What was the first major news story you remember as a child?

John Lennon's assassination.

The death of Princess Diana. My aunt and uncle were visiting that weekend, and I remember my mom and aunt sobbing, staring at the television. My siblings, cousins and I didn't understand why they were so upset. It was definitely the first time I was aware of public events on a large scale.

grace kelly's tragic car wreck. we were off school for some reason.

Khomeini's fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

Elvis dying. I was five and my babysitter cried.

When Pee Wee Herman was arrested for indecent exposure.

president kennedy assassination. i only remember cause my mom was watching tv and crying for 3 days.

John F Kennedy assassination - I made a scrapbook and cried all over it. Been a Democrat ever since (I was 8).

R1 here, I remember my uncles, who were teens in the 60's, repeatedly playing Double Fantasy and one said something along the lines of crazy Americans and their guns.

The Gulf War.

Probably the Dunblane Primary School massacre in 1996. I remember all the adults around me being very shocked.

Watergate—didn't know what it all meant, but I remember my grandmother being pissed about her "stories" being preempted.

LBJ's funeral

Columbine.

We have some young'uns posting in this thread. Chuck & Di royal wedding for me.

Tonya Harding

When Sally Kirkland didn't win the Oscar.

When the space shuttle exploded. I think we were actually watching it live in class.

Monica Lewinsky and the Impeachment attempts. I was in kindergarten and my Clinton-hating grandfather couldn’t shut up about it.

9/11 was the first one I remember on a personal level.

Was it Challenger or Tchernobyl? I can sort of remember the news coverage on these events, but not clearly.

The first one I clearly and fully remember is the fall of the Berlin wall.

JFK’s assassination. Yes, I’m that old (I was 8). I remember my mother crying and crying. I didn’t understand. I just knew something horrible had happened. And it went on for days. The weirdest thing was i remember it being so quiet outside.

Princess Diana dying

[quote]9/11 was the first one I remember on a personal level.

Same for me. 9/11 was when I became permanently tuned into "the news" for good.

Moon landing - 1969.

I guess I'm older than all of you. I don't remember this as a specific news STORY, but I definitely remember the news coverage of the 1960 election. I was 8 at the time.

Yes I remember the Watergate Hearings as so boring .... I also remember the airplanes on the tarmac and soldiers returning from Vietnam - but I live in Los Angeles and I have a vivid memory of the live coverage of the house on fire and the police shootout with the SLA _ reporters crouching behind cars and speculating that Patty Hearst was burning in the fire - I was about 8 - I didn't know how far or near the whole thing was - scary!

Diana I remember but not glued to TV. 9/11 was the big one

I was five when the Gulf War started and I have memories of the news coverage and how TV shows would get interrupted. I also remember the Waco raids.

The Challenger space shuttle disaster. I never realized how many of us kids in the US watched that live until years later.

John Kennedy's inauguration, not the swearing in ceremony itself, but it all being on TV. I was only 4, so I didn't understand what all it was, but I do remember seeing Kennedy on tv while "Hail to the Chief" was played and my father telling me he was the President now. I have much more vivid memories of things over the next few years, such as Alan Shepard's, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn's space shots. I remember most major events of the weekend (Friday through Monday) JFK was killed, including Oswald being killed and Kennedy's funeral the next day.

JFK. I was in first grade and they let us all out of school. I guess no one had a working Mom.

When Mrs Patrick Campbell lost her virginity. It was a very clammy tale......

Fidel Castro had come to power in Cuba. A mob of citizens tied ropes to the concrete eagle sitting atop the U.S. Embassy in Havana, and yanked it down.

US leaving Vietnam

The assassination of John Lennon. This was long before I became a fan of the Beatles, but somehow I still knew it was a big deal.

The assassination attempt on President Reagan.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Boy, what a shock that was.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. School was cancelled for weeks!

I remember being at a doctors office and seeing a magazine cover with a story about Reagan being shot.

I knew my parents really really really didn't like Reagan, and I couldn't imagine why anyone would make a guys over him being shot. I mean, he survived.

President Roosevelt’s death in 1945. I was 7 walking home and our neighbor was on her front porch crying. The President had just died. Nothing but slow ‘funeral’ music on the radio for a long time. Yes, I’m old but going strong.

I remember hearing about WWII having happened in the past, but not understanding what it meant. I knew it was bad because of the Nazis, but my father used to talk about it as if it had been nothing but a big party. I was extremely confused.

As a current event, the earliest thing I remember was Khrushchev coming to the US. I went to Catholic school and our pastor used to go on incessantly about how we had to pray to God Almighty, his Son, and his Son's Blessed Mother to protect us from Khrushchev and the Communists, because if they got their way "Khrushchev would hang (us) out to dry." I had nightmares about literally being hung from a clothesline with clothespins for months.

Elvis dying.

Rodney King riots

I remember watching the moon landing on the b&w portable TV in my parents bedroom - we were sitting on the bed - I had just turned 6 and every time my 4 year old sister fell asleep I would shake her awake and say “this is history”

The death of princess Diana. I was six and I'd never seen people cry over the news before. I remember feeling incredibly sad for the princes, at images of her coffin with the hand written card on top saying "mummy."

Vietnam POW's getting off planes and their families running to them, arms open.

R44 I was 4 when the funeral occurred. When I saw pictures, I figured they were giving an Egyptian mummy a royal parade.

Watergate.

[quote]I remember being at a doctors office and seeing a magazine cover with a story about Reagan being shot.

I remember it was on my birthday and was dreading it would become a 'horrible date in history' forever.

The OJ Simpson trial.

r44 I was 8 and that Mummy card freaked me out

JFK was Catholic!

The worst part of the shuttle explosion was that the networks replayed the explosion every single day for over a year and a half.

A year and a half. Boom.

I still feel bad for the families that were left behind. They couldn’t turn on the media at all. A million times worse trying to grieve.

Nixon's trip to China in 1966--I was six years old

Sorry--I mean in 1972 (I was born in 1966).

[quote]I was 8 and that Mummy card freaked me out

Freaky for sure, but Dodi al-Fayed *was* Egyptian.

JFK, barely.

More recently, 9/11. I still recall the morning the attack occurred: upon arising in the morning, I'd always flip on CNN to learn of overnight events while preparing for the work day. The NYC CNN scenes were like a surreal disaster movie. At first, I'd thought I'd accidentally selected a movie channel; I could not comprehend what I was watching.

F-16s were immediately dispatched to monitor the costal US states for surveillance. Though I could hear the F-16s all day, they were no where in sight. Eerie.

JFK, they sent us home from school.

Watergate. Preempted mom’s soaps. Also Nixon’s resignation, which was the first part of it I actually understood. (“The President quit.”)

Winston Churchill's funeral.

The Challenger explosion. They kept showing the footage and I think those explosion trails just seared into my 5-year-old mind. I still remember looking at the magazine cover, Time I think, of the explosion.

The Lindbergh kidnapping. I was in grade school and I remember my mother sitting before the radio while I had breakfast, and she would still be sitting there when I returned home.

First US space launch of Alan Shepard in 1961. I was in first grade and the principal announced it over the loudspeaker. I also vaguely remember my grandparents watching the Kennedy inauguration on television a year earlier but I spent most of that day playing outside in the snow.

John Foster Dulles' funeral.

No shit.

Freddie Mercury's death

OP - mine is the same - RFK assassination.

Nixon's resignation. I was 4 and had no idea what was going on.

The moon landing is the first time I think I really paid attention to a news story,though I had seen Vietnam coverage for years (my dad watched Walter Cronkite EVERY night) thats the one that captured my attention the most.

JFK death. I would have been 7

Oliver North trial. I didn't really understand it, but it went on and on.

Then the OJ trial, which I also wasn't all that invested in either. I loved People v OJ when it was on, though.

Manson family murders - Sharon Tate, etc.

Al Franken's resignation. They sent us home from school.

Eisenhower's suicide.

The Betty White shooting.

The Bowling Green Massacre.

Maude's abortion.

The night they drove Old Dixie down.

When Mia Farrow had shorn her long hair into that ultra short pixie.

Gladiator!

The Cuban missile crisis.

Nixon 24/7!

The 1976 Montreal Olympics (I was 6 and living in nearby Ottawa at the time).

First major global news story I can remember is the Tenerife Disaster of 1977, still to this day the worst aviation disaster in history.

Queen Elizabeth's coronation, I was 2.

The Challenger, then Baby Jessica. That was one dumb baby.

Our Lady of the Angels school fire in Chicago. Look it up, bitches.

Another for Elvis dying

RFK's assasinatuion/

So many of these made such a deep impression on me as a kid and young adult.

Like many others around my age, Watergate and its ceaseless coverage got my attention when it bumped all my shows. The only thing I distinctly remember was the culmination: Nixon getting on the helicopter for the last time. I should've been celebrating since it meant a return to my cartoons, but I was genuinely moved by the spectacle, even though I understood none of it.

A bit later, Jim Jones and the Guyana tragedy had me horrified but unable to look away. Sometimes I have to question my parents' thinking when they ran the evening news on the tiny TV in the kitchen before dinner.

I love you, R71

The kidknapping of the Lindbergh baby.

The Challenger explosion. Before it happened I remember Christa McAuliffe was on the cover of our Weekly Reader and our teacher said soon anyone would be able to travel into space. So much for that.

JFK assassination. I was in kindergarten and a neighbor drove over to the school to get her daughter (we stayed in school the entire day). She saw me and said oh I'll drive you home. The neighbor lady was crying, and her daughter had been crying, an "older" 6th grader. Got home and mom was crying.

I remember watching on live tv Lee Harvey Oswald being shot, too. We had a family event to go to later that afternoon, and someone brought a portable tv so everyone could keep up with the latest news. It was wall to wall news coverage on our 3 networks. Having a portable tv was quite a big deal at the time.

Waco

I remember hearing about the Chowchilla California school bus kidnapping as a kid while we were on summer vacation on the radio news. Being the same age as those kids it really scared me. Also from the same trip I remember updates about Karen Ann Quinlan, girl in a coma who was the forerunner of Terry Schiavo. This would have been in July 1976 on vacation at Bethany Beach, Delaware.

the 72 Munich Olympics when the Israeli wrestling team was taken hostage and killed...i was 12 and my mom let me stay up all night and home from school the next day

Betty Broderick!!!!!!!!

I remember Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) beating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight crown. I listened to it on the radio in my bunk bed.

The Baldwin Hills dam break.

I was just listening to some old-time radio shows from the '50s, and at one point the announcer broke in with BREAKING NEWS that the national coal strike had ended.

I remember my mom telling me how they interrupted her class in school to announce that the King had abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson.

BTW, these things both happened in the US, not the UK.

[quote]I remember hearing about the Chowchilla California school bus kidnapping as a kid while we were on summer vacation on the radio news.

I remember when that happened a friend at work (who'd just relocated from the east coast to California) had no idea what Chowchilla was. She initially thought it was a cross between a chow-chow and a chinchilla.

The sinking of the Andrea Doria. I was 5 and I remember seeing the photo of the ship going under on the cover of the NY Daily News.

Guyana tragedy

Ethel Merman died.

Edmund Dantes' escape from the Chateau D'If.

I recall our class starting doing current events for homework in June 1968. My father gave me the NY Daily news evening edition and I decided to clip an article on Bobby Kennedy's campaign for president and write a summary. The following week we had to do another one, and that is when RFK was shot, so I chose to cover his assassination as by second current event. It was a really hard way to be introduced to news articles.

R104 I forgot to include a cover of that days' Daily News coverage.

Baby Jessica in that damn well

Moon landing in July of 1969. I hadn't started school yet but I remember being in a room full of school-aged kids watching a black and white TV.

My mom said when she was young the average person knew nothing about the moon, and for all they knew people were looking back at us from here.

Lindbergh baby kidnapping. It seems like just yesterday...

I remember Elvis dying. My mom played his music all day. I was 5🎶

I was walking by the television when they announced Judy Garland died. I fainted.

I was seven.

President Reagan being shot.

Nixon winning in 1968.

Harold Holt (Australian PM) drowning in 1967.

Although I noticed a newspaper article about Elvis's death when I was six, I had no idea who we was or how big the story was.

The first huge story for me was the Iranian hostage crisis, which was reported endlessly on AM radio every morning on the station wagon school bus.

Challenger explosion

I am suspicious of the supposed nonagenarians who recall the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

On another kidnapping note, I had never heard of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping. Fucking nightmarish.

I've the barest memory of RFK; first half-way decent memory is of the moon landing, my parents waking me up to watch it live.

Iran hostage crisis in '79. I also remember people wearing t-shirts that said "Hey Iran!" and showed Mickey Mouse flipping the bird.

I also remember stories about the long lines at gas stations due to the gas crisis.

I'm not sure when or who it was but I heard the story of someone kidnapped and buried alive in a box. (actually there was a TV Movie of it I might have seen.)

That always freaked me out as a kid. It must have registered with Patty Hearst too because in the "Patty Hearst" film she says in the narration stuff like "please just don't bury me alive."

Anyone know the story and the TV movie?

Murder of nursing students by Richard Speck in Chicago and University of Texas tower shooting. Both happened around the same time, summer of 1966.

Barbara Jean Mackle was buried alive on a box.

r119, I wonder if it is the Chowchilla kidnapping. It has turned up a few times on this thread.

I could have included Patty Hearst on my list. I used Nixon's last helicopter departure from the White House, but PH was also in 1974, and it seemed like all the kids were talking about her. I just don't recall any single one news story. It was more kids imagining her sordid life on the lam.

John Lennon getting shot. My sister worked at a radio station and it came over the teletype. She called me as soon as she found out.

r5 me too, and I was too young to know who Elvis was but I remember my mom and her friends acting like it was a big deal when he died.

For r119

Watching TV coverage of Robert Kennedy's assassination. He had just been in our town about a month before. Our elementary school was along the motorcade route and we all went out to wave as he drove by. He was in an open convertible and I remember he had a lot of gray/white hair.

Mt. St. Helens erupting.

Princess Diana's death. I was four years old.

JFK's assassination is my earliest memory. I was three, and all I really recall is the flag draped casket in the Great Rotunda on our black and white TV, and how sad my mom was.

When Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? swept so many of the major Academy Awards I was six. I told my mom how badly I wanted to see it. Given the title, I thought it was a move for kids. When she said it wasn't, I was very confused.

I’m in Australia - so when the moon landing happened, we were let out of school early to go watch it on tv. It as a big deal. Both my parents were home. Old black and white TV set.

Later that year, there was an abduction and murder of a child here - Vicky Barton - and I remember the news on that too. She was abducted and it was speculated she’d been murdered - but they didn’t discover her body for many years.

The failed rescue of hostages from Iran in 1980. I was five.

Ditto baby Jessica in that well. Hours of my life I will never get back

First lunar landing. We had the only color TV in the neighborhood and all the neighbors were crowded in our living room to watch BLACK AND WHITE coverage. I was five.

The Lindbergh baby kidnapping really r61? You must be older than dirt.

MLK assasination. They made Kmart close early and had armored tanks rolling down The streets of Macon, Ga.

JFK's assasinatiion. I was only a toddler, but I can still remember my Mom sobbing.

Not my first but one that really affected me, The Oklahoma City bombing.

The election of Jimmy Carter.

The Chowchilla Kidnapping happened when I was a teenager, but I do remember it.

I remember that we were watching TV, and whatever we were watching was interrupted to announce that Joseph Stalin had died. While my family didn't jump up and cheer, they seemed to be happy that he was dead. I thought it was strange that they would be happy about someone's death.

The death of Lucy. I was watching that Chuck Woolrey game show that aired in the morning and they cut that programming to announce her passing.

R 74, R75, R 102, THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY DAY.

Nancy Kerrigan getting hit with the baton.

Back in 1968, my Dad took my brother and me on a different route to his second job, because of rioting in our city. We were poor white people, trying to make a living. My brother and me accompanied my Dad, to help him vacuum offices and empty trash containers. No one ever explained to us what the rioters were protesting. I didn't learn (or understand) the issue until I was already middle-aged. I knew about Martin Luther King, Jr, but had no idea that whole city blocks had been burnt down here,.

For people interested in Patty Hearst this is a fantastic documentary:

Only because I was in it: the 1959 Yellowstone earthquake. 28+ killed, major issues for survivors. I was tiny, pretty scared, and got sick from dysentery.

Another one for the RFK assassination. I think we were watching the coverage on the Today show.

The FBI knew about the Hearst kidnapping before hand! Idiots.

I'm Canadian and I remember the 1995 Quebec Referendum really well, for some reason. Internationally, I suppose the first major news stories I remember are the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa.

The Summer of Love. RFK's death yet again, and those of MLK, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. The bombings in Vietnam. The Zodiac Killer. The moon landing. The Chicago 8. Kent State. Riots everywhere. One long blur of Cronkite and Reasoner nightly on our huge box of a Magnavox.

JFK assasination, in first grade. Our teacher, a nun, rolled a TV on an elevated platform into the classroom for us to watch the rest of the day. I knew something bad happened to our president, but it was over most of our 6-7 year old heads.

The 1956 mid-air collision between a United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Constellation over the Grand Canyon in Arizona; all 128 persons aboard the two planes died. The planes had taken off from L.A. a few minutes apart and were flying east in uncontrolled airspace when they collided. When neither plane reported reaching its next checkpoint, a search was initiated. At first it was thought than both had crashed separately, but the wreckage revealed that they had collided.

Yes, I'm old.

Oj Simpson trial

Robert Kennedy assassination

President Obama being elected the first time.

The moon landing

JFK's assassination and funeral. I was 10.

1986: NASA space shuttle Challenger . I had nightmares about that for weeks.

The O.J. trial. Updates were played over the P.A. system at my school.

9-11

The murder and subsequent cover up of Dorothy Kilgallen.

Birth of Little Ricky

When they fired on Fort Sumter

I remember being at another kid's house and on TV they announced that Frank Reynolds the anchorman had died. The kid's mother screamed! (and then her husband got mad at her for making such a fuss.)

People were really wrapped up in their TV News people back then.

Pope John Paul’s visit to Boston in October 1979. Being Polish Catholics in Boston, it was required viewing. I was 10.

I remember JFK campaigning on Long Island in 1960 when I was five years old. As far as a news story on TV, it would have to be JFK's assasination three years later.

Clarence Thomas pubic hair in Coke.

Virginia Tech massacre.

R168 types prepubescent. Or his parents didn't let their kids watch TV.

I could have been someone's first memory but Michael Jackson stole my spotlight. Bitch.

I lived near the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980, and remember standing in my back yard, waving a sign for Jimmy Carter, who was flying over in a helicopter.

A year later, I remember watching the assassination attempts on both Reagan and Pope John Paul on television. I mailed the pope my allowance (coins taped to a piece of paper) to aid in his recovery.

The Iran hostage crisis and the election of Ronald Reagan.

R169 actually, you are spot on! We were not allowed to watch tv! Good spot!

There may be earlier news story memories that I cannot date, but the earliest memory - for certain - was the presidential campaigns and election of 1960.

Anita Hill or Rodney King

Also Kurt Cobain's suicide and Michael Jackson being accused of molestation.

Apollo landing in 1969 is the first major story I can remember. I would save the newspapers with pictures of the landing until my younger sister chopped them up and used them for show-and-tell.

My birth.

I remember being about 4 watching Michael Jackson's video statement where he denied being a child molester. I didn't really understand what he was talking about or who he was but I understood enough to find him really creepy.

Politically nothing made an impression until the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal which was everywhere, though I do recall being stuck on a long car ride listening to my aunt and uncle blathering about Whitewater.

Teapot Dome scandal

The invention of the wheel.

The death of Elvis

Several news stories stuck in my head from the 1960s:

The assisination of JFK

The Beatles come to America

Richard Speck murdered the eight nurses in the middle of the night in their apartment in Chicago

The Charles Manson Murders

The Vietnam War

The hippies and protests against the war

The Cuban middle crisis. I was 3. My mother took me and my brother to her home town. My great uncle had a bunker that would hold our entire extended family under his store downtown. I don’t remember much of the trip.. we flew ...

I clearly remember Elvis as we were driving my grandmother home from a visit (she lived 3 hours away) we switched on the radio and there was a call in show where people were calling in and talking about their memories of Elvis but no one was making it clear he had died. My grandmother got upset and said "Oh my God, I bet something has happened to Elvis!" . She made us pull over so she could buy the afternoon newspaper (they had those then) to see if it was reported but he must not have died in time to make the paper. Soon enough of course, we knew that the King was DEAD.

The bay of pigs. I also remember during that time Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table. It really scared me because I was aware that he had nukes.

Tough to say.

I could swear I remember Nixon resigning (I would have been 6), but that could have been replays of his resignation speech. But it was '74 if I'm remembering the original. I remember asking my mother about Karen Anne Quinlan and Patty Hearst because I didn't understand what those stories meant. So those may have been '75. I feel like I remember the two assassination attempts on Ford; those would have been in '75 too. And I definitely remember the '75 World Series (Red Sox vs. Reds).

I definitely remember watch Brady Bunch & Partridge Family on Fri nights. BB was cancelled in '74, so that lines up with me becoming aware of stuff in '74.

The Alamo.

Robert Kennedy funeral

Vietnam

The death of Judy Garland

JFK assasination. In reading group in first grade. Announcement emphasized that it was only an attempt. For some odd reason, I remember some kid had his hand down his pants. Later in day I thought I knew something because I said the "filibusters " were going to take over (?). Guess I just learned that word. Canfield elementary school in LA. Dorothy Troeger was principal. Random memories

King Edward Longshanks instituting Prima Nocta.

MLK and RFK assassinations.

The Berlin Wall coming down

"Mission Accomplished"

Moon landing

The Virginia Piper kidnapping in Minneapolis in 1972--the basis for the movie "Fargo."

It wasn't that big of a deal nationally, but it was a huge deal locally--the kidnappers asked for $1 million, and they got it (it was the national record for a ransom at the time). They had planned to kill her but she talked her way out of it. It was also very creepy because (as in Fargo) they kidnapped her in broad daylight--they just walked up to her while she was gardening in front of her mansion and took her away.

I was convinced for a year or so after I would be kidnapped, even though my parents were middle-class nobodies.

Son of Sam killer in NYC. Even though I was in adjacent Long Island, I remember feeling scared

When the Challenger blew up.

It was the JFK assassination, although I was only a toddler.

The JFK Assassination.

One of the few times in my life that I actually saw my Dad cry.

The Manson murders, but I didn't really understand what was going on. We lived in the Hollywood/Los Feliz area and my parents were really scared after the La Bianca murders in Los Feliz.

Vaguely remember some of the NASA stuff - not sure which ones

Then Watergate hearing taking a lot of airtime

Eisenhower elected 1952, watching my parents sitting by the radio (no tv) an weeping. Dirt poor farm family in the south, they knew they were fucked, and they were.

Elvis dying. I was four at the time. Later, the Jamestown Massacre, death of John Lennon, Mt. St. Helens exploding and, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, which I'm kind of surprised people never talk about anymore. I remember that being a huge big deal at the time.

For me I think it was Desert Storm. I remember the yellow ribbons everywhere and seeing the oil wells burning on TV.

I remember the OJ Simpson trial and the 1996 Election going on in a general sense, but I don't have memories of specific moments for those, except for voting for Ross Perot in our class's mock election. The 1994 Lillehammer Olympics too, if that counts.

I guess the earliest for me is Princess Diana dying. I don't have memories of finding out though, just people talking about it the next day. Earliest distinct news memory would be the Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998.

The Omaha bombing.

*Omagh bombing. For some reason I thought that happened 10 years before it did. Which means my earliest memory of a particular news story was Fred and Rose West. I recall those infamous photos on the front pages for weeks.

Challenger disaster.

I dimly remember the reporting on the death of Pope John XXIII. That was five months before the JFK assassination. My upbringing was decidedly midwestern protestant. I remember how strangely I thought the pope's costume and how extravagantly large was St. Peter's.

Even in the summer after kindergarten, I thought it all grotesquely excessive.

The battle at Gettysburg.

The wedding of Princess Margaret.

Sputnik being launched

Fall of the Berlin Wall. (I’m in Germany)

The '76 election.

The Kennedy assassination. On a local level it was a news story of an estranged husband who took his child for a visit and then killed the toddler and left his body in a field. When the body was finally found the grandmother ID'd the dead child by a red button she had sewn on his coat the day the dad picked him up. I was maybe 6 when it happened and it has stuck with me all these years.

The death of Princess Diana.

Interesting to have one's first memory be RFK's death, but Martin Luther King's death a couple months before went unnoticed.

That must have been a few weeks of crucial developmental steps.

Or something.

JFK's assassination and Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. The latter happened on my eighth birthday.

Watergate. And wondering why they named a jello salad after it.

The 1972 Munich Olympics. I still remember a stunned Jim McKay saying, "They're all gone."

Moon landing and manson murders. I was 5 in the summer of 1969.

The TV news and funeral coverage of the astronauts killed in on the launching pad at Cape Kennedy in 1967, and then the assassination news and funeral coverage on TV of Robert Kennedy. Now with the eyeglasses and almost all white hair, I get a lot of younger people at work asking me, "Do you remember what it was like when President Kennedy was killed?" Uhm, no, I was 1 year and 2 months old.. So it's a weird feeling that coming up on the 50th anniversary of Robert's death and related news events, this is the first time and the first one major political event I can say that I truly do recall in my life, from that time.

Americans held hostage in Iran.

Atlanta child murders.

I have vague memories of the moon landing and watching on our small black and white TV (that moved into my bedroom when I was a teenager), but the first clear memory in which I can remember details about what I was doing (playing at a neighbor's house when his mother called us inside to see) when RIchard Nixon resigned. She said it was something we'd remember for the rest of our lives.

The FLQ Crisis in Quebec...October, 1970

I must have been around 4,and I remember asking my dad what all those bags lined up on a runway were and he said " men who's luck ran out' . It was apparently a shot of Vietnam . That was the 1st time I "noticed" something other than Captain Kangaroo or Speed racer.

JFK assassination. I was only 8, but I remember that it was unbelievably sad in my house. However Princess Diana death and funeral was even sadder.

Another major news story was when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald happening right before your eyes. No assassin would ever be allowed to be in the open like that ever again as they walked him out of the courtroom My father yelled, my mother screamed as we watched TV. It was shocking beyond belief happening right after JKF's death.

Age 4- fall of the Berlin War

I recall watching the Summer Olympics in Mexico City on tv with my parents (in black & white) in August 1968 when I was five, but I do not remember MLK and RFK's assassinations just a few months earlier.

Cuban Missle Crisis, JFK Assassination, Freedom Summer, Selma. Remarkably frightening all of it. Horrible, unspeakable to see Americans treated so violently by white racists - and I mean the cops. Fire hoses, dogs- just shocking. I kept saying WHY are they doing this to people?? LIfe magazine was full of stories of “Night Riders” dumb thugs and white terrorists trying to prevent voting. I developed a visceral reaction to hate those cowards. I was 6 years old.

I am appalled to see a POS like Trump trying to align this country with what the White Nationalists refer to as the last White Nation/Russia. The GOP created this shit storm of bigotry and now we will make them pay.

Worrying about Nuclear war - this was in Miami so very very real. On the day JFK was murdered being sent home from school after the principle gathered us all in the cafeteria to announce that we all were dismissed for the day. The television was on for 3 days nonstop. My mother and father were shaken - they were depressions kids - they knew who was looking out for their interests and were extremely serious Dems. All of the students were Democratic families, progressive smart liberals. This was a nightmare, we were home for the rest of the week.

I also forgot the launch of Alan Sheppard and John Glenn.

Bay of Pigs. There were all these pigs in Cuba that were swimming to Florida. Weird, I know.