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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Time froze - JFK moments
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
1. Watching the wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones - remember thinking how dreadful Princess Anne looked (the bridesmaids' dresses were frightful and the Princess was rather lumpish at the time).
2. Hearing the news of the assassination of JFK: the news was delivered during a choir rehearsal - we were singing canticles by Sumsion.
3. Watching the state funeral of Winston Churchill and listening to my father moaning about the commentary by Richard Dimbleby.
4. Hearing that my mother had died.
5. Being told there'd been "a bit of a cock-up" (sic) and that my other half had a life expectancy of maybe 12 months, not years.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Gwai
Shipmate
# 11076
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Posted
I was alive for Challenger, but too young to remember. I won't forget though accidentally bringing the news about the Twin Towers. I was in college, had been up early and was chatting with my mom on Messenger about various things including the insane plane crash. In fact, I was still talking to her when she heard a breaking bulletin that a second plane had just hit the other tower. It was slightly after nine, so I should have been at class, but the news was distracting and Greek was only across the street. Everyone else had been on time to class, and when I got there they were discussing the news about the plane. The prevailing view, led by the professor, was that it was probably an accident. I asked how the second plane fit into that theory. The professor stopped in mid-motion. "The second plane?" Everyone froze and stared at me. Although I was a bit confused because I didn't realize what they didn't know, everyone else understood that the preceding discussion had made very clear what a second plane would imply.
I don't think we got a lot of Greek done that day.
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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
I don't remember Challenger. The first major news event I recall was when my Dad made me watch the Berlin wall come down, telling me "Watch this, it's important."
There have only been two such moments since then. The first was the death of Ayrton Senna, the second was 9/11.
For the latter, I had finished a day at college though there was no mention of it. I had walked into the cafe at Luton Churches Education Trust shortly after the attack on the Pentagon. That was the first I knew. I was told by the centre manager there (now a vicar in Leeds) that the World Trade Centre was *this* high, making a pinching sign with her fingers.
I couldn't have told you at the time what the World Trade Centre was. I'd heard of it but didn't link it with any of the anonymous skyscrapers of New York. It was only as I sat down and ate dinner in front of the tv that it dawned as to what had happened.
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
I’m feeling very old here – I remember JFK (and RFK and MLK). I remember Challenger and Columbia; Princess Diana’s death; and of course 9-11 and more recent disasters. I also remember when the Berlin Wall came down. I was with some friends in their hotel room at a Diocesan Convention, and the television was on. I couldn’t stop the tears flowing down my face. Another happy memory -- I remember Nixon announcing his resignation.
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
I was at school when I heard about the Challenger accident. I made a rather lame joke to my science teacher, asking him if we could have our chemistry exam cancelled, because the accident clearly proved the futility of science. He chuckled and replied no.
9/11. After hearing about it in the morning, I stopped at a local cafe for a coffee on my way to work, and leafed through the morning paper, which had been printed before the attacks. There was a small article buried in the middle, about how airlines had just been ordered not to allow Salman Rushdie to board planes.
If it had been a movie, there would have been jolting music, with the camera zooming in on the headline.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Some events stick out because they happened at formative times in one's life. The Cuban Missile Crisis was one for me; I was in Uni and more susceptible to existentialist thoughts. "JFK" happened during my last year at Uni and had a similar effect.
Diana dying may have been a big deal for some, but the outpouring of second-hand grief was incomprehensible to me.
9/11 was very immediate and awful, but it seemed to be a natural progression from some of the intensely stupid things that had gone on in and around the Middle East (from all concerned) so I was less touched.
The Swissair crash in 1998 made more impression on me, partly from the pointlessness of killing hundreds of people over bad wiring for entertainment systems, and partly from empathy with people who lost loved ones totally into an ocean (and gratitude for the Nova Scotians who helped). But repetition dulls one's responses.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
I remember where I was when JFK was shot- standing by a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository... ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Horseman wrote:
quote:
9/11 was very immediate and awful, but it seemed to be a natural progression from some of the intensely stupid things that had gone on in and around the Middle East (from all concerned) so I was less touched.
I'll admit that I was more spooked by 9/11 than by, say, civilians killed in some Middle East conflict, because of the "That coulda been me!" factor. Not that I've ever been to NYC, but I am more likely to go there than to somewhere in the Middle East that gets hit by bombs.
More-or-less felt the same way about Oklahoma City in '95, though I am less likely to have gone there.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
I can remember in respect what must have been the Cuban missile crisis. Dad, an IRBM missile technician in the RAF, was at work for a week non-stop and my Mother (who had lost her first husband in WW2) trying to hold things together.
I don't recall JFK's death, so Churchill's death and funeral was next. The Apollo space flights were the first memorable good news.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
In the UK, the Challenger disaster famously was first announced on children's news show Newsround (apologies for the poor quality of that clip) - I think simply because, before there were any 24-hour rolling news channels, it was simply the next news programme to be shown.
I remember doing a temp job in the basement of Royal Mail in Sheffield on 9/11 and our team leader (always a subtle sort) coming in and declaring "they're bombing America!" or words to that effect (with a rather worrying smile on his face).
A couple more that stick in my mind:
1) Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, being assassinated the night before my baptism. We were watching the news which had reported his being shot and then, straight after the weather forecast, they went back to the newsroom. As soon as they announced that's what they were going to do, several members of my family declared, "he's dead".
2) Hearing about the 7/7 bombings in London in a team meeting when I was a civil servant; our senior manager was told about it by mobile phone and she informed us at the end of the meeting. Think we were glued to the BBC news website on our computers after that...
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
I watched, live, Jacques Parizeau's 1995 concession speech. Yes, that one.
I don't remember if I thought at the time that the comments would go down in political folklore, but I guess it was pretty much inevitable.
Switching to pop culture...
I watched the premiere episode of Friends, and thought it was so obviously flogging the dead horse of Gen X angst, that it wouldn't last for more than a few episodes.
Though I was never a huge fan of Michael Jackson, when my co-worker informed me that he had died, my jaw actually dropped, cartoon-style. I mean, he just wasn't the kind of person you expected to be dying at that point.
[ 29. January 2015, 17:31: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Sarasa
Shipmate
# 12271
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Posted
I remember JFK, instead of the next BBC programme they went to the news. I also remember 9/11 and 7/7 very clearly, specially the latter. That morning I was waiting for the bus to work, thankful that I had recently swapped to a job I was enjoying, London had just won the 2012 Olympics and I had been succesful in getting tickets for the Live Aid Anniversary concert. A little later I saw on the BBC website about there having been an accident on the underground, and it just rolled on from that.
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'I guess things didn't go so well tonight, but I'm trying. Lord, I'm trying.' Charlie (Harvey Keitel) in Mean Streets.
Posts: 2035 | From: London | Registered: Jan 2007
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Tree Bee
Ship's tiller girl
# 4033
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Posted
Hearing about the disaster at Aberfan made a big impression on me because the victims were children only a little younger than me. I remember sitting cross legged on the floor at school assembly while the head teacher talked to us about it and launched an appeal.
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"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple."
— Woody Guthrie
http://saysaysay54.wordpress.com
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I was in first grade in St. Camillus parochial school when JFK died. I particularly remember because it was a Friday, and we always said the rosary on Friday afternoons. The nun in charge of us (it was a class of more than 70 kids!) said that one rosary would cover both the standard Friday one and the president, which I thought was very efficient.
A friend and I had planned a trip to London in 2001, and with my usual magnificent luck I booked us to leave on September 11. We had no difficulty switching our flights to sometime in October, and when we went we were practically the only people on the jet. I went to the Savoy theater to see a play about Antarctica (which I was writing about at the time) and there were perhaps a dozen people in the stalls all told. The management begged us to come down and sit in the front row. I thought of going round to the stage door after (it's not your fault! It's Osama to blame!) but thought it would be dispiriting for the actors.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tree Bee:
Hearing about the disaster at Aberfan made a big impression on me because the victims were children only a little younger than me. I remember sitting cross legged on the floor at school assembly while the head teacher talked to us about it and launched an appeal.
I live about an hour or so from where the Sewol sunk last year, though the day it happened I didn't quite foresee that it would be as huge a political issue that it eventually became.
The captain was actually jailed in the city where I live, and tried in the city where I formerly lived.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
Diana was early teens and of course asleep and busy when it happened.
9/11 was told by driving instructor, but from the comment thought it was more like a big Omagh or something, so wasn't that fussed.
When saw the TV and heard early estimates found it was much bigger than I thought, then I realised I was now over-estimating it's relative magnitude (especially as casualty figures (thankfully )came down).
Thatcher I missed till I got home, it encouraged me to be a bit prompter on the news.
Posts: 1643 | Registered: May 2006
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
I remember JFK (I was a tiny girl but I remember where I was standing in the sitting room by the uncut moquette sofa watching the TV)
I remember Mountbatten, as a teenager, being with a group of friends watching tv at someone's house.
9/11, I had just got off a train in Gloucester to go to a meeting, got in a taxi and heard it on the radio. It was so unbelievable, I asked the driver if it was a play and, rather uncertainly said he thought it was real. We spent the meeting watching the tv in the reception of the hotel.
7/7 was a day I was holding a meeting in the centre of London. One person managed to get there, so we spent the time eating the whole lunch between us.
M.
Posts: 2303 | From: Lurking in Surrey | Registered: Sep 2002
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
It strikes me that most (all?) of the significant moments of history of which I have early memories were mediated by television - by no means a given at the time. And they are tied in with the development of the medium itself.
I can't remember exactly what programme was being shown on New Years Eve 1959 - I suspect Jimmy Shand and The White Heather Club - but I remember the novelty of being let sit up to watch this little grey screen. And I do remember very clearly the shock, a couple of years later, of watching the first edition of That Was The Week That Was and seeing the camera pull back to show it was all happening in a studio. (Not that cameras, booms etc didn't come into shot occasionally on other programmes, but those were mistakes). The other thing I was just old enough to appreciate was that they were being cheeky about politicians, which was also unusual in those days. My strongest recollection of the JFK assassination was the hastily revamped TW3 that went out the following day.
Aberfan was extended OBs of the desperate rescue attempts and a rain coated reporter turning a microphone away from an interviewee because what he was saying was judged too distressing to broadcast. The moon landings were glimpsed from the back of the Student Union TV room. By then the screen was bigger and in colour, so that on Bloody Friday you could see the red on the concrete of the bus station.
Now it's expected that every war and famine and earthquake and terrorist bombing will be brought to you in wide screen, high definition every minute of the 24, while at the same time being just one stream among hundreds offering you fictional battles and CGI disasters and imaginary lives. ISTM it had more impact when it was just a few hours in the evening, with only the most extraordinary events escaping from the 6 and 9 o'clock news.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tree Bee:
Hearing about the disaster at Aberfan made a big impression on me because the victims were children only a little younger than me. I remember sitting cross legged on the floor at school assembly while the head teacher talked to us about it and launched an appeal.
Oh heck, I had forgotten that.
I still run cold when I think of that, especially when I travel up the A470 towards Merthyr Tydfil. I was overseas at the time and I too remember the headteacher talking to us all.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
And John Lennon was shot on my birthday ![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif)
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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crunt
Shipmate
# 1321
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Posted
I was hanging around in a record shop in Newport, skipping classes at the technical college I hated, when I heard about John Lennon.
Nowadays, I hear about everything on Facebook.
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QUIZ: Bible
QUIZ: world religions
LTL Discussion
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Posts: 269 | From: Up country in the middle of Malaysia | Registered: Sep 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gwai:
everyone else understood that the preceding discussion had made very clear what a second plane would imply.
Yes, I remember a 10 minute or so period when the group of people I was with and I all assumed that "Breaking news: Plane crashes in to World Trade Center" was someone in a Cessna.
My grandmother's music teacher made a note in the margin of her piano music at the point she had got to when the armistice was declared in 1918. I think we still have the music somewhere.
I remember where I was when I was told Princess Diana had died, but only because I was visiting my parents at the time and had gone to bed early in anticipation of some planned event the next day, and Dad came up to tell me. Like Horseman Bree, I was rather nonplussed by the mass emoting.
I remember being completely bemused by the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and lining up with the other children to be given a commemorative mug and an orange by the Mayor. There was bunting, and a street party.
I remember the expression on Michael Portillo's face when he lost his seat, and suddenly realizing how massive the Labour majority was going to be.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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basso
Ship’s Crypt Keeper
# 4228
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Posted
I'm old enough to remember JFK - we were told in class and later told to go home. I think I just remember the Cuban missile crisis, but it's mostly the unease I remember. Lots of occasion for that in my youth.
Of course I remember MLK and Bobby. A happier memory of that year is my mother waking me to show me the front page of the Chronicle with the news of Gene McCarthy's win in the Oregon primary. I was definitely in a the minority in my eighth grade class -- most people were firmly in the Kennedy camp.
Posts: 4358 | From: Bay Area, Calif | Registered: Mar 2003
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
The space program was very exciting to me when I was a young thing. It still is! But I remember the horror of Grissom, White and Chaffee dying in their space capsule.
Nineteen years later, I was at Tae Kwon-Do doing extra warm ups because it was so cold, and looking out the plate glass windows to see the Challenger lift off. As we jogged in place, our exuberance turned to shock as we watched the shuttle explode. I sat in the bathroom crying for a long time.
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Jasmine, little cat with a big heart.
Posts: 18017 | From: 'Twixt the 'Glades and the Gulf | Registered: Aug 2001
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rugasaw
Shipmate
# 7315
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Posted
1. I remember the April 3rd, 1974 outbreak of 148 tornadoes. I was a young child and we had gone to a Ken's pizza for my birthday(I got a giant clown balloon while there). On the way home we could see one of the tornadoes from the car.
2. In the winter of 1980 I sat on the couch with my family watching the amazing semi-final Olympic hockey game. USA! USA! USA!
3. While doing my student teaching, feeling and hearing the Murrah Federal Building bombing. The entire class and myself rushed to the window to see what car had ran into the school and blew up.
There are also various personal things that wouldn't matter to most other people.
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Treat the earth well, It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children. -Unknown
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
I’m feeling very old here – I remember JFK (and RFK and MLK). I remember Challenger and Columbia; Princess Diana’s death; and of course 9-11 and more recent disasters. I also remember when the Berlin Wall came down. I was with some friends in their hotel room at a Diocesan Convention, and the television was on. I couldn’t stop the tears flowing down my face. Another happy memory -- I remember Nixon announcing his resignation.
You're not the only one to remember all of these. I can remember the announcement about JFK very clearly - at school, 4th year high school, paling cricket and the message was passed on. The big difference between that and 9-11 is the new ability to send the TV pictures around the globe so quickly and show us, more than a half day away in time, what was happening. While I can remember just what I was doing when the news of JFK's murder came through, I can't for either his brother or Martin Luther King. As for Princess Diana well, truth be told, she was never more than a bit player of a small role. While it may have had a very great impact in the UK, it was lots of news here but nothing more in general life. What a contrast to JFK.
I clearly remember the other events, the thoughts of what we would do here if the Cuban missile crisis really took off (would we drive as far out of Sydney as possible?) but it was not a single moment.
I still find seeing film or photos of the Berlin Wall coming down very moving. A peaceful end to an era of tyranny. No bloodshed after all that had been spilt in the past.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Athrawes
Ship's parrot
# 9594
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Posted
The first thing I can really recall is the Granville Rail Disaster because it was the train we caught to get to Sydney, and we knew people on it that morning. Fortunately, they weren't in the first, third or fourth carriages!
[code fix]
[ 30. January 2015, 13:42: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
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Explaining why is going to need a moment, since along the way we must take in the Ancient Greeks, the study of birds, witchcraft, 19thC Vaudeville and the history of baseball. Michael Quinion.
Posts: 2966 | From: somewhere with a book shop | Registered: Jun 2005
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
Of course, I meant "playing cricket".
I had forgotten the Granville Train Disaster and can't remember what I was doing when the news came in. I would have been at work, but that's as far as it goes.
[ 30. January 2015, 06:27: Message edited by: Gee D ]
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
No one has mentioned Thatcher's resignation, but I could go back to the precise place I was standing when I heard ...
And being told that "Dr Who had died". He hadn't, he had just changed into Tom Baker, but it was my first experience of the regeneration concept and I missed it.
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
9/11 is the main one that comes to mind. I normally didn't watch morning TV; but, for some reason, I turned it on--right between the first and second towers. I've heard of other people who did the same. Maybe there was some kind of ripple??
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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The Phantom Flan Flinger
Shipmate
# 8891
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Posted
I remember Lennon dying when I was 6.
Diana many years later - like others, I didn't understand the outpouring of grief, nor the fury directed at the other royals.
We were on holiday in Ireland on September 11th, everyone in the village we were staying knew someone who was affected by it.
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http://www.faith-hope-and-confusion.com/
Posts: 1020 | From: Leicester, England | Registered: Dec 2004
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Stejjie
Shipmate
# 13941
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Posted
This thread keeps bringing back memories! Two more:
1) I was 11 when Thatcher resigned. Our English teacher announced it in class to great cheers, which we were promptly told off for! I don't know if it's because she was a Thatcherite or just because we were being too rowdy.
2) I remember hearing about Pope John Paul II dying when I was playing a computer game. It was an online roleplaying and suddenly some of the other characters started saying "the Pope's died", so I switched to my browser to check the news. That's the strangest way I've heard of a big news event...
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A not particularly-alt-worshippy, fairly mainstream, mildly evangelical, vaguely post-modern-ish Baptist
Posts: 1117 | From: Urmston, Manchester, UK | Registered: Jul 2008
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
I was in the Bishop's Palace at Chichester the day that Thatch resigned, and his chaplain put his head round the door to tell us (the Bishop, my colleague, and me) the news.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Erik
Shipmate
# 11406
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Posted
The first one that comes to mind for me was the Omagh bombing. I remember sitting in a caravan on holiday in Scotland and watching the news on a tiny TV. I would have been in my early teens and my aunt, uncle and cousins had recently moved to Northern Ireland.
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One day I will think of something worth saying here.
Posts: 96 | From: Leeds, UK | Registered: May 2006
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
I was at a Shipmeet on the Isle of Wight when Pope John Paul II died. So were quite a few other Shipmates!
I remember the Hillsborough disaster - my dad was doing some gardening and asked me to pop inside to find out what the score was. I told him the game had been abandoned due to a riot - how wrong I was ![[Frown]](frown.gif) .
One that I don't think has been mentioned yet is Live Aid, but I mostly remember that because I wanted to play in the garden and couldn't understand why my mom thought watching some music on the TV was so much more important.
On 9/11 I was a week or two into my first ever job after graduation, and thought the co-worker who first told me was just winding up the n00b. Then we all started logging on to the BBC website...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
On a MUCH lighter note:
It was Easter Monday so no wo*k - but children don't know about things like public holidays...
Staying in a friend's holiday cottage took the children downstairs and turned on the TV to see - TELETUBBIES!
Thought it was great - and really appreciated the effort the BBC had gone to in making such a wonderful pi**-take for April Fools Day.
It was only later I realised it was 31st March so the programme was for real ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif)
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
The moon landing was one of my earliest memories--I was young enough that my parents had to keep telling me to look at the TV and NOT at the black-and-white carpeting, which was so much more fascinating to a toddler...
When 9/11 happened I was holding my own newborn and sitting with my mother on my mother's bed in California.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
The first public event I can remember is the death of the King in February 1952.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
The first big event I remember was the trial and sentencing to death of Steven Truscott in Canada. It made a big impression on me because he was just 14 at the time. I was 12.
I was just arrived in a physical rehab hospital when the Cuban missile crisis went down in 1962. I remember reading the newspaper in fear the end of the world was coming.
Obviously, it hadn't. I was still in the same hospital a year and a bit later when John Kennedy was shot. I was in my room receiving speech therapy (the hospital was under quarantine for diphtheria) when another boy came in and told us. My American therapist burst into tears and followed the rest of the inmates down to the solarium where the TV was. We watched it, all of us, non-stop for days, as there was nothing else to do. I knew about Robert Kennedy as soon as it became known in Canada, because my Dad came in to wake me, as I was home from University at the time. Dr King's death a few months earlier was during examinations, but I took an hour off to watch the news and the subsequent rioting, I thing in Detroit, not very far from where I was studying.
On a lighter note, I remember the winning goal in the 1972 Canada-Russia series. My grad seminar was in the classroom just opposite the student lounge and I remember looking back to see the professor throw his papers in the air as the seminar room emptied. (He joined us, just a bit later).
Anwar Sadat of Egypt was assassinated when I was incarcerated in the hospital watching my 10 inch TV.
I was vaguely aware of the crisis in New York, as they wheeled me into the TV room at the hospice, but I was heavily sedated (morphine) and went back to bed 15 minutes later.
Nothing else springs to mind.
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
I'm too young to remember JFK, but I remember hearing about John Lennon - I was listening to the Radio 1 breakfast show's weekly chart countdown, and they played Starting Over, which was odd, as it was on its way down the charts. Then when the news came on at 8:30 the shooting was the lead story.
I was on a school trip to Italy when Pope John Paul I died, and in Orkney on holiday when Princess Diana died.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Marvin wrote:
quote:
One that I don't think has been mentioned yet is Live Aid, but I mostly remember that because I wanted to play in the garden and couldn't understand why my mom thought watching some music on the TV was so much more important.
About all I can remember about watching Live Aid is Madonna saying on stage "I'm not taking sh*t off now"(ie. I'm not taking off my clothes), a reference to nude photos of her that had appeared in Penthouse shortly before.
Interestingly, that was at a point in her career when it was still possible for nude photos of her to be regarded as a novelty.
And I think I remember Mick Jagger saying "Where's Tina?", when inviting Tina Turner to join him in a duet.
[ 30. January 2015, 14:50: Message edited by: Stetson ]
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Dogwalker
Shipmate
# 14135
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Posted
I'm old enough to remember JFK, and the space program, and even Sputnik. But one I really remember was a Friday night in August, 1961 in northern Vermont. I was 11.
We were in the Parish Hall parking lot at a fair sponsored by the Catholic Daughters. My mother was one of the leaders.
About 5 or so miles away, three kids were out with a .22 caliber rifle, shooting at targets at an old quarry. One of their targets was on a small building that contained 250 or 300 pounds of dynamite.
The explosion killed two of the kids and wounded the third, and blew out windows for miles around. The sound scared all of us into silence. Several of the adults (remember, this is 1961) were sure we were being bombed.
After a minute or two, our priest climbed some steps and blessed and gave a plenary indulgence to all of us.
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If God had meant for us to fly, he wouldn't have given us the railways. - Unknown
Posts: 155 | From: Milford, MA, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Tree Bee
Ship's tiller girl
# 4033
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Posted
It's strange how events make the whole day memorable.
The day John Lennon died (it rips me up just to type that) I took cb, then 10 months old to a National Childbirth Trust Christmas party. The Mums couldn't believe what had happened. We talked about John while we played pass the parcel with our babies on our laps. cb was so small she fell backwards through the bars of her chair at tea time.
Live Aid, I was at home with my little girls while Mr Bee was at work. It was such a hot day, but I rushed to mow the lawn so we could watch the whole concert. We were transfixed, but the girls don't remember it as they were 5 and 2.
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"Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple."
— Woody Guthrie
http://saysaysay54.wordpress.com
Posts: 5257 | From: me to you. | Registered: Feb 2003
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Following on from what I was saying about significant events being mediated by television, there were about twenty years when I didn't have one. So some memorable moments completely passed me by - there was a Live Aid concert? Radio can be a bit baffling at times of crisis - one weekend morning I couldn't understand why my usual listening had been replaced by solemn music - until the brief announcement Princess Diana had been in a car accident. Lockerbie was a few sentences on the on the hour news summary as I was sitting reading.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Bene Gesserit
Shipmate
# 14718
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Posted
Herald of Free Enterprise – as soon as it made the news, my phone rang with friends and family telling me about it.
Princess Di’s death – my Other Half brought me a start-the-day cup of coffee and told me that she had died – we switched on this tiny little television that we had beside the bed to see if there was anything on about it. There was.
9/11. I was at the hairdresser and could only half-hear the radio so I though a light aircraft had crashed into somewhere like Canary Wharf. I rang my other Half from the taxi home, and he told me what had happened.
The start of the first Gulf War – The Company of Wolves had just finished on television and I switched channels just as the live reporter was saying the air raid sirens in Baghdad had sounded.
Seeing the breaking news that Papa Razzi had just announced his resignation...
Margaret Thatcher's resignation -I was on my own on the office and two of my colleagues rang me to tell me.
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Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Posts: 405 | From: Flatlands of the East | Registered: Apr 2009
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
Having arrived early at the office as was my custom, I was working away at my desk when I heard a tremendous crashing sound outside. It sounded as if a construction crane had toppled over.
Someone had their radio on, and the news came over the radio that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. This was followed by news of the second plane, then news of the plane hitting the Pentagon.
Then another crashing sound, and the first tower collapsed.
We were all looking out the window watching the second tower burn, when it too collapsed. The entire scene turned pitch black and remained so for at least five or ten minutes. As light began to return, it looked like it was snowing outside -- a fine white ash was trickling down on everything. One of our employees, who was Afro-American, came in at that moment completely covered with white ash. He looked as though he had stared the Angel of Death in the face.
We closed the office. I had to walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge and hitch a ride to my street once I got to the other side.
I will never forget that day in any of its vivid details.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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BessLane
Shipmate
# 15176
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Posted
I remember being at a friend's house watching Richard Nixon resign. I was 6 or so at the time I and remember being very relieved because my daddy could finally stop ranting and raving about Tricky Dick.
I was home sick with a stomach virus the day Regan was shot. We had a TV by that time and I remember thinking it was so cool that you could hear someone in the background cussing right after it happened. (This was of course, edited/bleeped out of subsequent showings of the shooting.)
I was sitting in my hallway coveren in blankets in August 1992 when Hurricane Andrew came raging through South Florida and the clearest memory of that night was at one point thinking to myself that microwave ovens should NOT fly over your head and crash into your roommates bedroom door.
9/11 I had just gotten off-line from a chat group I used to belong to. A few minutes later, my phone rang and it was my mother in tears telling me about the first plane. I turned on the TV and it struck me like a brick that one of the guys I had just been talking to was in that building (RIP Trane).
On a lighter note - although, I would like back the brain cells this one takes up - I remember Luke and Laura's wedding on General Hospital. I was at the babysitter's house and we had to watch the show in complete silence so she didn't miss a magical moment ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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It's all on me and I won't tell it.
formerly BessHiggs
Posts: 1388 | From: Yorkville, TN | Registered: Sep 2009
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
I was at my friend's house the evening the JFK news broke. I remember that the second time the BBC TV news came round the newsreader had changed to a black tie.
I was working at home on 9/11, and my wife called home to tell me to turn on the TV. First reaction was to worry about our daughter in NY. I wanted to know which way the wind was blowing in case it had been a chemical weapon attack. She rode her bike in from Queens to Manhattan to be with her student friends. A few weeks later the event was given as the reason for losing my job while the aircraft business got the jitters.
My first paddle steamer trip down the Clyde.
Other events permanently etched - I hope - in my memory, are musical; hearing the Mikado live for the first time; hearing Orpheus in the Underworld at Sadler's Wells with Alan Crofoot. How can a hellish opera be so heavenly?
But my memory has black holes too; empty spaces that I'm not sure if I should try to recreate.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I'd just been to vote in my first election. Our geography teacher popped her head round the door of our all-girls' class, and told us with pleasure that Margaret Thatcher had just been elected as Prime Minister. We were all equally delighted at the thought of finally having a woman prime minister.
One morning in the late 80s I woke up after a nightmare of being trapped in the London Underground in a tunnel that was filling up with smoke and fire. As the fire reached me the pain of it was so intense that it actually woke me up. I went off to work and remarked on the dream to my manager, who gave me a funny look. Hadn't I heard the news, she inquired. No, I said, I don't have a TV or radio, and I haven't seen the papers. She told me that that that night, fire had broken out in the Underground at King's Cross station in London, with tragic loss of life.
Some years later I was off work with bronchitis and went out to pick up a prescription when I heard someone in the chemists saying that the Pentagon had been attacked by terrorists. As this was the name of a shopping centre I knew of, I turned on the television when I got back, but all they were showing was a disaster movie involving a plane crashing into a skyscraper. It was a couple of minutes before I realized this was no film, but the news. It was 11 September. After that the skies went eerily quiet. There were no planes at all for some time. No jet trails in the sky, none of the usual sounds we take for granted, nothing but clouds and birds.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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