, someone just got the hell bombed out of their country.” And then I went back to sleep.
As a Gen-Xer born in '65 my choices are not that spectacular.
[ul]
[li]I remember LBJ dying when I was in 2nd grade, but President Johnson was no more real to me than FDR so it didn’t mean much. [/li][li]I remember Nixon resigning, mostly because of where I was: On vacation in Disneyland*!* We drove cross-country in a big motorhome so I watched him leave the Whitehouse on a little B&W TV we had. Again, didn’t really understand it. [/li][li]Had just gotten home from high school when Reagan got shot. Actually heard it on the radio first, then turned on the TV. Being that he lived it was nothing like JFK (I imagine anyway). Plus the video footage clearly showed exactly what had happened right away.[/li][/ul]
I worked third shift all my life so I slept thru Challenger, 9/11 and Columbia. Kind of glad I missed seeing 9/11 live…
The two things I recall like that were the JFK assassination and 9/11.
I was in a lecture when JFK was shot. No one would interrupt the lecturer (if you knew him you would understand) but the instant we left the lecture room, someone told us. He had already died by then. I did witness the murder of Oswald on live TV the next day.
On 9/11 my wife and I were marketing and then came back and we were listening to news on CBC. They did not break into the program and so we heard on the 11:00 news. As it happened our TV had gone on the blink over the previous weekend and a repair shop picked it up on 9/10 and returned it on 9/12, so we didn’t get to see much on TV.
I do recall the Challenger explosion but neither that nor any other happening sticks in my mind the way the two things above did.
Robert Kennedy: I was a little kid. I was in the kitchen of our home. The radio was on. I remember it mostly because my mother got so upset.
9/11. I was in Manhattan, at my office. I watched the whole thing from the windows.
John Lennon’s death. I was on the street, as chance would have it, just a few blocks from the Dakota (his home) when it happened. Word spread fast on the street – I heard it from people within minutes. It was eclipsed for me because a friend was murdered that day. Her death never made the papers because of Lennon’s murder.
Oklahoma City bombing. At work again.
OJ verdict – at work.
1975: I don’t have a vivid memory of the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford by Squeaky Fromme in early September, when I was almost 6 years old. However, I do remember the attempted assassination by Sara Jane Moore in late September. I was talking to my older brother in his bedroom, and when he told me he had heard about it on the radio. I thought distinctly remember telling him that had happened weeks ago, and it took him a while to convince me that this was a second assassination attempt.
1978: Similar to the Ford assassination attempts above. My teacher told us about the Pope’s death, and I thought she was relaying old news. She was talking about John Paul I, and I was thinking about Paul VI who had died about a month earlier.
1997: I read in the newspaper at the breakfast table that Elvis Presley had died, and I remember asking my mother who Elvis Presley was.
1981: I was in middle school choir practice when someone interrupted to tell us Reagan had been shot.
1983: I was listening to the radio during breakfast before going to school when I head that the Soviet Union has shot down KAL flight 007. That was the first and only time during the Cold War that I really thought there might really be a shooting war between the US and USSR.
1986: I got home early from a high school midterm exam, ate my lunch, and had just lain down on the couch for a rest when my mother told me about the Challenger explosion.
1989: When I was in college, I happened to be watching CNN Headline News at my place when the news broke that Ayatollah Khomeini had died. I thought that was going to usher in an immediate thawing of Iranian-American relations. It didn’t quite work out that way.
1991: I don’t have a clear memory of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or Desert Shield, but I remember seeing the beginning of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991 while watching TV in my bedroom at home for Christmas break.
1991: I was at home from college listening to the radio in my bedroom early one morning while getting ready for a doctor’s appointment when I heard the news about the hardline coup attempt against Gorbachev in August 1991. I had no idea that it would lead to the dissolution of the USSR within a few months.
1997: I read about Diana’s death in a newspaper headline while doing my grocery shopping. Somehow I had avoided the wall-to-wall radio, Internet, and TV coverage until then.
2001: I learned about the World Trade Center when reading e-mail in my bedroom. A guy I know who lived in New York and worked in the financial district sent out a short message that he was all right. At first I had no idea why he would send such a message. It was only when I read some of the newer messages and news sites that I figured out what was going on.
I was in fifth grade and had been sent to the office to report to Sister Mary Claver for some infraction. She had just heard that JFK was shot.
Damn, dude: Here I was thinking about how old I am that I remember when John Glenn was shot into space! I still have the newspaper with a huge headline saying GLENN DOES IT!
I was three days old, so my memory of it is fuzzy. 
On the other end of the war I do remember VJ Day – from newspaper headlines. And a front page photo of The Bomb is clear in my memory, too.
Nixon resignation. Or actually the Sunday right after it (he resigned on a Friday)
I was subbing for my brother delivering the early Sunday morning papers on his route. Every time I tossed one of those hefty tomes on a doorstep, as the circulars spilled out propelled by the inertia of the toss, the bold block-letter headline that filled the whole half of the front page would tattoo out “NIXON RESIGNS”.
After a while I started to think “Hmm, I wonder what the hell that’s all about.”
During Netherlands 1-4 England in Euro '96 I was at university, with three friends we watched a magnificent game on TV in the lounge of the house we shared.
I heard of Princess Di’s death walking into my house which I shared with my then girlfriend. She wasn’t impressed at all, I was shaken.
9/11 I was at work and a colleague said the first plane had hit after being told on the phone, after the second hit I went downstairs to watch on the TV there. The office ground to a halt with dozens of us staring at the TV.
7/7 at the same workplace as 9/11 in northern England, but in the basement cafeteria watching the events on TV, again dozens of us blankly staring at the TV in complete silence.
The first inauguration of Barack Obama I was alone in a hotel in Riyadh.