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

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9/11


<---born in 1994


I also remember Emmit Smith breaking the record for total rushing yards. I think this was '99 or 2000. Those are only 2 i can remember.
 
el diablo said:
Moon landing. Watched it live.
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^ This. The Apollo 11 landing is etched in my mind. It was Sunday morning and I'm sure the Houston churches were empty. I can still see the den, the orange shag carpet :facepalm:, the old TV, and my family watching it. I had no idea I'd someday get to work in NASA.

My 7th mission was 51-L, the Challenger disaster. I've never felt more empty in my life. I remember some of the astronauts had their offices in Bldg. 32, where I worked due, to an office shortage in Bldg. 4. I met Christa McAuliffe and spoke with her for just a minute about teaching, as my sister was also a teacher. She was an extremely sweet person. I think there will be a permanent black hole in everyone who was affected by this tragedy.
 
I remember watching the moon landings and seeing coverage of the Vietnam war, but to my young self those were just things that were always happening, and would continue to happen forever, so I attached no particular historical importance to them. I came to the early conclusion that your life direction was determined by the military draft: You'd either be free to live your life and do something cool like be an astronaut or a Beatle, or you'd die in a war in some godawful jungle.

And I could never understand why soldiers were always fighting "gorillas." Leave those poor animals alone!
 
Probably Reagan getting shot. I have a vague recollection of people talking about the Reagan/Carter election.

I was also confused about the leftist gorillas.

EDIT: I take it back - the first big news story I remember was Three Mile Island. I think because I grew up nearby I filed it under "local stories" in my head.
 
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Tralfaz said:
I remember watching the moon landings and seeing coverage of the Vietnam war, but to my young self those were just things that were always happening, and would continue to happen forever, so I attached no particular historical importance to them. I came to the early conclusion that your life direction was determined by the military draft: You'd either be free to live your life and do something cool like be an astronaut or a Beatle, or you'd die in a war in some godawful jungle.

And I could never understand why soldiers were always fighting "gorillas." Leave those poor animals alone!
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I thought I had it all figured out back then - if you were a boy, you had to get drafted and go fight in the army. If you were a girl, you had to endure the agony of childbirth. Thus was life balanced and fair.

And I was also confused by the gorillas thing. :grin:
 
Moon landing
Tate Murders
Hurricane Camille

All within 4 weeks of '69. Don't remember much after Camille for a long while.
 
Tralfaz said:
I remember watching the moon landings and seeing coverage of the Vietnam war, but to my young self those were just things that were always happening, and would continue to happen forever, so I attached no particular historical importance to them. I came to the early conclusion that your life direction was determined by the military draft: You'd either be free to live your life and do something cool like be an astronaut or a Beatle, or you'd die in a war in some godawful jungle.

And I could never understand why soldiers were always fighting "gorillas." Leave those poor animals alone!
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One thing that sticks out in my mind about the Vietnam war coverage was Cronkite on the TV with a daily body count of "dead", "injured" and "MIA" displayed on the screen.
 
Tiltsta said:
I remember driving about an hour in my dad's pickup truck to the theater to see the original Star Wars movie. It was fricken huge at the time. It opened the week before, and I remember being in my treehouse listening to a kid from the farm next door's tape recording of the movie because he went on opening day. He explained the whole movie while we listened to distorted laser blast sounds on cassette.
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I remember it was playing at a theater when we went to visit my uncle in Nags Head. My uncle told my dad it may be too scary because a guy gets his head cut off with a laser sword. Good thing my dad thought I was old enough to handle it. I guess my uncle and I have a different idea of what getting a head cut off means.
 
Guitar Heel said:
Hostage Crisis, Miracle on Ice, then Reagan.
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I totally forgot about the hostage crisis. I remember that one. I remember the tons of people I saw wearing a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse flipping the bird with "Hey Iran" on it. I remember a bunch of kids singing "Bomb Iran" to the tune of Barbara Ann on a bus going to a field trip.
 
Chad said:
I totally forgot about the hostage crisis. I remember that one. I remember the tons of people I saw wearing a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse flipping the bird with "Hey Iran" on it. I remember a bunch of kids singing "Bomb Iran" to the tune of Barbara Ann on a bus going to a field trip.
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Yep, every other car had a fuzzy, 5th generation photocopy of that taped in the back window. I don't think Ayatollah Khomeini ever saw one, though. :facepalm:
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Alex W said:
We were in school watching the Challenger take off.
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That's the story I was going to mention. I think I was in 3rd grade. The 4th grade class next to my classroom was watching it. I remember it was a very quiet bus ride home as we all listened to the news on the radio (parents these days would probably be mortified if the bus driver played such a news broadcast). The following week, the janitor (who was a really cool guy otherwise) got suspended for telling a bunch of us the Need Another Seven Astronauts joke.

I also remember building space ships with my legos and having them blow up in flight. I think my goal was to try and figure out for NASA what had happened to Challenger.

Second runner up would be the Exxon Valdez oil spill. 20 years later, I was up in Prince William Sound doing oil surveys and groundwater sampling on those same rocky beaches.
 
Moon landing.

Munich Olympic massacre.

I remember the drills and going to the basement of my grade school fallout shelter.

Lots of early early childhood memories. Riding a tricycle on the porch. Lying in bed at 4pm in the afternoon on Christmas Eve trying to go to sleep. Really too many early memories to list.
 
While I have general vague recollections of seeing Vietnam War coverage on TV, the clearest memory is the Watergate Hearings. I remember wanting to watch TV and all that was on were a bunch of old men sitting at green tables talking. I asked my mom what it was, and she told me I should watch it because it was important and was history in the making.
 
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