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Jonestown and Patty Hearst are the first news stories I remember the grownups talking about in hushed whispers. I remember Hinckley shooting Reagan, the Iranian hostages, the Challenger explosion, the Berlin Wall falling (my mom called me up telling me she remembered it going up).
And of course 9/11. I remember spending the day freaking out about my paramedic (now cop) buddy, who I din't hear from until midnight-he was on vacation in Hawaii. He came back a few days later, his squad lost 3 guys that day and he wound up doing a few 24-hour shifts at ground zero.
I actually recall Armstrong stepping on the moon, even though I was only five.
There was also the time when, at the behest of the CIA in collusion with some Politburo members, I assassinated Andropov. But no one's supposed to know about that, so forget I mentioned it.
I remember listening to Armstrong walk on the moon over the radio at primary school. That would be the earliest and, in the sense that it opened my eyes to the fact that a world existed oustide my neighbourhood, the most significant to me personally.
Nixon walking to the helicopter and the whole Watergate thing (also on b&w) was the first important thing i remember seeing and asking about and understanding (i was 9). Everything after Watergate is clear as a bell, and i have clear memories of sitting with my grandpa for Cronkite and watching war on the news but Vietnam went on for like a hundred years, and that wasn't moments so much. The evacuation (again with a helicopter) on that roof in Vietnam is clear as a bell too.
jon, one day you have to go to Berlin to the Checkpoint Charlie museum--unbelievable, and full of all the ways people tried to get out and over and under and stuff.
> I distinctly remember the ski-masked face of the Munich olympics terrorist on the balcony, and the disquieting vibe of peaceful-event-made-horrific that it brought.
> I also remember seeing live or at least unedited news footage of Sadat's assasination, and the dead bodies and survivors horribly mutilated in the reviewing stand. That was chilling, even more so in hindsight, knowing it was an introduction into islamic extremist terrorism.
The first things I remember seeing on the covers of Newsweek and Time were the Vietnam War and Nixon getting impeached/resigning. I remember seeing the now-famous photo of the Vietnamese girl running naked while screaming after being napalmed, but at the time I didn't understand what was going on. It was several years before I knew what napalm was.
I was approximately two during the first moon landing, and (of course) older during the rest of Apollo, but by the time I was aware of it, it already seemed like ancient history. The first thing from the space program I remember from the time it happened was the Skylab snafu.
i wish i remember seeing the moon thing--i'm sure we all watched it.
TV wasn't as universal then as it is now, though and it was much more common to listen to world events unfold. Certainly, when I was growing up in NZ, it wasn't the ever-present being in our lives that it is now. Those are the times that TV is at its best.
Aside from the moon landing, has anyone noticed that all the events we're remembering were violent, if not downright horrific? And it continued throughout our adolescence and adulthood with Columbine, Tiananmen, Oklahoma City, 9/11, etc.
We're the first generation to grow up with media saturation as a given (baby boomers can at least remeber TV as something new), so we've had the horrors of the world beamed at us from day one. We can be forgiven a certain amount of numbness, nihilism and a sense that the world has gone mad, methinks.
Jonestown is the primary reason for my intense distrust of organized religion. Although I was in elementary school, it shook me to the bone. I think it was Time that had an aerial photo of the bodies and had to do a fold-out to accomodate them all.
I remember watching the first moon landing and running outside to see if I could see them up there walking around. Watching "Easy Rider" in a movie theater when it first came out (it was rated M and I was thrilled when I saw breasts).
My first political convention I ever watched involved Hubery Humphrey-he made an impression on me. What it was, I can't say except that I was fascinated that his initials were HHH and I had never heard the name Hubert before.
George Wallace also sticks in my mind. My father explained to me that he was a wicked man but wouldn't tell me why.
I remember the moon landing. I was about five or so and my parents woke me up and brought me downstairs to watch it on TV. My father kept saying, you have to remember this your whole life, and I have. I remember being bored and tired and not being able to see the TV through the grown-ups. Then later, I remember Watergate, although I didn't understand what was going on, the older kids on the bus and everyone's parents were all talking about it and it was the only thing on TV. Vietnam seemed like it was just always there, my whole life as a child until suddenly it was over. And Patty Hearst! I remember Patty Hearst!
jrossi, I think the fact that Jonestown and Patty Hearst were my earlist news meomories at least somewhat accounts for my distrust of hubris and utopianism of any kind. I've argued on MeFi that they were pivotal events in the country's rightward swing in the 80's (at least in the "the world really has gone mad, maybe we need to get back to old fashioned values, blahdy blah" sense).
Of course decades later we had Waco, with the double barrelled blast of wacko religion and government gone wild.
One of my personal mysteries is a memory I cannot place. I was very very young, and in a playpen. Through the bars I watched an absolutely interminable state funeral for a US president. To this day I don't know which president it was. Current best guess is Eisenhower, but I'll never know for sure.
Man, I remember Patty Hearst. And Vietnam - it was just something that was always in the background of life for me (we have always been at war with Eurasia) until one day it suddenly just ended. It was almost as if I only noticed that it existed when it ended. Again, the lack of TV probably meant that Vietnam had less impact for me than for those in other countries, where it was pretty much the first "made for TV" war.
Earliest: the Falklands War and Chernobyl's meltdown.
I only remember the Falklands because of people talking about it on my periphery, and because of a book I remember reading that was a sort of kiddified version where Thatcher was an actual tin woman-robot-thing. I remember listening to the radio at school every Tuesday morning, and one particular Tuesday about something to do with a place called Chernobyl in Russia. Likewise the space shuttle explosion in 1985.
I remember the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, and what a fairytale it was. I learned what the Cold War was when I was about seven, from a children's book by Raymond Briggs about two old people in a nuclear bombing (a great book if you can get hold of it; I think it's called "When the Wind Blows").
I remember my Dad (a Vietnam veteran) watching a documentary about My Lai with intense interest. This must've been the late 70's because I was very young and I remember it being in the sunburst-carpeted basement of our first house.
People around my age (born December 3, 1970) are the youngest people to remember a lot of things: life before PC ubiquity, when there were only 3 TV networks, before video games, cell phones, bicycle helmets, ....
People around my age (born December 3, 1970) are the youngest people to remember a lot of things: life before PC ubiquity, when there were only 3 TV networks, before video games, cell phones, bicycle helmets, ....
Ah, I remember all that too and I was born in December 1975. But as far as significant world events, I think the first big one I recall was the Challenger explosion. I was in third grade and all of the teachers were so excited that Christa McAuliffe was going to be the first teacher in space.
The Cuban missile crisis, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, JFK assassinated in Dallas, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King shot down, Neal Armstrong landing on the moon, Watergate hearings, the Saturday Night Massacre and Nixon resigning, the Iran Hostage Crisis, Mt. St. Helens, Challenger exploding over Cape Kennedy, and 9/11. Sheesh, I've lived in interesting times.
Remember how the UHF knob had a very satisfying whirr when you spun it too quickly?
Oh yeah. Remeber old school cable boxes where you could pick up black and white scrambled porn? That was great, except now I can only get aroused when looking at porn cross-eyed.
Hey, gynovision! I worked at a tv station, and we pulled our programming down by satellite and taped it for later in the week. The crew would point the dish at "Spice!" and watch rolling, scrambled porn until 1 min before the "My little pony" feed started, and then switch at the last minute and roll tape. Some episodes of MLP had brief snippets of gynovision in front of the slate.
Mine was a Commodore Vic-20, in 7th grade, 1982, bought with paper route money.
The first one in my neighborhood was the Apple IIe owned by the rich "hippie" family up the block. But what I'm saying is I can remember when nobody had a computer in their house, when "computer" meant some big ol's blinken-lights device that filled a room.
The first historical event I remember well was JFK's assassination, and doubly so because my family was moving into a new house in The Valley™ that day and while the movers were unloading furniture, I was having my first day at a new school. Then, at lunch, there was an announcement over the school PA that the President had been shot. Being preoccupied with what was going on at the new school, I misunderstood it as the Student Body President, and thought "Whoa, this is a tough school!"
(Interestingly, my parents sold that house umpteen years later, putting it up on the market the day of the first attempt on President Ford's life... They seriously considered waiting until there was a Democrat in the White House.)
chernobyl. i remember sitting on the floor in the family room because i'd woken up early and the tv news was on as my parents were getting ready to go to work (well, my dad. my mom was up for breffixt). they were way at the other end of the room and i was playing on the brown rug by the really thick curtains. it was april, and i think it was cold outside, and dark. what's weird is i remember this as happening BEFORE the challenger disaster, which i also remember very, very vividly -- but somehow the two are reversed in everyone else's reality.
I'm pretty sure it's the (or perhaps a) moon landing for me. I remember a little silvered paper model of the LEM that I put together with my dad's help -- so many tabs! I don't remember actually watching the moon landing itself, alas.
I remember my parents listening to Nixon on the radio; I used to think this was his resignation, but we were in another house by then, so it must have been an earlier momentous event, and which one I can't quite divine (I've asked).
I wish I could remember the Midwest earthquake, around '71 or so, but for whatever reason, I don't. My little brother does!
My father has an oft-told tale about hearing the Pearl Harbor announcement on the radio, but according to his older brother, that was impossible for various logistical reasons. Hasn't stopped him from telling it.
I was in college when the Challenger blew up. I was working at the gallery; we were installing a show and the artist and I were talking about how to hang this huge painting when the fire alarm went off and we all had to leave the building. We were standing in the parking lot joking about all the valuable art sitting there unattended when somebody came running up to tell us about the Challenger. It was surreal; it seemed as if the fire alarm and the space shuttle were somehow linked.
Nadia Comaneci
The US Bicentennial
Iranian hostage crisis
Mt. St. Helens erupting
Reagan getting shot
The Pope getting shot
John Belushi dying (I was in the car with my parents and I heard it reported on the radio)
Spider Dan climbs the Sears Tower
Jane Byrne elected mayor of Chicago (first female mayor)
Harold Washington elected mayor of Chicago (first black mayor)
Harold Washington's death
The first space shuttle
The Challenger explosion (I was in 7th grade...my class was watching the liftoff on TV. Then the principal announced what had happened on the PA system. Didn't everyone know someone at that time whose teacher was supposed to be the alternate to Christa McAuliffe in case something happened to her before the liftoff?)
Laurie Dann's shooting rampage
Live Aid
Hands Across America
The Berlin Wall falling
Iraq invades Kuwait
Both Iraq wars
Plainfield tornados
Chicago Loop underground floods
The first World Trade Center bombings
John Wayne Gacy's execution
9/11
I remember hearing people talk about the deaths of Elvis and of John Lennon, though at that point I didn't know who either of them were. I remember asking my dad if John Lennon was related to Vladimir Lenin. What a weird kid to know about Lenin but not Lennon.
The earliest major events I remember are all pretty lowlights of the last quarter of last centure. Iran hostage. Reagan v. Carter debate. (I was with someone who kept saying how great Reagan was, but I wasn't buying it.) John Lennon getting shot, which may have the greatest impact of any of these events in the long run.
I remember Challenger and Christa Mcauliffe very well, and I watched Columbia live on TV. I wasn't ready for that to happen that quiet weekend morning.
I also remember the launch of the MacIntosh. I thought "I want one of them", and I didn't even know about pr0n yet.
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