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.