What is the first big news story you remember from childhood?

mongooz said:
so....while you are reminding us of what the OP was.....what's your big first news story?
mine was being sent home from school because kennedy was assinated......and then watching his funeral on tv.....in BLACK AND WHITE.
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Please see post # 7 of this thread.
 
I don't remember it but I've been told I was enraptured by Star Wars at the drive-in. Dunno whether it was the original or Empire they were talking about.

I basically have no memory of anything I can pin to a certain year before preschool. And then I always have to count back from the first year of junior high to remember what year that was.
 
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Fall of the Berlin Wall, collapse of the Soviet Union, probably.

Not an "event" so much as political awareness... But being in Northern Ireland with my grandfather and seeing soldiers with rifles in the streets, seeing my grandfather have a gun pointed at him by one of them.
 
Elvis dying is the first big news event that I remember. I have lots of memories earlier than that but thats mostly because I had a tumultuous childhood.
 
Probably Bobby Kennedy's assassination. I remember I was pissed that they bumped either Superman, or Scooby Doo or something for coverage of the funeral. I think I remember some apollo news from that year too. I was 5 turning 6 late in the year.

the best of the entire era was the moon landing and walk. Watched that live. But that was later. Watched all of that. Or at least all that Cronkite showed us on the news. From pre-launch to splash-down and etc.
 
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Earliest News story would have to be the same as the OP. Vietfuckingnam. I was 5 going on 6 when Saigon fell. My stepfather who had retired from the USMC the year before, after serving in both Korea and Vietnam was glued to the Zenith for hours. He was not enjoying what he was seeing. The tension in the house was palpable.

As for general memories, I remember small things from as young as 2. My first very clear and distinct memory is of moving from the house we lived in when I was born to a new, much bigger house in an unfinished development in 1972. I was 3. I remember the moving van we rented, big and green, with two elephant's (mother and child) on each side. I remember having a picnic on the bare living room floor on the first day of moving. My brother, sisters and I all sat in a circle around a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (long, long before they abbreviated it down to KFC). I even remember the wooden strips with the bazillion nails stcking up through them at the base of each stair that were anchor points for the gaed awful 1970s gold shag carpet that was installed throughout the home in the following days.
 
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jaxn slim said:
Kurt Cobain's suicide, probably. I was 11 and had only a few months before discovered MTV. I had broken my arm skateboarding a the day before and was stuck in bed.
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I was waiting tables at O'Charley's in Tuscaloosa, AL. That was the same year of the Oklahoma City bombing.
 
dmn23 said:
I was waiting tables at O'Charley's in Tuscaloosa, AL. That was the same year of the Oklahoma City bombing.
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I remember that one, too, but it was just over a year later....cop0

But you mention that, and I remember the David Koresh bullshit in Waco, Texas. That happened a year prior to Cobain blowing his head off. I remember that vividly. That's my new answer.
 
jaxn slim said:
I remember that one, too, but it was just over a year later....cop0

But you mention that, and I remember the David Koresh bullshit in Waco, Texas. That happened a year prior to Cobain blowing his head off. I remember that vividly. That's my new answer.
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I stand corrected, I really thought OKC was '94. The 90s are a bit foggy for me anyway.
 
I never really understood TV yellow as a guitar color until I watched the old live clips of the Kennedy assassination. It is amazing how the crappy TV cameras would distort like crazy when someone in a white jacket/dress was in the frame.
 
Watergate hearings. I remember sitting in my rocking chair and being unclear on the difference between the House of Representatives, the Senate and Congress.


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It has to be a tie; US troops starting to come home in body bags, and the Watts riots. 1965.

Earliest memory was the Seattle Worlds fair in '62.
 
Earliest Big News I remember? Not the Kennedy assassination, but the coverage of the funeral.
 
I guess the Johnstown flood of 1977. I got to see all my nieghbors fighting for life and well being on a television screen on vacation in New Mexico.

I was 6 at the time. Maybe something before that may be in there, but that is the only one that stands out.

Edit: Right afterwards Elvis died. So I guess as far as world news goes I'm with Mark.
 
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Seeing the newspaper in the stand at the corner market. I was in second grade I believe.
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