What is the first major news event you were aware of as a child?

[Bootie]

There are 2 news events I can remember vaguely as a child.... The first is the Challenger disaster and the other was the Lockerbie bombing. I think the next event that has stuck with me would be The First Gulf War although I was 14 years old by then. So... Whats yours?

 

[Strangelove]

I dont recall order but beyond local (national) news I was struck by :


- the sinking of the HMS Sheffield (It was sunk by a French Exocet and as a kid I was wondering if we might be at war with GB as consequence)


- the Lebanon invasion by Israel


Challenger also come to mind but was faaaaar older (as a kid point of view of course)

 

[fabishd]

My age will now show. JFK assassination & Vietnam War.

 

[Massimo]

I was very young and I can't forget the moon landing (audio) on a big b/w tv

 

[Nort]

VN war, along with the RFK and MLK assassinations. Stuck in my mind, because it was the first time I saw my mom cry.

 

[Floki]

Man walking on the moon just like Massimo....came home for lunch from school except I watched in a small (very small) B/W TV.....with rabbit ears antenna.

Before that I'd watch the news but was never really interested in it.

 

[Nelson1812]

Outbreak of smallpox. (I had to have a jab.)
Most likely around 1962

 

[Mehlsack]

Shooting of Lennon and Pope John Paul II, declaration of martial law in Poland (war in a neighbouring country? ), Falklands war (GB going to war?, what next?)...some of the very first impressions of the news world

 

[Cargol]

Heyzel Stadium tragedy,Challenger explosion.

 

[Floki]

Shooting of Lennon and Pope John Paul II, declaration of martial law in Poland (war in a neighbouring country? ), Falklands war (GB going to war?, what next?)...some of the very first impressions of the news world

We really show our age in this thread....I remember when Pope John Paul II was shot like it was yesterday (being of Polish heritage) but I was in the back seat of a car drinking beer with the lads listening to music on the radio when a news bulletin interrupted the song....can't remember the song though....probably something from the B-52's or Blondie LOL

 

[Mehlsack]

B52s...didnt know they were active in the 70ies already...I owned a TAPE in the early 90ies!
Before switching to Techno for some years...

 

[Floki]

@Mehlsack John Paul was shot when I was in grade 12 so that would be early 80's...They were the big then

 

[mTk]

Probably the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was a Sophmore in H.S. and we were in the back of the bus waiting to go home and I recall a bunch of us were talking about it. Some were saying how they were going to go enlist in the military. Patriotism was high, intelligence low.

 

[Richtig]

Moon landings probably for me, but my biggest thing overall is that I felt I was born into a world where we (the west? or maybe even then good old Great Britain - whatever happened to that great country) always moved forward, everything was improving - new developments, progress. My heart broke when we no longer supported Concorde, and I realised my childish notion of progress was false.

Naturally being a keen follower of all things military, I seem to recall a lot of wars.

 

[Nathangun]

John Lennon's assassination. I didn't fully understood what had happened as I was only six years old but I remember everyone stopped what they where doing and 'Imagine' was played on the news.

 

[Lt. Smash]

The first 2? I remember watching a moon landing on television at my grandparents house, and I remember the OPEC oil crisis in '73. But, I didn't know that was news as much as I remember waiting in line for gas (petrol, for you Brits).

 

[Rambler]

The fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

[Nelson1812]

Not sure what year ... but it was in my infants, guessing, very early 60's... having a drill where we had to get down under our desks, in the event of a nuclear war and the four minute warning was given.

 

[Wastemoreland]

There are 2 news events I can remember vaguely as a child.... The first is the Challenger disaster and the other was the Lockerbie bombing. I think the next event that has stuck with me would be The First Gulf War although I was 14 years old by then. So... Whats yours?

I´m not kidding, but those would be the ones I remember best to. Maybe not so much Lockerbie though.

 

[Ithikial]

Fall of the Berlin Wall (age 5). But the first one I watched the news every night was the Yugoslav War in the early 90's. It was years later by chance (bus had mechanical problems) that in 2009 during my touring of Europe we got to stop by at Srebrenica. I had to tell most of the tour group (all around my age) that they were all alive and in primary school at the time when this occurred. Sort of rammed it home for some of them that not all history is about the long dead.