what is the first major news event you remember clearly.

[nedbal]

the first major news event I remember clearly was when Kennedy was shot, I was home from school sick watching it, it sunk in to me as it was like a 5 day event.

only vague memories of these two:
My Mom always tried to do the best for me , we didn't have a tv at the time when there was a Mercury launch, it may have been John Glenn goes into orbit she took me into a bar to see it, sorry I don't remember it clearly she was NOT a bar person.

I don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis clearly , but I remember her worry watching it


recommends always welcome, enjoy

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. Clinton impeachment.

I remember asking my mom what was going on. :D

[AlCzervik]

2. Watching Nixon Resign and my parents trying to explain it to me.

[ScreamingMeemie]

4. We are about the same age, right? Cuz I just posted that too.

:hi:

[AlCzervik]

7. must be, i'll be 40 in July.

:toast: :hi:

[Iris]

84. me, too! Although I have some vague memories of a moon landing

when I was a toddler.

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. Nixon's resignation and the fall of Saigon are two that I remember

pretty clearly. Really clearly I remember Carter's acceptance of the Dem nomination.

[dolo amber]

80. I remember the Saigon thing

My dad had just recently gotten out of the Navy, he was trying to explain what was going on. I just remember thinking the world was ending. Scary stuff for a little kid.

I remember Nixon too, but I guess even at that age I could tell he was a douchebag so I didn't much care. I remember having a "don't let the door hit you!!:hi:" sort of feeling. :D

[rurallib]

5. I am older

Cuban Missle crisis.
My folks lived in bars. So I remember all the old drunks sitting around the neighborhood bar saying
"we're going to war Yup Yup"

[MonkeyFunk]

6. I have vague memories

of civil rights actions in the South, but the first thing I really really remember was MLK's assassination. April 4th. it was my Dad's birthday, and the day I had to have my pet bunny put down.

[Oeditpus Rex]

19. My birthday, too

My 12th.

Kinda ruined the party. x(

[Joe Fields]

8. Jesus was born. Film at eleven....

[femmocrat]

9. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

I can remember it because that is when we got our first television. I was very, very young!

[Glorfindel]

26. Me, too! I was 7 years old

My parents were total Anglophiles, and this was a major event in our household. We didn't have a TV, but listened to it on the radio and followed events in the newspapers.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

10. Berlin Wall falling.

[femmocrat]

12. deleted by poster

[Starbucks Anarchist]

20. ?

[LeftyMom]

11. The '88 election

We made a big deal out of it in school, with campaign speeches, a mock election, etc. Bush won handily in my class, because it was a very Catholic neighborhood at the time and he was that anti-choice canidate.

That was the first time somebody ever told me I was going to hell for supporting abortion rights. I was seven, the girl who decided to let me know I was damned was eight or nine.

[Nicole]

13. JFK's assassination for me n/t.

[MassLiberal]

24. JFK for me too

I was a preschooler, but I remember my parents talking about it as they watched the news.

[Rabrrrrrr]

14. Depends on how clearly you mean. I remember early 70s moon landings,

watching them in school, but I couldn't tell you what year or even month, nor even which ones I watched, nor even that they were especially amazing. I was 6 or 7, so I was stupid.

I also have memories of the Vietnam War, though at the time I didn't know it as "The Vietnam War". I have vague memories of knowing a war was going on, and when I was maybe 4 or 5, I remember thinking to myself one day "How do they decide which side of the war a person fights on? I hope that when I fight, my friends don't get put on the other side". I envisioned a judge somewhere pointing at people and saying "you go to that side, you go to that side" and I really hoped that my friends and I could line up in such a way that we'd all end up on the same side. I didn't want to kill my friends.

I have vague memories of Nixon, and one particular memory of my older sister talking about Nixon when she, Mom, and I were tooling around town in our white Toyota something-or-other, no seat belts on of course. I have better memories of Ford, though to be truly precise, they're memories of Chevy Chase. I was also then in fourth and fifth grade, not second and third, and so of course the memory is better because the awareness level is better.


In terms of a major news event memory that is clear as to year and location, it's the Bicentennial stuff of 1976.

[nedbal]

61. As THE OP your 70s moon landings are clear memories of the event and .....

you had a fair understanding of what it meant. In my OP of the JFK event, in no way do I clearly recall most of those days of coverage, just bits and pieces


hell I would be a poor trial witness for most things I saw last week

[Omphaloskepsis]

15. Challenger disaster...

I was in the third grade and we watched it live on TV.

[gr8dane_daddy]

49. Same here...

In 5th grade for me.

[Rising Phoenix]

87. same here

I was home sick and watched all happen.

[johnnie]

16. 1969 Man on the moon - I was 4

It was a big deal because my dad worked for NASA, so we felt "involved"..lol

[Broken_Hero]

17. Challenger explosion, nt

[Maddy McCall]

18. Neil Armstrong's moon walk.

[OnionPatch]

57. Same here

nt

[ElizabethDC]

21. Oklahoma City bombing

I was in the 2nd grade - I overheard two of my teachers talking about it in the back of class.

I very vaguely remember the first Gulf War - I remember my parents having the evening news on every night, and I was asking my mom what Baghdad was (was it a neighborhood? a city? a state?) but those memories are extremely vague. I was in pre-school at the time.

[Oeditpus Rex]

22. Same as you

I remember JFK's assassination and the days following it pretty clearly. I was 7 .

I remember all the kids being sent home from school during the Cuban missile crisis, but I also remember not knowing why. I have some vague recollection of a sense of unease among the grown-ups, though.

[nedbal]

37. I have vague recollection of duck & cover @ school, clear of directed into a Brooklyn Subway for ..

cover after a cop stopping a city bus during a air raid siren - drill , was 7 too for JFK shot

[Joe Fields]

23. I was in kindergarden when all of us kids in school were gathered

down in the basement of this little three room red brick school house built in 1903. (no fooling) We were gathered together around a portable black and white television to watch Alan Shepherd fly the first Mercury mission. I was mesmerized. It was May of 1961. Been hooked on space flight ever since.

That one little episode had a giant impact on me.

[Louis Cipher]

25. Jonestown massacre.

all the bodies.

[Theres-a]

27. The Day That Elvis Died

I was 9,and didn't know what all the fuss was about.

[ChoralScholar]

28. 1980 Election

followed by Lennon's and Reagan's shootings.

I was born 10/31/77 for reference.

[av8rdave]

29. Same here...JFK assassination

[lost-in-nj]

30. This is my first memory

to
My birthday is Nov. 23 and my father had his prayer group over....
I knew there was something wrong and I knew my birthday was ruined....
I was young, born in 1958.....

no cake this year.




lost

[Burma Jones]

31. Death of Winston Churchill

I have a vague memory of watching Gemini launches in Kindergarten. I remember seeing news everyday about Viet Nam, I had two Uncles serve there.

[smtpgirl]

32. Vietnam War casualties

and the moon landing in 1969. When I was in Jr. High, I had a friend whose dad worked at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, MD. I have about 25 black & white pictures of Gemini & Apollo missions.

My family has a Zenith B&W set, probably 20-22"

[fizzgig]

33. challenger

i was 4-1/2 and have only very vague memories of it. i also very vaguely remember the 88 election and the fall of the berlin wall.

the first one i clearly remember was when tom sutherland came home (i was 10), but that's probably because we lived in the same town

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

34. The Cuban missile crisis

I remember absolutely everybody being scared out of their wits we were gonna be in an atomic war. It was a cloying fear, and I didn't understand what it was all about- all I knew was the end of the world was very near.

I dreamed about atomic war for five years after.

[Critters2]

35. Kennedy assassination.

My sister and I were playing Barbies on the family room floor, while my mom was ironing and watching her "story". I remember when they broke in with the bulletin, my mom just sat down and watched, looking shocked. Then she told us to go to the basement and play in our "kitchen". Judging by how she looked later, I think she sent us away so she could cry.

[swag]

36. Great question.

For me, the assassination of RFK in June 1968.

Very vivid. I was 7.

[conscious evolution]

38. Kent State

I have hazy memories of earlier stuff but that one still stands out.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

39. Kennedy's inaugural speech in Jan. 1961.

I remember going to first grade in the fall of 1960 with a Kennedy button on. It was a private school. I was in school a year early, at the age of five, in a private school, because I was already reading books voraciously and they didn't know what else to do with me after they gave me a bunch of IQ tests. Kindergarten would have been a waste of time.

[Roon]

40. Elvis dying

I can't think of anything else.

[SeattleGirl]

41. JFK's assassination.

I remember everything about that day, and all the way through the funeral. I was 8 at the time.

[Flaxbee]

42. Probably Reagan being shot

though if I rack my brains, I'll probably remember something earlier...

[UrbScotty]

43. 1996 Olympics (nt)

[Reverend_Smitty]

44. I have fuzzy memories of the Berlin Wall falling...

but I guess the first Gulf War is the first big news story that I was really aware of. I was 7 at the time and clearly remember watching CNN and seeing those bombs fall

[Adsos Letter]

45. We must be about the same age

I remember the kennedy assassination quite clearly, but the Cuban Missile Crisis is in my memory more as a feeling of dread, and some scattered impressions, than anything really coherent.

[Ptah]

46. Sputnik

Beep beep beep beep

[Tikki]

47. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II 2nd June 1953....

I remember hearing the ceremony drone on and on as my folks listened to it on the car radio on a road trip
we were taking from Spokane WA to just outside of Portland OR.

I was born in 1949....so WOW!! I was only 4 years old.


Tikki

[mitchum]

48. JFK murder

[alittlelark]

50. Alb. Journal headline "Nixon Resigns"

[Blue-Jay]

51. Nixon's resignation.

I was watching it with my mom. He said "I am not a crook", and Mom said "Ummm. Yes you are, you liar."

[piesRsquare]

52. Oil Embargo...

Long gas lines, etc. Iran hostage crisis.

[RoyGBiv]

53. Nixon resigned ...

I remember it because I had been in DC with the family just a few months before.

[QMPMom]

54. The Cuban Missile Crisis.

I remember that time very well. My Dad was very nervous.

[BrotherBuzz]

55. Nuclear tests in the Pacific and The Everyman's failed attempt to disrupt them

I guess it was mostly a local San Francisco bay area story, but it raised my consciousness of the threat of nuclear weapons and was the beginning of my peace activism. It also piqued my interest in sailing boats; I was a young kid ready to sail away and save the world.

http://www.schumachersociety.org/about/biographies/swann_autobiography/swann12.html

[HEyHEY]

56. I'd say Probably the Challenger explosion

[ashling]

58. The Hollywood Club fire

in Galveston, TX. Huge fire, we all went down to watch the fire and my cousins and I left a Tonka trailer (in which we had been collecting toads - we called them toad frogs) on my dressser. It wasn't latched very well and all the toads got out all over the house. When we moved a year or so later, Mom found a dead toad under some furniture.

National news: Sputnik. We watched it with my uncle's binoculars. I didn't understand the implications.



I remember X-15 flights

[krispos42]

59. Challenger

http://upload.wikimedia.org.nyud.net:8090/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Challenger_flight_51-l_crew.jpg/750px-Challenger_flight_51-l_crew.jpg


The crew of STS-51-L. Front row, from left to right: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, and Ronald McNair. Back row, from left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik.




I was in Mrs. Fontaine's 4th grade class at Brookside Elementry School in Norwalk, CT. Someone, I think it was Ms. Cousins from across the hall, came in and told something to Mrs. Fontaine. Then Mrs. Fontaine stood in front of the class and said "The space shuttle just blew up."

[alphafemale]

60. Vietnam Era, finding the LIFE/LOOK magazines my parents had hidden away.

There was the iconic Napalm image of course, of the little girl center frame of the photo. But the one image that has stuck with me to this day was one of the corpses of a mother and a small child in her lap, the mother's body bent over the child in a vain attempt to protect.

[SarahB]

62. Iranian hostage crisis.

It began when I was about 7.

[AllegroRondo]

73. same here - it was all over the news that year

[Bread and Circus]

79. Me too,

I also remember telling a neighbor to vote for Carter, I did not know why but I knew they should!

[Danmel]

63. The 1964 New York World's Fair

I was four and I went with my grandparents who lived in Jamaica Queens. We lived in Brooklyn. I remember walking around with them but not too much detail.

The first major NEWS event that I remember clearly was the 1965 NYC blackout. I remember sitting on the couch in our living rood listening to my older brothers transistor radio to find out what happened. And I remember asking my mother 'Who is big Alice????"

(Big Allis was the transmission system that failed plunging the whole Northeastern US and Canada into darkness that night.)

[dropkickpa]

64. Mt. St. Helens erupting

in 1980. I only vaguely remember it (I was 4) but I was afraid of volcanos for a while there; lived in Miami, FL at the time, no volcanos or even hills if I recall correctly. We moved to TX a short while after that and I remember being happy because we were away from the volcano (hey, I was 4).

[LostinVA]

65. The moon walk by Armstrong

[jus_the_facts]

66. The Manson Murder Trial. n/t

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

75. Funny story on that subject

I'm probably about the same age as you are. We were sweating the Vietnam War because I had an older brother getting ready to graduate from high school (and possibly be drafted). So I clearly remember admiring Sen. Mike Mansfield and his opposition to the war.

When when Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered, I wondered why on earth a decent man like Sen. Mansfield would have killed all those people.

Bear in mind, I was only seven years old at the time...

[Fox Mulder]

67. When Challenger exploded.

I was four at the time.

[Tyler Durden]

68. The 1960 Election.

CLEARLY. Then the Missile Crisis.

[Beausoleil]

69. I can vaguely remember Kennedy's election,

John Glenn being the first American to orbit the earth and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but my most vivid recollections are of Kennedy's assassination. I was 8.

[RebelOne]

70. Pearl Harbor being bombed.

I was only a couple of years old, but when my parents told me about it, I felt sorry for Pearl Harbor because I thought she was another little girl.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

71. assasination of Indira Gandhi

[raccoon]

72. I guess it would be the Kennedy assassination. I was in 7th grade.

We came into sixth period math class and somebody said the President had been shot. About 10-15 minutes later, the principal came on the intercom and announced it. I don't recall exactly when we heard that he had died.

That was on a Friday. The following Monday we didn't have school, flags were flying at half mast, and in my neck of the woods it was a rainy day. I remember riding my bike in a light rain.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

74. RFK Assassination...

We were just getting ready to leave the house and the news was on. We thought it was just another "political story" about the 1968 primaries. My older brother hit the "off" switch on the television just the announcer said the words "was shot" and we quickly turned it on again.

[Aristus]

76. The Watergate hearings.

I remember thinking they went on forever; days and days and days of Congresscritters sitting behind microphones and saying the most BORING things. I was about six years old. None of it made any sense to me.

I remember my brother (he was only four at the time) walking into the room and asking my mother: "Mommy, what's a Kissinger?"

[bikebloke]

77. Kennedy's inauguration

And Alan Shepherd's first space flight.

[Lil Missy]

78. Kennedy assassination, because it was televised for several days

After that, probably the Nixon resignation

[gollygee]

81. Hostages in Iran

I thought it was Regan winning the first time but I clearly remember the hostages and that was first.

[TZ]

82. 1976 bicentennial celebration in DC

Since I was actually there! Of course I was 7 at the time so I really remember the fireworks (too loud and scared me) and the other things I remember were the big crowds. So many people to a small girl! It was sooo crowded we ended up spending the night at my Uncles house on Capitol Hill (his scary 150 yr old house with sloping floors) as this was really pre-subway--imagine trying to drive home from that!

[BlueIris]

83. Probably the Challenger disaster. Either that or when the media started discussing AIDS

under the acronym it is known today.

[NMDemDist2]

85. JFK's assination for me too

we were glued to the TV for days

[datasuspect]

86. vietnam

or when they found out that soylent green was made of people

[Thirtieschild]

88. Pearl Harbor. I was six.

[auburngrad82]

89. First Moon landing

My parents got us out of bed so we could see it. Pretty cool stuff.