Princess Diana’s death, for sure. I remember my mother being absolutely distraught, and I didn’t understand why. We’re not British and I’d literally never hear of her (from my mother or otherwise) before her passing and funeral were news. The funeral took place in the middle of the night and I remember her being up super early to watch (and I eventually woke up and joined her).
I’m surprised it was 1997, I would have figured it was '95ish. Can’t believe that’s the first news story I can remember. But we definitely were NOT a news household. Nobody reading the newspaper, no local news on at night or cable TV news on TV all day.
The first moon landing
Challenger exploding, closely followed by Chernobyl exploding. I’m sure inbetween there were parts of London exploding. And after that, Pan Am 103 exploding. The 80s were a wild time.
I only remember it because they wheeled out the TV’s in the middle of school to watch it. Why did they do that?
1986 was wild experience as a kid here in Finland. Chernobyl, Challenger, Olaf Palme assassination (Swedish PM but it was huge news here as well) and Jakomäki Bank Robbery/Mikkeli hostage crisis that ended up in big car explosion seen on tv.
l also had Chernobyl in mind at first. It was a big thing, as it affected life as a kid in Europe directly.
But then I remembered all the news stories surrounding the Anti-Pershing protests.
These were in 1983, the year in which humanity perhaps was closest to complete annihilation ever.Yes, the 80s were wild.
Reagan being shot
The assassination of prime minister Olof Palme.
- 93 Bombay bomb blasts
- Kargil war
- Attack on Taj Bombay
Internationally
- Princess Diana’s death
- Gulf war
- 9/11
I was born in 1991. For me, it’s gotta be 9/11. I can’t really specifically remember anything from before that, and I was only 9 when it happened, so I didn’t really pay much attention to the news.
There was a time I was on the news because my grandfather got asked about something at the airport. I have no idea what it was or if it was before. But it certainly wasn’t major and either way I don’t remember the actual story that happened. If I had to guess it was something about asking people about airline delays, but that’s genuinely just a guess.
Clearly, like vividly? OKC bombing. Think was 10.
I vaguely remember desert storm missle strike clips. I remember staying up to watch the ball drop in 91. But anything else on tv in the early 90s that didn’t involve mutant turtles, power rangers, Italian plumbers, or mortal kombat is a blank.
The inauguration of Barack Obama.
I don’t think I have a single clear memory of any news story ever. I have vague half-remembered snippets.
The best I can do is 9/11 but I was well into my teens at that point, and even then my memory of the news itself isn’t clear.
I remember what my local news anchor looked like. That’s absolute it.
The Challenger explosion
Obama becoming President, I think! I had a very old Elementary School teacher, and while she certainly used some not-okay words to explain the event to us, I think she was quite supportive of it. I must have been 9 years old? So either my memory is bad or there just weren’t all that many interesting world events that I would have heard about when I was younger than that.
9/11. I was in school and my teacher wheeled the TV cart in. She was an absolute wreck doing so because her husband left that morning for an interview in tower 1. Due to the phone traffic being so busy she couldnt reach him. Luckily he was running late because of traffic and had to drive far enough away before he could call her.
Where did you grow up? I was in 4th grade in Fairfield county and we had soooo many stories like that, both tragic and miraculous. Missed trains, traffic, sick kids, but also people that otherwise wouldn’t have been there but for a thing that day, interview, meeting. Thankfully our elementary school did an amazing job with a media blackout, teachers that couldn’t remain composed were swapped for those that could, we were all given a sheet to bring home explaining that we hadn’t been told anything yet. But it really quickly became obvious that something terrible had happened, kids getting picked up for no reason, every fire truck in town screaming down the highway, the fucking jets flying over. Apparently the highschool didn’t do a good job containing things and tons of kids just left, some to try to get to the city where their parents worked. Didn’t learn about that until years later. I remember standing on the beach the next day watching the smoke rise over Long Island Sound
For myself that would be 9/11. I remember being confused when the teacher put it on the tv. Thought we were watching an action movie.
I remember being upset that all of the other classes got to watch it. We heard from friends in other classes that an attack had happened and they were all watching TV now. My teacher refused to put it on, and kept teaching as usual until parents started showing up to pull their kids out of school early.
Thinking back, it’s probably good that we didn’t watch it; We were only 8 years old, after all. All my friends in the other classes watched the second plane hit and saw towers fall live, while I only got the recap.
I’m trying to remember something big before 9/11. I was 9 years old and I feel like I should remember at least one news story before then, but I guess that’s basically the first thing that got enough attention to really leave an impression. Not to mention literally everything changing after that
We wanted to watch our daily dose of Pokémon at a friend’s house but there was only a stupid movie of planes flying in skyscrapers on TV. When we wanted to complain about this to his grandfather he was watching the same movie and told us to go. So we decided the TV must be broken and played on his N64 instead. It wasn’t until next day in school I learned that the “movie” was real
Challenger and Chernobyl, as they happened within a few months.The shape of the Challenger cloud will be forever seered into my brain. And after Chernobyl we had to seek cover immediately when it started to rain and weren’t allowed to play on grass, I’ll always remember that sense of unease. We also had two young kids from the Ukraine in our home for a while. Thinking back on that I feel so bad for them. They were so far from home and communication only worked through a paper dictionary. They didn’t shower for a while because they were told water was very expensive. Somehow their hovercraft was full of eels.
I never saw the Chernobyl disaster until later in life. Must have gone over my head. We had a kidnapping in the neighborhood that went national around then too. Could be why.
Wow yeah that was the same year 😳 I saw the Challenger disaster on the news in January when I lived in Colorado, then the Chernobyl disaster I saw on TV on the news when I lived in California that summer.
1986 was a Colorado-California year for me.
