Thread: Time froze - JFK moments Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :
 
There's about maybe half a dozen moments and a few musical pieces which I recall clearly, as in where I was, what I was doing, how I felt, when I first heard of them.

The anniversary of one is today. I was too young for JKF. Musically things as diverse as Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch", Jewell's "Foolish Games", Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel"

What are yours? Where, perhaps? What?

[ 29. January 2015, 15:33: Message edited by: Zappa ]
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
I remember where I was when JFK was shot- standing by a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository... [Devil]
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 
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...
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Tree Bee (# 4033) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by M. (# 3291) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
And John Lennon was shot on my birthday [Waterworks]
 
Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by basso (# 4228) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by rugasaw (# 7315) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Athrawes (# 9594) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Lord Jestocost (# 12909) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
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??
 
Posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger (# 8891) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 
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...
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Erik (# 11406) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
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] .

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...
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
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]
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
The first public event I can remember is the death of the King in February 1952.
 
Posted by Uncle Pete (# 10422) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Dogwalker (# 14135) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Tree Bee (# 4033) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Bene Gesserit (# 14718) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by BessLane (# 15176) on :
 
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]
 
Posted by Stercus Tauri (# 16668) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
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.
My boyfriend (I was about 17) was working in St Pancras train ticket office that night when the fire happened and witnessed the scenes in the aftermath [Frown]
 
Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :
 
I remember the Live Aid concert as it was on my 16th birthday and I had just got out of hospital and could watch what I wanted on TV (quite a prize as I was the youngest of 8 and never got to choose). I watched it all day.
I clearly remember the Baltic Exchange bombing by the IRA in 1992 as I lived in a nurses' residence about 20 mins walk away (St Helen's opposite it, which was very badly damaged, became my church later). There was a loud boom, the windows of the room shook and it left a sudden stillness in the air. I had never heard a bomb before but I knew clearly what it was. I also later heard the Bishopsgate bomb, Holborn, London Bridge and Canary Wharf bomb. There was an army checkpoint through the City for years.
 
Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
... 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...
I had much the same experience, down to the cheering, although without being told off. I was a couple of years older during PE when the teacher came to the changing room and told us.

Hillsborough was a strange one as I was away on a school trip to North Yorkshire that weekend. There were no TVs or radios, so we didn't find out until we were taken to church in Whitby on the Sunday and found out during the sermon.

One of the events that affected me personally the most was the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria. The news coverage had implied there was a chance of him and his colleagues having their sentences commuted (not even vaguely true as it turned out) and I prayed that night as hard as I ever have, finding out the next day that they had been hanged. It started off my nearly 20 year membership of Amnesty International.
 
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :
 
On 11 June 1978, 12 school boys and a teacher drowned on a canoe trip on Lake Timiskaming with St John's School of Ontario. I was graduated, working in a program for disabled people, we were taking a wheelchair group to sleep over night in army bell tents on a hot evening. I had taken a half-ton truck on an errand, and heard it on the radio. I recall everything about it and can see the radio and the view of the lake where I stopped to listen and feel ill. The conversation with another staff is burned into my mind as if I hear my voice from someone else.

The second one is also 1978, 18 November. The Jonestown, Guyana suicide of nearly 1000 people, and then the report of the USA officials who had been shot immediately proceeding this, some of whom we knew. I was in Canada, but my parents were living in Georgetown, and then when the phone rang from Ottawa reporting that they were all right, but also reporting about people we knew from the USA embassy who's been shot. It was a bad year.
 
Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on :
 
I am not sure why this has stuck in my mind, but I vividly remember hearing that Terry Waite had been released; I have no idea when it was, but I do know where I was. I was doing the washing up, listening to a little radio hanging from the hook on the towel rack thingy.
 
Posted by Deputy Verger (# 15876) on :
 
I remember JFK and MLK but I was so young that I only recently realised that they were actually five years apart. They’re a kind of composite memory, and I thought they happened very close together. Mostly I remember how upset the grownups were. Teachers cried.

I remember the moon landing, which was cool. And I remember the shuttle explosion – I was working in Australia (totally different timezone) and what stands out for me is that by lunchtime there were already jokes about it. (What does NASA stand for? Need another seven astronauts.) Sorry, don’t flame me, but that was by way of expressing the vividness of the memory – normally I have a poor recall of jokes.

On the 8th of December 1980 I was on early duty in the office in Soho (London). I picked up the phone to a colleague saying “John is dead”, to which I replied “John who?” because we didn’t have a colleague called John. But for the rest of the morning it was me saying “John is dead”.

The day Diana died I was working a publicity event, which involved picking up some VIPs at the airport early in the morning. I was in a rented car which had a radio, interrupted by the news bulletin. So I was again the news-bearer. I was surprised how affected I was.

Music can also do it. Dark Side of the Moon takes me back to a specific room, as do Get Back and Hey Jude and Pinball Wizard and many more songs of that era, but on a more political note, Ricky don’t lose that number takes me back to Watergate and Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon.
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I remember the day the Falklands War broke out. There was a parents evening at school that night, and I was one of the prefects on duty.

A group of about 12 of us, all 17 or 18, final year at school, in our school uniforms, were in the common room discussing whether there might be conscription, and whether this affected our going to University that autumn.

Also, the engagement of Charles and Diana. After years of school teachers drumming the exams-first-then-romance mantra into us, suddenly the newspapers were full of stories about how not bothering with an education and getting engaged at 19 was a splendid idea for a girl. I was 17 at the time, and it was the topic of the day at school. I recall several of our teachers eye-rolling at it all - our home ec teacher was particularly scathing.
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
I remember Princess Anne's wedding. I was at a convent school in Dublin at the time, and the nuns very kindly brought the convent's television set in on a trolley into the gym and let us off lessons so that we could sit and watch it.

Diana's wedding was pretty much eclipsed by That Dress which was the main subject of discussion in our sixth-form common room for a short while. Half of us insisted it was a great innovative design statement, the other half insisted equally strongly it was a disgrace and it should have been ironed before she put it on. Or better still, worn something completely different instead.
 
Posted by squidgetsmum (# 17708) on :
 
The death of Diana - I'd just woken up and my mum (serious Diana fan) came rushing in to tell me. My 11 year old brain was a little bemused, to say the least.

9/11 - I found out in choir practice. We'd just been on a US tour a month before, so it was particularly striking. I can remember the piece, which had been written for the choir - "when every hand joins every hand and together works in unity, that's when we'll be free". Musical dross for a fairly talented group, but never sung with more power than that night.

7/7 - Working in a special school, and as we were very close to Edgware Road, not being allowed to leave, whilst several of the kids panicked about their nearest and dearest, and we tried to work out what the hell to do with a bunch of kids relying on medication if we were kept in for much longer...
 
Posted by Wesley J (# 6075) on :
 
I remember the first moon landing! It was on my summer holidays with my uncle and aunt and cousins, at their home, as I often was in summer. My aunt and uncle woke me up in the middle of the night, to have me sit in front of the black-and-white telly. I think I watched for a few minutes in disinterest before I was allowed to go back to bed. It is to their credit that they thought I really had to see this extraordinary thing, and so I can now say I did, though I was rather annoyed back then. It was in the middle of the night, after all!

9/11 - a very strange day, I found. I'd just had one of my horseriding lessons, and was feeling quite knackered. On the tram back to the station, I overheard two men briefly talking to each other about a plane having crashed into some highrise building, but I don't think they said where that was (perhaps they did say America). They may have added 'This could mean war.' I didn't pay much attention, believing it to be a small propeller plane. On the train back, there was this utterly weird silence - I still don't know to this day whether public transport in the afternoon then was always so calm, or whether everyone was already deep in thought about what had happened. At home I turned on the radio, or perhaps the BBC News website on my old Windows 95, 75Mhz Pentium computer on dial-up ( [Big Grin] ), where it was all over the news, and which then made me switch on the TV. I think I even rang one of my neighbour's doorbells to tell them what happened. They may already have known. I then called one of my friends in the US, who was very very angry and in tears, as was I, and we talked for a few minutes. The rest of the evening and long into the night was spent by watching the telly, with all the developments coming in. [Waterworks] [Votive]
 
Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
The loss of flight TE901 to Antartica in 1979. This was the first and I think only time an Air NZ commercial plane had crashed with all aboard being killed. Then later the judge, Sir Peter Mahon challenging evidence given by the airline at the hearing and describing it as "an orchestrated litany of lies."

Huia
 
Posted by Barnabas Aus (# 15869) on :
 
My first memory of an event such as this is the Queen's visit to Australia in 1954. My grandmother was returning from a coach trip interstate, and I recall gazing in wonder through the car window at the illuminations in the Sydney CBD as we went to meet her. I was only three years old at the time. Since then, of course, I share in the memories of many of the other notable occurrences referred to upthread.
 
Posted by Paul. (# 37) on :
 
I heard about Challenger on the way to see a friend as a student. I saw the pictures on TV sets in show windows.

9/11 I was in the office and it was the first such event I heard of through the internet. I remember constantly refreshing the news websites and watching those postage stamp size videos. I distinctly remember being disgusted by a colleague who made a remark about how they'd hit the second tower - she was prone to inappropriate remarks and I thought it was a bad joke.

I remember Diana's death. I remember the sermon our pastor gave which he prefaced with some remarks about her - that was a week later I think. I can't remember much of what he said but the phrase, "she was beautiful in a way women admired more than men" sticks in my memory. I was in London for the week following the funeral for a training course and to get from my hotel to place it was held I walked through Hyde Park and got the tube from Notting Hill. The tributes and flowers where still there but in contrast to the descriptions given on the TV I found the atmosphere creepy and not moving. But maybe that was just me.

Last summer was my first experience of hearing about the death of a friend via Facebook, that was very odd.
 
Posted by ChaliceGirl (# 13656) on :
 
Diana's death- It was around midnight for us in the States, and Brian Williams from NBC news said, "Princess Diana is dead." I remember thinking, "Whaat? how can that be??"
I also watched her funeral.

9/11 is a day I'll never forget- I was at work, alone in my office, listening to the radio and accessing the web. I normally like being alone but on that day it was very eerie and I felt very scared.

Challenger- I was in high school and someone mentioned it in class and that's all we talked about the rest of the day.

[ 02. February 2015, 20:31: Message edited by: ChaliceGirl ]
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
I watched the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings live. When Hill began testifying about Thomas' interest in a particular adult film-star, I immediately suspected that she was talking about a guy whose name(among other attributes) had been well-known among my junior high cohorts a decade earlier.

And, sure enough, when the senator asked her the actor's name, it was him. (click with discretion)

[ 03. February 2015, 12:50: Message edited by: Stetson ]
 
Posted by Hilda of Whitby (# 7341) on :
 
JFK. We were living in Houston, Texas at the time. My dad was on a business trip to Dallas. I was 7 at the time. It was a school day.

There was an announcement over the intercom at school. Teachers were crying. We were allowed to go home early. It was very surreal and frightening--I got it in my head that somehow Dad would get killed because he was in Dallas.

I'll never forget it.

A commemorative book was issued in 2013 by the publishers of Life Magazine for the 50th anniversary of the assassination. Aside from text and pictures, it included a separate full-size reproduction of the issue of Life Magazine that came out right after the assassination. I bought the book. My parents kept that issue of Life magazine for decades.
 
Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
It seems to me that everyone, even those of us who had no connection with New York, has a World Trade Centre story.

Mine is that we had been in New York in July 2001, and had bought booklets of tickets for various tourist attractions, including the WTC. We hadn't used them all, and still had tickets for the WTC, the Museum of Modern Art and something else which I've forgotten. When I went back to work (in Belfast), a colleague said that he and his girlfriend were going to New York in September. I gave him our left-over tickets, wished him bon voyage and promptly forgot about it.

On the day following the attacks, I suddenly remembered about it and wondered if (a) he was still in New York; and (b) he was all right. He phoned the office a couple of days later, and I immediately asked him where he'd been on the Tuesday morning ...

They'd been on their way to use the WTC tickets, but missed the bus, so they got the next one. On the way there the driver got a message about the first plane, and said that they'd go to the Empire State Building instead. Then the driver got a message saying the whole of Manhattan was closing, and they had to abandon their trip and go back to the terminus. On the way back, they saw the first tower collapse.

Just as well they missed that first bus ... [Eek!]
 
Posted by nickel (# 8363) on :
 
Wesley J, I was 9 years old and disgruntled to be woken up in the middle of a good night's sleep to watch the moon landing. "Can't I just watch the re-run?"

First-listens to music are necessarily more personal, I guess. Some of my most vivid involve David Bowie. I was 13 aimlessly tuning the dial of the Zenith radio (G730 model, great sound) all the way to the left, and heard the whole "Diamond Dogs" intro & song! Amazing for 1974, when all I had known was middle of the road, middle of the dial pop stations. I never bothered with mainstream music or channels again.
 
Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on :
 
I was helping out at an archaeological dig in Hereford when we got the news about the Twin Towers. At first, we were imagining a small light aircraft, and nobody thought much of it. The Hereford lads doing the heavy labouring were totally uninterested anyway, on the grounds that anything that happened in the States wasn't going to affect their day-to-day life.
Then my mother-in-law rang up, and said "What does 'Breaking News' mean?" She had switched on the TV to watch an old film, and every channel had the footage of the plane going into the tower, and she had no idea that this was something that was really happening.
 
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
It seems to me that everyone, even those of us who had no connection with New York, has a World Trade Centre story.
Apart from being ill at the time, I had originally agreed with a friend that we'd spend a few days in New York in September. However, we couldn't agree on what to see and do. His priority was Grand Central Station, the subway, Penn Station, and looking at as many American trains as he could find.

He wasn't particularly interested in anything else, and if I was going to cross the Atlantic I wasn't going to spend my holiday hanging round railway stations thank you very much. So the plan fell through and indeed the friendship with it. But 11 September would have been the day we arrived.
 
Posted by Stumbling Pilgrim (# 7637) on :
 
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 my, yes - probably the first thing that affected me that way, and for the same reason (I was only six when JFK died, I knew it was important but didn't really register just how important). Doing the maths I must have been nine, and as we were saying a prayer at the end of the school day (that seems weird, but I'm sure that's what we were doing) the teacher, who IIRC was Welsh, asked if we had heard about the school in Wales that had been buried. We said we hadn't, feeling a bit [Confused] , and left. My mum met me outside as always, and as usual on a Friday we went up to the local high street to meet my dad to go shopping. He didn't make his usual fuss of me, or even say hello, just unfolded the evening paper to show us that famous, horrible picture of the top of the school appearing to float on a black sea. I think that was what made the initial impression on me - I don't think I'd ever seen my dad affected like that by anything before.

9/11 - I was at a placement as part of my university course (yes, I was a very mature student), and OH was out at a meeting, both of us having learned during the morning that we had no water at home due to a burst main. We coincidentally arrived home at the same time at lunchtime, and put on local radio, something we hardly ever did, to find out when it was likely to be fixed, only to discover that nobody was remotely interested in our burst water main. After spending a few minutes trying to work out what on earth we were listening to, we turned on the TV a few minutes after second impact. I don't know if it was BBC or CNN news, we flipped between the two, but I remember a reporter called Aaron somethingorother perched on a roof with all the chaos going on behind him. My placement was at a centre from which several Christian community ventures were run, and the next day the normal lunchtime prayer meeting was replaced with a service of prayer and meditation. One of the organisers was a builder who was working nearby, and he came in his hi-vis jacket and hard hat. He got up to speak about and pray for the rescue workers, but I don't remember what he said, only what he did - he placed his hard hat on the altar, took off the hi-vis jacket and draped it over the altar cross. One of the most powerful visual messages I've ever seen in a church, and it taught me a lot about the power of actions as well as words.

[ 06. February 2015, 21:07: Message edited by: Stumbling Pilgrim ]
 
Posted by Athrawes (# 9594) on :
 
I have been thinking of this a bit. I remember 9/11 as horrific, but it didn't have an emotional impact on me at the time. I think it was because it was so far away.
However, I can remember two other disasters which had a profound impact, even though I wasn't that old at the time. The first was the destruction of Darwin in 1974. I was 6 at the time, and we were living in Townsville. I can remember the footage, late on Boxing Day, I think (it may even have been Christmas Day,) of an ABC reporter driving along a ruined street in a white car, with the windscreen wipers going, as he described (in a very calm voice which I now recognise as extreme shock) what had happened the night before, to his house, and his neighbours. The footage is part of this documentary although they didn't use the voice over. It's about 2 minutes in.

The other one was a reporter in the Adelaide Hills during the Ash Wednesday bushfires, standing outside his home and describing his feelings as it burnt down.

[fixed link]

[ 07. February 2015, 13:31: Message edited by: jedijudy ]
 
Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on :
 
Not a specific date, but I remember listening to the news on the *wireless* in about 1940, when they broadcast the sound of an air raid over London with sirens and bombs.
Wedding of the present Queen and Prince Philip; no TV then but we were allowed to sit up and listen to the broadcast. I was at boarding school – was it the whole school in the hall, wrapped up in our rugs, or just senior classes???
The first moon landing, not the moment of hearing the news but the atmosphere in the school where I was teaching.
Princess Diana's death I heard on the car radio on my way from church to lunch at the house where some of us were gathering for lunch.
As for 9/11 – I was to have a bowel X-ray next day, had been taking meds to clear out the gut so I was sleeping on the La-Z-boy in the living room in case I had to rush to the bathroom. The phone rang and it was my daughter in Australia, who just said 'Mum, turn on the TV'

Tangent: A psychology lecturer reported that when JFK was killed he got his Psych 101 class to write down exactly where and how they heard of it. The next year he had Psych 102 do the same. Those who were in both classes in many cases remembered it quite differently the second time.

GG
 
Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :
 
shameless name drop

quote:
Originally posted by JoannaP:
I am not sure why this has stuck in my mind, but I vividly remember hearing that Terry Waite had been released; I have no idea when it was, but I do know where I was. I was doing the washing up, listening to a little radio hanging from the hook on the towel rack thingy.
I was talking to him just before Christmas! (But I too remember rejoicing at his release ... I had met him some years earlier and had stuttered shamefully dwindling prayers through many months).

/shameless name drop
 
Posted by Celtic Knotweed (# 13008) on :
 
I remember Thatcher resigning - we'd been listening to the radio in the 6th form common room, and I'd gone up to the library to get some work done as I had a free period. One of my friends came up and told me "she's gone". I can still remember which study bay I was in.

On 9/11 I was in work. At first we thought it was just another light plane, like the one which had flown into a skyscraper a few weeks before, then we heard about the second plane... The company's London office was evacuated as it was in the Canary Wharf building, and our department (in the Basingstoke office), spent most of the day wandering over to the one net-connected machine to check the ABC news website (the BBC site wasn't responding, so the computer user went for Oz on the grounds that there were fewer people awake and using the site!). A friend of mine had been over there on business and considering coming back via NY. I didn't dare email/text him, just waited and hoped, till I got a message on 13/9/01 that he was OK.

Most of the other sharp location memories I have are music - first time I heard several groups live; first opera I went to; but also the first panto I went to (with tickets in the stalls as they were a gift to the family from a friend!), where although I can't remember most of the action, I do remember the grand finale, and being able to see what the decorations at the side of the stage were for the first time (if we bought tickets it was always seats in the circle, which is too far away from these panels to see them clearly)
 
Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :
 
Mine, as I recall ...


And songs?


 
Posted by Jante (# 9163) on :
 
The investiture of Prince Charles- first time I remember school showing us a TV programme.
The safe return OF Apollo 13- I was at a friends birthday party and over tea we had the news on so her granddad could see what happened.
Lockerbie- I was babysitting and horrified at what I saw on the TV
Death of Diana- I was getting ready for church and omitted to tell my husband who was going to take a service in another town- he heard it on the car radio
9/11- clearing up my classroom a cleaner came in to tell me she'd heard it on the radio. Put the car radio on as soon as I got into the car and the TV as soon as I got home. My children were not happy I wanted the news on all night!
Strikes me the TV has a lot to answer in how I remember these events so vividly
 
Posted by MSHB (# 9228) on :
 
My earliest memory of public events was seeing big scary tabloid headlines screaming about the brink of WAR! The year was 1961. Cuba, I believe, though I didn't understand what was happening at the time - just something scary.

I remember being told at breakfast one day about the death of Marilyn Monroe - though it was probably more significant to my parents than to me (she was a celebrity for grown-ups, not so interesting to a child).

JFK I remember very well - and not long before that I remember hearing about the death of Jackie K's newborn son.

And Pope John.

From then on it would have been the usual stream of major public events others here have noted.

I found out about the Twin Towers in 2001 when I went to the local train station and all the people seemed rather subdued and sombre. Then I noticed the front page of the morning papers completely taken up with a picture of something disastrous. So I got all the details soon enough after that.
 
Posted by Signaller (# 17495) on :
 
HMS Sheffield: The nine o'clock news started, and went straight over to ol' stone-face from the MoD. Up to that moment the whole Falklands thing had seemed bit of a lark to us cosy suburbanites, who were too young for WW2, or Korea, or Suez.

The realisation that a Royal Navy ship could actually be destroyed- in the 1980s- changed a lot for me.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Jante--

Re TV and memories: I think a lot of that is due to repetition.

9/11, for instance: they kept showing the impacts and collapses over and over again, here in the US. Not just immediately, but over a long stretch of time. IMHO, it retraumatized viewers. I found that I either had to get my news from the radio, or turn on music during TV broadcasts. Has helped me with lots of other bad-news coverage, too.
 
Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :
 
The somber aftermath of 9/11 is something I remember, too. I can't remember actually hearing the news (though it would have been on the early morning radio news), but I vividly remember the quiet train ride into work.
 
Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
9/11, for instance: they kept showing the impacts and collapses over and over again. . . . IMHO, it retraumatized viewers. I found that I either had to get my news from the radio, or turn on music during TV broadcasts.
I couldn't watch it for months afterward on TV -- had to change the channel immediately. Still can't. Nor could I walk within seeing distance of Ground Zero for the longest time.
 
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
MSHB wrote:

quote:
JFK I remember very well - and not long before that I remember hearing about the death of Jackie K's newborn son.

Hm. I don't think I had ever heard about that. Thanks.

As for Diana, I guess I'll just come right out and say that I was with a group of jaded hipsters who treated the announcement of her death as funny. I can't remember if I joined in the general mockery, but I didn't put up any objections.

Sorry if that's in questionable taste, but then, this is a forum where people take bets on which celebrity will die next(NTTAWWT). The crowd I was hanging out with at that time basically regarded Lady Di the way that many people today regard Kim Kardashian.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
I spent most of 9/11 here on the ship. Someone started a thread, and we all shared whatever news and information we had, plus talking about how we felt.

It was a big help in dealing with things.

Moo
 
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
It was, though I was only lurking at that time.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
I'd been lurking, too, without joining, until 9/11.

[ 13. February 2015, 08:47: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
 
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
I spent most of 9/11 here on the ship. Someone started a thread, and we all shared whatever news and information we had, plus talking about how we felt.

It was a big help in dealing with things.

Moo
Just for reference/interest, the thread's here.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
I went to church without having watched the news and preached on whatever the readings were that day.

I was surprised to see a larger than usual congregation.

Now, I always watch the news and have a set of notes for an 'emergency sermon' should any disaster happen.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
forgot to say - that day being the death of Diana
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
Just remembered being at school when the deputy head got us all in after morning break to tell us the 'tragic news that Rhodesia has just declared U.D.I.'

We were left wondering where or who Rhodesia was and what UDI meant.
 


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