What's the first major news story you remember?

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What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Twistappel » Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:46 pm

Based on something I saw on Twitter: What's the first major news story or historical event that you remember, that occurred in your lifetime?

Mine is the Challanger disaster. I particularly remember seeing pictures of Christa McAuliffe on TV and thinking she looked like my own (happily very much alive) school teacher.

Happily, since I grew up in Australia, I was spared seeing it happen on live TV, like many Americans.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Aquila89 » Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:55 pm

I think it's the death of Princess Diana. I was eight years old then, and I remember reading about it in a woman's magazine my mother bought every week. I also remember that my mother thought it was unfair that her death got so much more coverage than Mother Teresa's (they died within a week) just because Diana was young and pretty.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby CarrieVS » Mon Jul 08, 2019 10:43 pm

I had to look up the dates to figure out which one was older but I remember BSE becoming big news - it'd been around longer, and in fact seems like actual cases peaked a few years before - and beef being considered dangerous, which was apparently the year before Princess Diana's death (which I also remember.)
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby gisambards » Mon Jul 08, 2019 10:50 pm

The earliest thing I remember seeing on the news was them knocking down that statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, during the 2003 invasion.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Absentia » Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:13 pm

The death of Princess Diana is the first event that I remember in detail, and more or less understood what was going on. I was nine when it happened.

The first event that I remember at all is the 1992 presidential election when I was five. Both of my parents hated Bill Clinton, so we were all bummed that he won.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby cmsellers » Mon Jul 08, 2019 11:45 pm

That time Quebec tried to secede from Bosnia is the first news story I remember.

The first news story I remember more or less accurately is the 1996 presidential election. That was when I decided to I wanted to go to Electoral College, or as avi put it: as I child, I dreamed of becoming a faithless elector.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Pedgerow » Tue Jul 09, 2019 1:46 am

I can't really describe any memories of big news stories that happened before I was about eight or nine, but I remember places that sounded horrible because they were constantly in the news for war-related reasons. I actually have a theory that you can work out how old someone is by which places they really don't like the sound of. For me, those places are Yugoslavia and Rwanda, because even though I wasn't really aware of Srebrenica or the Hutus rising up against the Tutsis, "Yugoslavia" and "Rwanda" were on the news every day, with horror story after horror story, and I eventually just figured out that these must be terrible places. People a few years younger than me seem to have the same feeling about Kosovo, and people even younger than that probably get the same heebie-jeebies over Iraq and Darfur. Meanwhile, anyone a few years older than me probably hates the very mention of Biafra, which seems to have gone through a really terrible time a bit before I was born (although I looked it up and the nightmare stories seem to be from the late 1960s, so anyone who hates Biafra like I hate Rwanda must be pushing 50 now).

If being vaguely aware of a war doesn't count, then honestly, my earliest detailed memories are probably from Euro 96.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Delta Jim » Tue Jul 09, 2019 2:29 am

Either the news talking about this "OJ Simpson" guy being in trouble with the law or this building in Oklahoma smoking (I don't remember if the bombing happened before or after the first time I paid attention to how often OJ was being mentioned on the news).

I think the first news story I actually understood the context of was Princess Diana's death.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Krashlia » Tue Jul 09, 2019 2:44 am

News features on the soon to be undertaken War in Iraq.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Twistappel » Tue Jul 09, 2019 2:55 am

cmsellers wrote:That time Quebec tried to secede from Bosnia is the first news story I remember.


Wait, what?
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby cmsellers » Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:02 am

I was little, and there was a lot of stuff on the news about Quebec trying to secede and people (Serb separatists) trying to secede from Bosnia. I asked my parents what "secede" or "secession" or whatever the word I was hearing was, and then preceded to conflate the two stories.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby Twistappel » Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:14 am

cmsellers wrote:I was little, and there was a lot of stuff on the news about Quebec trying to secede and people (Serb separatists) trying to secede from Bosnia. I asked my parents what "secede" or "secession" or whatever the word I was hearing was, and then preceded to conflate the two stories.

That's exactly what somebody who has accidentally given away that they are from an alternate universe, and is frantically trying to cover their gaff, would say.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby JamishT » Tue Jul 09, 2019 6:35 am

The earliest news memory I have is the 2000's election, and I was somewhat aware of Clinton's impeachment but only because it contains "peach".
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:02 am

I remember the first Ronald Reagan election. It's one of the earliest memories for me and I was doing this thing we used to call channel surfing. It had nothing to do with real surfing. I believe I was sick with a temperature. No, wait it was him winning the Republican convention thingy do-hickey.
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Re: What's the first major news story you remember?

Postby IamNotCreepy » Tue Jul 09, 2019 12:23 pm

I thought the first one I could remember was the 1992 Presidential Election, but after looking it up I guess the LA Riots were before that.

I also do remember the Michael Jackson sex abuse allegations (1993), the Oklahoma City Bombing (1995) and the death of Princess Di (1997).

I'm surprised no one had 9/11 as their first news memory.
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