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

missy

missy

Super_Ideal_Rock
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For me it was the massacre at the 1972 Olympics. It is the first news story I remember.

Massacre begins at Munich Olympics | September 5, 1972 | HISTORY

During the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, in the early morning of September 5, a group of Palestinian terrorists storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage. The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September, in return for...
www.history.com www.history.com


What was the first news story you remember?
 
The first moon landing- my mum sat my sister and I in front of the tv (sister was a tiny baby) in what felt like the middle of the night to watch it all.
 
Space shuttle Challenger explosion
 
OdetteOdile said:
Space shuttle Challenger explosion
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That was haunting. I remember watching it in our graduate school lounge area. We were all glued to the set and then uncomprehendingly saw the explosion. We were stunned. Had to process what happened. :(
 
Snowdrop13 said:
The first moon landing- my mum sat my sister and I in front of the tv (sister was a tiny baby) in what felt like the middle of the night to watch it all.
Click to expand...

Cool. What a momentous occasion to experience with your family.
 
JFK funeral. It was on every TV channel (and didn't interest me, at my young age), and I wasn't even allowed to go to my friend's house to play that day.
 
11-22-1963.
My brother and I were playing outside.
Mom came out and told us to come inside.
We all sat around our console B+W TV.

JFK had just been shot.
 
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Great question!

For me it's when baby Jessica fell down the well, and was rescued. I was at a sleepover at my friend's house, I remember watching it on the news in her living room the next morning.

Anne
 
I’d have to say the moon landing too. Prior to that, we didn’t really watch much TV.

I remember the Challenger disaster because it happened the day before I was going in to hospital to have my wisdom teeth out. o_O
 
Jonestown massacre :cry:
 
Like Kenny.....I remember getting sent home from school because the president had been shot. I remember people crying in the streets
 
Participating in a March. I remember signs that read Simpson-Mazzoli. Years later when I read about it, I realized that my undocumented crop-pickers parents were marching peacefully for immigration rights.
 
I was watching some kid's TV show when a news bulletin came on announcing that MLK had been shot. I remember running to my mother to tell her "The King has been shot". My mother had to explain that he wasn't "a king" but the significance and following it on the news after.

This reminds me of my visit to the 9/11 memorial, an event that happened later in my life and I have better recollection of. It was watching the faces/reactions of younger visitors in shock seeing much of the footage for the first time that really brought back of the emotions of that day and what followed.
 
JFK assassination. They closed down my grade school and sent us home without telling us why and it was darn scary. I was 8.
 
When George Wallace was shot, it was all over the news and I remember my parents talking about it.
I also remember vividly the Patty Hearst hostage story.
 
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missy said:
That was haunting. I remember watching it in our graduate school lounge area. We were all glued to the set and then uncomprehendingly saw the explosion. We were stunned. Had to process what happened. :(
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I remember exactly where I was when I heard that.
I worked in an art studio in Pittsburgh. We always had the radio on. They interrupted the song "Life in a Northern Town".
 
The Berlin wall. I had vague memories of my parents telling me how momentous it was. I was not yet school aged. In my memories we were still living in France, and it was late at night. But by then we had already moved to Boston a few weeks earlier. So I am not sure how reliable my memory is.
 
JFK
 
The Challenger explosion for me as well. I was in 5th grade, and we were watching the takeoff on TV in my class. It was very tough to concentrate the rest of the day.
 
They announced that President Reagan had been shot during art class. I was in 4th or 5th grade.
 
Princess Diana’s death.
I was eating breakfast inside - my mum and I often took our bowls outside, but it was too cold that morning.

I’d seen the news plenty of times before then - news about Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia was the daily staple - but the accident that took Princess Diana’s life was the first story I remember feeling shocked by on a personal level.

But I was still young enough to go to school and not think on it too much more. It was sad but it wasn’t personal.

Four years later 9/11 happened. My friend and I had a free half-period and we were braiding each others’ hair in the library. There was an announcement over the intercom, and someone turned the TV on and we watched the second tower crumble. It was muted - no sound needed. That was a visceral horror that evoked feelings that I will never forget.
 
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The Iran Hostage crisis. I was living on a Coast Guard base at the time (Governors Island) and the yellow ribbons were everywhere.

From before that I have memories of gas shortage lines, Vietnamese "boat people" as the refugees were called, and IRA bombings too, but those weren't specific single events.
 
I was raised in Northern California and vividly remember in the early 1970s seeing the news on TV about something bad happening in "Vietnam" ... at that age I thought Vietnam was in Southern California and I remember thinking I was glad it was so far away ...
 
So, I would have said the Challenger explosion. I remember watching it in school. That was January of 1986.

But then I looked up earlier stuff and I have memories of it, too. Bobby Knight threw a chair across a court in 1985 and that was a big huge deal in a basketball loving household. I also remember all the hoopla around the Unabomber, and that went on for years in the 80s (no idea when my memories would have started, though).

Vanessa Williams was crowned Miss America in 1983, and I remember the huge waves that made in my small Southern town.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was released in 1982 and I remember seeing the movie in the theater. Not sure if you would count it as a news event or not.

Then I start to have a bunch of other, more vivid memories of news events and discussing them at school. Pan Am flight 73, baby Jessica in the well.... and on.
 
JFK funeral. I was in catholic school and this was the first time we were allowed to have a TV in class. It was horribly somber.
 
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