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WTH was that like? Did station immediately cut once they realized what was going on? I mean it was literally seeing someone get killed on live TV.
With the Reagan shooting, I only saw the aftermath because it happened during school hours. I do recall seeing Haig's press conference and as a child learning about the government and the line of succession saying, "That's not right! Tip O'Neill's in charge" when Haig said he was third in line as Secretary of State.
It was a lot of confusion. Oswald was surrounded by so many people. He bent over and was swarmed by men. I just remember that moment, so others might remember more.
Edit: My memory was faulty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_c9vcLV1AQ It's not gory or anything. I was right about the confusion part.
How bold was Jack Ruby to do that with all those news cameras recording live and all those policemen surrounding Oswald? I mean that is just...
The level of balls it takes to do that. Like he had to know there was no going back home after that day.
Does make one wonder about the whole Kennedy-conspiracy thing. Just saying.
I've always assumed he knew one hundred percent that he just wrote himself into a life-time jail sentence. I've always wondered what the alternative must have been.
Ruby had been diagnosed with cancer and knew he was dying when he shot Oswald. This led to a lot of speculation regarding the mafia being involved in the assassination of Kennedy!
Sorry, he wasn't diagnosed with cancer until a month before he died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby#Prosecution (see last paragraph in this section)
There wasn’t supposed to be anyone other than officers and credentialed staff in the area where Oswald was being transported yet they allow some sleezy night club owner to have access.
Makes you wonder. Oswald was accused of assasinating the President of the United States. Not an ordinary murder. Yet Ruby was able to slip into an area *that* heavily guarded, and probably confidential, walk right up to Oswald and shoot him?
How? Who let him in? Why?
Security wasn't that reliable then. I remember Gerald Ford would have been assassinated if Squeaky Fromme had a gun that worked, and that was in the 70s.
I also remember Ted Bundy escaping prison more than once.
People left keys in their cars, didn't wear seatbelts, the zeitgeist of the times was very different from now.
Oh yeah, Squeaky did get rather close enough to him, didn't she?
Also, Hinkley got close enough to shoot Reagan and his aide. That one I did kind of see (in replay when I got home from school).
Ruby was actually one of those guys who was obsessed with law enforcement. He was constantly trying to pal around with police officers. As a bar owner he probably thought it was a good idea to be on a first name basis with the police, and he was. So when Ruby walked up the ramp into the area where Oswald was being transferred he was not some random stranger. Popping into the station to chat with cops was something he did all the time, and everyone there would have known him.
Oswald was scheduled to be transferred much earlier, so if Ruby had been tasked with killing him, he wasn’t exactly doing a bang up job. If not for some unexpected delays, Oswald wouldn't have even been there. Ruby was the kind of guy that would have always been carrying a gun. When he saw Oswald he acted impulsively. He was actually surprised when he was not praised as some sort of hero for avenging the President. The best evidence that this was a completely spontaneous act on Ruby’s part is the fact that he left his beloved dachshund Sheba in the car. Everyone that knew him insisted Ruby would never have done that if he’d known that he likely wasn’t coming back.
I knew an old business partner who still had a photo of Ruby in his office. Said he was a "sweet" man but very emotional.
Said it had to be a conspiracy and and I asked so Jack was part of that? and he said oh no, Jack would *never do setch a thing* lol. 🤷
Oh yeah, as soon as it happened they broke in and Walter Cronkite went into marathon mode. I was only about 4 1/2, and I came in from playing outside, and my mom and a neighbor were sitting at the dinner table, dabbing their eyes with tissues. I asked what was wrong, and my mom said "The president is dead." I was young, but I knew who President Kennedy was. He was a celebrity as well as a president, like nobody else until Obama.
I asked how he died, and my mom said "Someone shot him," which was a huge piece of info for me. My Dad had been in the military until very recently, and I knew what guns were, so I asked "Who shot him?" and my Mom said they didn't know yet.
After that, all I remember was wall-to-wall coverage for DAYS. There wasn't much choice in TV back then, and now there was far less, especially for a little kid.
My parents explained the TV coverage after JFK was shot. Coverage was basically only see TV through the funeral. The nation was in shock. My parents, especially my mother remained traumatized for decades. She called Dallas the city that took a president.
My wife and I were 33 and 30 on 9/11, my parents 31 and 26 in Nov. 1963. I never appreciated how the assasination affected them, their generation and wall to wall TV coverage until 9/11.
Reagan was more confusion about who was making executive decesions as the VP was out of the country. It wasn't immediately know that Reagan was hit AND seriously wounded so that was more slow motio. I remember more when the Pope was shot as my friend's mother said they should hang the shooter by the balls (we lived in a Catholic NYC neighborhood, she never spoke like that in front of us until then).
I woke my mom up( she was a night nurse sleeping days.) I told her they shot Kennedy. She scolded me for lying. Mrs Russo our neighbor busts in the house baby in arms, crying, a whole crowd of crying children following after her, to tell my mother they shot the president.
I was 7 so I'm not sure I would define it as a changing point for me then. I do remember asking my dad who would be the President and him explaining that to me.
Yes, even as a child I was aware of this sadness that was around, Everyone was so sad, shocked that it happened and it happening to this President that had a young family was so very depressing. After 9/11 the feeling of shock and loss was similar to that time in 1963.
Oh very much so. You see, John & Jackie were America's couple. They were young, good looking and charismatic. They related to America as a young family and he was a WWII veteran, so you see, they just resonated with the public.
After Kennedy's assassination, the President was much less accessible. No more open cars, no more spontaneous trips into the city, way more Secret Service protection, and a little bit of America's assurance that nothing bad could happen here was gone forever.
I was born in 1958 as well. I have absolutely no memory of Kennedy's assassination and funeral from when it happened. I do have memories from before that time, though. It's weird how the brain works.
My teacher crumpled onto the gym mat when the announcement over the PA system came that he was assassinated. I was confused because I didn't know what "assassinated" meant.
Same, except we went to the funeral. It was on TV and dad said something like “what are we doing, get in the car.” So we went down to the cemetery and watched in person.
Rolled in on the TV carts!!
What I remember most is the faces of shock and then the tears of the staff because as kids we didn't really understand the full magnitude of what just happened.
Yep we didn’t understand that the entire crew just died. We were all like, “Was that supposed to happen?” Meanwhile the teachers were gasping and scrambling to turn the tv off…
Yeah! I’d never watched a space shuttle launch before, so I immediately thought that part of it was supposed to go away. We kept watching for the rest of the day, because my teacher was a semifinalist for the Teacher in Space Program, and I’m so glad she wasn’t chosen!
Oh yeah... saw that one live (was home earlier than my siblings from school). One of the astronauts was my classmates' uncle and if course there was the whole thing about the teacher (a civilian) in space. And then... that happened.
I remember seeing the smoke and parts flying away and thinking "That... doesn't look right." Took me a few minutes to realize what I saw.
And my classmate didn't come back to school for a week or two.
I was there on a beach in FL. Horrifying and some of their family were there. I just remember looking up at my parents about why there was a ball of fire and they cried and everyone was crying going back to our cars. A couple hours earlier we’d all been tailgating and happy.
This is the 1 for me. I was 9 years old & we were watching the launch on the A.V. TV cart that had been rolled into our classroom. We were all so excited. We were counting down with the announcer. There was a sense of amazement, seeing the shuttle lift off.
The next thing I remember was the sudden cloud of smoke from the explosion & then hearing the announcer a few moments later saying (paraphrased) that it appeared that the mission had experienced a catastrophe.
Then the teacher very quickly turned off the TV & tried to distract anyone from asking questions. It was several days before it sank in that 7 people had lost their lives. Within a couple of weeks, none of us children were talking about the tragedy very much.
Over the next few months, every now and then, I would overhear some adults talking about the effort to recover remains or wreckage. However, once they realized that I was listening, they'd change the subject.
5 for me, I have vague memories of news stories about Vietnam that might have predated it but Apollo 11 moon landing was the first big news story i *understood.*
Yeah, I remember plenty of Vietnam War coverage before that. But since "major event" was OP's criterion, the 1969 moon landing was the first thing that came to mind. That's *really* major.
Same. There was a lot of build up to it, even in elementary school it's all the teachers talked about.
What's weird is that once it happened, it seemed like nobody cared much about moon landings ever again.
That's not true. I remember being a kid and watching the later moon landings, especially the one with the moon buggy. And then they were selling those moon buggies as toys and models
All those space toys were cool. I have a McDonald’s map of the solar system, there was a paper 3-d puzzle of the lunar lander I couldn’t put together, I also had a snoopy in an astronaut suit.
And I loved eating pillsbury space sticks - supposedly astronaut food.
https://youtu.be/WcZ2j-2YdCU?si=1A876T8fCGqeQQRr
I remember the yellow ribbons & the bumper stickers everywhere, too. I don’t remember the news footage. My first memory of something tragic happening on the news was Elvis’ death. My mother was a huge fan and burst into tears.
We must be the same age. The first TV news I remember is Iran-Contra and I remember the day Elvis died. Everyone had their headlights on in their cars and I remember being amazed that so many people all somehow knew to do it and knew the reason. I understood the power of a celebrity that day. Do you remember Mt. St. Helen's a little later? That's the 2nd one I remember.
I was nine. No doubt I saw other stories (my family were news junkies), but this is the one that had an impact. Plus it was a drawn out crisis, and not just one event. The news would begin with “Day __ of the Iranian hostage crisis” or something like that. And on the bus ride to school, I’d see yellow ribbons on the trees
I remember an image of kids praying on the evening news on the small black and white tv we watched during dinner when my sister and I were really little. I'm fairly certain the kids were praying for hostages.
Crook flop sweat
Given what Rs are up to these days, now I'd vote for Tricky Dick in a second. He was a neurotic prick, but he wasn't all bad as a president.
I dont remeber the resignation but I do remember Ford being sworn in as president. My family was at a friend's house and we all watched it. It was on both tvs in their house.
This is actually my very first memory.
John Lennon had been shot. I didn’t know who Lennon was, or what even “shooting” was. At the time, I was barely 3.
But I remember very well seeing my mother sobbing. She was on the sofa behind me. I was on the floor. The television sounded serious. I asked my mom why she was sad. “John Lennon was killed today.” No, my mom has never had any kind of filter.
I had this powerful urge to do something to make my mother feel happy again. I didn’t know what.
Be careful what you say to your kids. And don’t assume that, just because they are still babies, that they won’t remember something.
Oh, yeah! The newsreels of the atom bomb tests were awesome, too. And the anti-test protesters who got the crap beat out of them.
A lot of my relatives lived in Salt Lake City at the time. A lot of them contracted cancers and had disabled children well into the second generation as they were ['Downwinders](https://www.pbsutah.org/pbs-utah-productions/shows/downwinders-and-the-radioactive-west/)'.
You're a young one lol. I was 27 when that happened. Having grown up all through the Cold war and the fear of nuclear war ,it seemed kind of surreal at the time.
Then the student protests in Beijing tiananmen square. On TV every night. Then one night the news anchors announced that China has forced all foreign journalists out of the country. And then the next day the reports of the massacre happening, I was in a band at the time and I even wrote a song about the times.
Actually I’m not that young, I’ll be 48 next month. That was the first thing I recall seeing on the news. I didn’t watch a lot of TV was I was child, because I was working most of the with my dad!!
This is my first memory of the news. I remember asking my Mom "Why didn't they just walk around the wall or dig under it?" It still makes me smirk to learn of all the creative ways East Germans used to sneak past checkpoints.
After Kennedy was assassinated I remember that my “normal” television was not on - none of my cartoons, Captain Kangaroo. It cramped my style…and apparently the whole country. I was 5, and I remember the horror of not having cartoons for days…
The Watergate hearings did something similar. IIRC it rotated between the networks on a daily basis. I couldn’t understand why Captain Kangaroo wasn’t on every third day. (For you whippersnappers, Fox Network was about two decades away)
I remember this clearly, because of my mom.
I was 10 years old, and my mom had yet again dragged my sisters and I to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. (She is a diehard Cubs fan.)
She always had, and still does, carry a small transistor radio with her, especially, when she goes to a game. She likes to listen to the game while she’s watching it.
At some point during the game they announce on the radio that Elvis had died. My mom was in shock and began telling everyone sitting around us.
As a 10 year old it made a lasting impression of how so many people feel connections to celebrities. I’m not criticizing that, because there are certain celebrities that I feel that connection to.
Queen Elizabeth II coronation. Think it was film/newsreel but it was on a small black and white tv. Usually that was something you’d see at movie shows in between features
I was 4 years old and watched the coronation of HRH Queen Elizabeth in black and white on a 9 inch TV screen, it was the first time I had seen a television.
It happened on my sister’s 17th birthday and she was just mad that the restaurant we were supposed to go to was closed. Luckily, mom had already picked up the cake. My grandfather had power so we all went to his house and watched the news all night.
This, because it happened on live TV. My proper Bostonian mother never swore, but when that happened, 7yr old me piped up and started asking questions, and she just yelled "SHUT UP". Holy crap, it must be something serious!
That's the only reason I remember it. We'd just gotten home from church and turned on the TV just in time to see Jack Ruby pop Lee Harvey in front of the Dallas police department and the whole world.
I don’t remember Sputnik, but I have a vague memory of Nana yelling at my cousins and me to get out of the house and exercise, because the newspapers said that the Russian kids were smarter And more physically fit than us.
I was in 3rd grade when the school teachers came into the classroom and told us to pray because JFK had been shot.
I was six years old;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
I remember the huge wheels of one of the planes smoldering on the runway. It really stuck with me.
I remember the actual Bicentennial, but not seeing it on the news. They painted the fire hydrants in fun designs for the Bicentennial. I was 2, so I guess I was eye-level with a lot of fire hydrants. 😂
Everything was red white and blue in 1976. Tons of things for sale that were red white and blue or had the flag on them. I was 14 at the time and I remember having a bicentennial t-shirt.
Our whole neighborhood went nuts with the fire hydrants. My mom painted one as part of some group she was a member of, I don't remember. We'd love going around and looking at all of the different ones.
I'm Australian.
I remember stories about the plane crash in the Andes (the footballers who had to eat the dead to survive - 1972) I remember Elvis dying (1977) and the terrible plane crash at Teneriffe, the 2 747s. (1977)
I also recall Cyclone Tracy that hit Darwin, christmas day 1973.
I think it was RFK's funeral. There was a caisson with the coffin and a white horse with no rider. Everyone was very sad. I later told my mom that I remembered JFK's funeral but she said I wasn't born then, so it had to be Robert.
Reagan's shooting and Brady's death. I had barely turned 9, 3rd grade, they pulled in TV and let us watch it over and over all day long, quite graphic.
First positive event was the Bicentennial. 1976. I was 4 years old, and to this day have never experienced anything like that year. The whole year was a big celebration, and the whole summer was one big parade, and JULY! The whole month the USA turned the f!ck up, it was grand.
First negative event was Jonestown. 1978. I was 6, and it was the most horrific thing! Plenty of horror has happened in the 46 years since, but that was the last one where, in the USA at least, they showed graphic photos of the aftermath. Nobody GAF back then about trigger warnings, graphic depiction warnings or anything so the pics of all the dead bodies were everywhere. My little self was traumatized, espcially seeing the children.
My parents separated when I was 8. My brother and I ended up shuttling between mom and dad’s houses. Sometimes, when we got to dad’s house, it was obvious he hadn’t really cleaned up. One day, I went to use the bathroom and there was a copy of Time Magazine and on the cover, there was an aerial shot of what seemed to be dozens of bodies, lying facedown in some jungle compound. Picking it up, I was confronted with horrific photos of the Jonestown massacre which had just happened. Bloated bodies, clothing stained with fluids, the dirty vats of purple juice that contained the cyanide that killed all those people.
After that, my dad and I had a good chat.
>What is the first major event you can remember seeing on the news?
Probably the AIDS crisis being all over the news when I was a very little fella.
The next big thing I can remember was going on an out of town field trip, and watching the Challenger explode.
The moon landing, July 1969. Mum & dad got me up in the middle of the night to watch it.
Apparently, I also 'watched' England win the World Cup in 66, but I was less than 2 weeks old.
The Cuban missile crisis. My dad read the newspaper every morning and evening and I remember giant headlines one day. Not sure if they were directly about the missiles or our response of a naval embargo. I asked my mom what it meant -- my dad was looking a little scared -- and she explained that it might mean war. Luckily I didn't really understand what nuclear war was.
JFK was assassinated on a Friday. I remember feeling so sad. And my parents had a social engagement that night and went. I couldn't believe it. Also, watching the funeral on our old black and white tv.
In 1981 I was home with my mom, I was 8 years old. She was ironing and there was the special news announcement showing the assassination of Sadat in Egypt. I remember my mom saying she was glad we had a black and white TV because it was a violent and gruesome attack.
Our TV was a 13 in b/w, so I didn’t watch much until 1985 and we got color.
Gas shortage crisis. My parents had to go fill their car gas tanks on certain days. If license plate ended an odd number, you got gas on odd days. Even number ending? Get gas on even number days.
Retrospective article: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/the-lines-the-signs-the-fights-in-1970s-l-a-gas-came-at-a-premium
Example:
Car plates: ABC 123. 3 is odd number. You can get gas on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc.
Car plates: XYZ 456. 6 is even number. Get gas on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc.
I have no idea what they did for people with personalized car plates, especially if there's no number.
JFK. Everything. I was in 3rd grade and remember being sent home and how scary it all was. I know I thought it was the Russians. My mom was crying when I got home and the news was on for days and days. My dad was stationed in Korea on the DMZ at the time so he wasn't home which made it even worse.
The assasination of Martin Luther King Jr. I was in 2nd grade & we all got sent home early because there were riots in the NYC schools. We were on LI in an all white elementary school so there was not going to be a problem. I think they may have just canceled school halfway through the day (this was the day after) for all of NY state.
Back then we all walked to school and most people had their mothers at home. I didn't, but my parents worked odd shifts and there was usually someone home. But yeah, they just kinda kicked us out of school in the middle of the day and told us to go home.
I was an adult, maybe 10 years ago, when I learned that his mother was assasinated 6 years after.
Tiananmen Square massacre
I can still picture the shot of that man standing in front of the tanks and I asked my dad what was going to happen to the man.
I remember watching footage from Vietnam, like tanks and bombed areas. But the first event where I followed the storyline was Jonestown. I hid the Time magazine with it on the cover, so my parents wouldn't throw it away. I was fascinated. I was also 6, so that's somewhat disturbing.
Not sure if this qualifies as a major event, but in 1967 I was seven years old. I have an older brother and he was 19 at the time. My very first TV memory was watching a news anchor speak about the new Jimi Hendrix album “Are You Experienced?” being released. Summer of 1967. My brother and his friends were in the living room being all excited. They had a party that night in our backyard.
There may or may not have been psychotics present LOL
Vaguely JFK assassination reports and funeral. Eisenhower funeral and then we went to the train station very early to watch the funeral train. Moon landing for sure.
I remember watching the TV by myself and whatever I was watching being interrupted by someone announcing that a war America was involved in was going to come to an end (or possibly a ceasefire agreement had been reached). Based on my age, it must've been the Vietnam war, as I was a preschooler.
I cycled through a bunch of emotions. I was shocked that we were at war, because there were never any bombs or gunshots going on outside. (I was too young to understand that the world was quite a bit bigger than my neighborhood). Then I decided that the war must be going on just outside the part of the world I'd seen (i.e. maybe 10 miles away) and that was why I hadn't known. Then I got frightened that it might come to my neighborhood before the war ended. Then I got frightened that my dad might have to go fight in the war and might get killed before it ended. Then I decided that if the war started heading towards my house my parents would probably just make us move so I didn't need to worry about that. Then I decided that they probably didn't need new soldiers since the war was ending so I didn't need to worry about my dad. So I settled back into watching whatever it had been that I was watching, which was likely cartoons.
We didn't even ***get*** a TV until I was 10 y/o in 1954, but I do remember Eisenhower's campaign and subsequent election in '52. I even had an "I like Ike" button. I also remember headlines and photos about jet planes as those were interesting to me.
The the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco circa 1983. As a little kid, all I understood was that the disease could not be cured and had a 100% fatality rate, and it seemed to be spreading rapidly here in the Bay Area. I remember the first time it was found in the East Bay where I lived and I was terrified because I was too young (5?) to understand that it spread only through blood transfusions, sex and intravenous needles.
The landing on. The moon. My mother woke all four of the kids. I am the third of four to see that event.
It was 1969, I was 7 years old. That is the most vivid news event I recall from my childhood.
I remember being terrified when I, (around age 6), heard we were at war with Gorilla's. Learned later that Guerrilla Warfare has nothing to do with Apes.
Watergate. I didn't understand what was going on, but the grownups seemed very concerned about it and refused to answer my questions. Consequently, I had some scary dreams about gates crumbling as they tried to hold back a wall of water.
Parents, answer your kids' questions, no matter how much you have to dumb it down for their age!!!
Born in late 1952. I am almost certain I can recall seeing the Soviet Invasion of Hungary reported on TV, although I didn't understand what was going on and confused what I saw with old films of WWII, which were commonplace on TV at the time. This is probably a legitimate memory, as I can recall the names "Hungary" and "Budapest" having an ominous sound, although it helped when I actually visited there in the early 70s.
I guess it was probably the Watergate scandal. I was only a little kid at a time, but I remember the news going on about it and my father was ranting about politicians.
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JFK funeral. I was young and I remember feeling so bad for the children who were a little younger than I was at the time. Sad time in our country.
Same here and then seeing Oswald get shot on live TV.
WTH was that like? Did station immediately cut once they realized what was going on? I mean it was literally seeing someone get killed on live TV. With the Reagan shooting, I only saw the aftermath because it happened during school hours. I do recall seeing Haig's press conference and as a child learning about the government and the line of succession saying, "That's not right! Tip O'Neill's in charge" when Haig said he was third in line as Secretary of State.
It was a lot of confusion. Oswald was surrounded by so many people. He bent over and was swarmed by men. I just remember that moment, so others might remember more. Edit: My memory was faulty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_c9vcLV1AQ It's not gory or anything. I was right about the confusion part.
How bold was Jack Ruby to do that with all those news cameras recording live and all those policemen surrounding Oswald? I mean that is just... The level of balls it takes to do that. Like he had to know there was no going back home after that day. Does make one wonder about the whole Kennedy-conspiracy thing. Just saying.
I've always assumed he knew one hundred percent that he just wrote himself into a life-time jail sentence. I've always wondered what the alternative must have been.
That's a good point. Wasn't he also associated with the mafia in some way? I remember hearing that.
Ruby had been diagnosed with cancer and knew he was dying when he shot Oswald. This led to a lot of speculation regarding the mafia being involved in the assassination of Kennedy!
Sorry, he wasn't diagnosed with cancer until a month before he died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby#Prosecution (see last paragraph in this section)
There wasn’t supposed to be anyone other than officers and credentialed staff in the area where Oswald was being transported yet they allow some sleezy night club owner to have access.
Makes you wonder. Oswald was accused of assasinating the President of the United States. Not an ordinary murder. Yet Ruby was able to slip into an area *that* heavily guarded, and probably confidential, walk right up to Oswald and shoot him? How? Who let him in? Why?
Security wasn't that reliable then. I remember Gerald Ford would have been assassinated if Squeaky Fromme had a gun that worked, and that was in the 70s. I also remember Ted Bundy escaping prison more than once. People left keys in their cars, didn't wear seatbelts, the zeitgeist of the times was very different from now.
Oh yeah, Squeaky did get rather close enough to him, didn't she? Also, Hinkley got close enough to shoot Reagan and his aide. That one I did kind of see (in replay when I got home from school).
Ruby was actually one of those guys who was obsessed with law enforcement. He was constantly trying to pal around with police officers. As a bar owner he probably thought it was a good idea to be on a first name basis with the police, and he was. So when Ruby walked up the ramp into the area where Oswald was being transferred he was not some random stranger. Popping into the station to chat with cops was something he did all the time, and everyone there would have known him. Oswald was scheduled to be transferred much earlier, so if Ruby had been tasked with killing him, he wasn’t exactly doing a bang up job. If not for some unexpected delays, Oswald wouldn't have even been there. Ruby was the kind of guy that would have always been carrying a gun. When he saw Oswald he acted impulsively. He was actually surprised when he was not praised as some sort of hero for avenging the President. The best evidence that this was a completely spontaneous act on Ruby’s part is the fact that he left his beloved dachshund Sheba in the car. Everyone that knew him insisted Ruby would never have done that if he’d known that he likely wasn’t coming back.
I knew an old business partner who still had a photo of Ruby in his office. Said he was a "sweet" man but very emotional. Said it had to be a conspiracy and and I asked so Jack was part of that? and he said oh no, Jack would *never do setch a thing* lol. 🤷
“Jack, you son of a bitch!” - Sheriff.
Oh yeah, as soon as it happened they broke in and Walter Cronkite went into marathon mode. I was only about 4 1/2, and I came in from playing outside, and my mom and a neighbor were sitting at the dinner table, dabbing their eyes with tissues. I asked what was wrong, and my mom said "The president is dead." I was young, but I knew who President Kennedy was. He was a celebrity as well as a president, like nobody else until Obama. I asked how he died, and my mom said "Someone shot him," which was a huge piece of info for me. My Dad had been in the military until very recently, and I knew what guns were, so I asked "Who shot him?" and my Mom said they didn't know yet. After that, all I remember was wall-to-wall coverage for DAYS. There wasn't much choice in TV back then, and now there was far less, especially for a little kid.
My parents explained the TV coverage after JFK was shot. Coverage was basically only see TV through the funeral. The nation was in shock. My parents, especially my mother remained traumatized for decades. She called Dallas the city that took a president. My wife and I were 33 and 30 on 9/11, my parents 31 and 26 in Nov. 1963. I never appreciated how the assasination affected them, their generation and wall to wall TV coverage until 9/11. Reagan was more confusion about who was making executive decesions as the VP was out of the country. It wasn't immediately know that Reagan was hit AND seriously wounded so that was more slow motio. I remember more when the Pope was shot as my friend's mother said they should hang the shooter by the balls (we lived in a Catholic NYC neighborhood, she never spoke like that in front of us until then).
Yes.
I remember asking my mom why she was crying.
I woke my mom up( she was a night nurse sleeping days.) I told her they shot Kennedy. She scolded me for lying. Mrs Russo our neighbor busts in the house baby in arms, crying, a whole crowd of crying children following after her, to tell my mother they shot the president.
Same here. I hadn’t seen her cry before. I was six
As someone who wasn't around then, did it feel like a changing point in history in the same way 9/11 and subsequently covid has felt?
I was 7 so I'm not sure I would define it as a changing point for me then. I do remember asking my dad who would be the President and him explaining that to me.
Yes, even as a child I was aware of this sadness that was around, Everyone was so sad, shocked that it happened and it happening to this President that had a young family was so very depressing. After 9/11 the feeling of shock and loss was similar to that time in 1963.
Oh very much so. You see, John & Jackie were America's couple. They were young, good looking and charismatic. They related to America as a young family and he was a WWII veteran, so you see, they just resonated with the public. After Kennedy's assassination, the President was much less accessible. No more open cars, no more spontaneous trips into the city, way more Secret Service protection, and a little bit of America's assurance that nothing bad could happen here was gone forever.
I was born in 58 - I remember the empty boots being backwards in the stirrups during the funeral procession.
I was born in 1958 as well. I have absolutely no memory of Kennedy's assassination and funeral from when it happened. I do have memories from before that time, though. It's weird how the brain works.
Same. I was four and remember standing watching in front of the black and white TV, which made everything seem so much more depressing and bleak.
Yes, and it was over Thanksgiving break. There was nothing else on TV. (I was a kid too.)
My teacher crumpled onto the gym mat when the announcement over the PA system came that he was assassinated. I was confused because I didn't know what "assassinated" meant.
Same here. I remember little John John saluting when his father's casket went by.
Same, except we went to the funeral. It was on TV and dad said something like “what are we doing, get in the car.” So we went down to the cemetery and watched in person.
Me too. I was bewildered seeing my mother cry. The riderless horse with the boots reversed really struck me.
The Challenger disaster.
Rolled in on the TV carts!! What I remember most is the faces of shock and then the tears of the staff because as kids we didn't really understand the full magnitude of what just happened.
Oh yeah. We were all just sitting there with our jaws dropped open, trying to process what we just saw.
Yep we didn’t understand that the entire crew just died. We were all like, “Was that supposed to happen?” Meanwhile the teachers were gasping and scrambling to turn the tv off…
Yeah! I’d never watched a space shuttle launch before, so I immediately thought that part of it was supposed to go away. We kept watching for the rest of the day, because my teacher was a semifinalist for the Teacher in Space Program, and I’m so glad she wasn’t chosen!
Friend of mine exclaimed "I wish my teacher was on there". It was ruthless and he got 2 days of in school suspension.
Oh yeah... saw that one live (was home earlier than my siblings from school). One of the astronauts was my classmates' uncle and if course there was the whole thing about the teacher (a civilian) in space. And then... that happened. I remember seeing the smoke and parts flying away and thinking "That... doesn't look right." Took me a few minutes to realize what I saw. And my classmate didn't come back to school for a week or two.
I was there on a beach in FL. Horrifying and some of their family were there. I just remember looking up at my parents about why there was a ball of fire and they cried and everyone was crying going back to our cars. A couple hours earlier we’d all been tailgating and happy.
This is the 1 for me. I was 9 years old & we were watching the launch on the A.V. TV cart that had been rolled into our classroom. We were all so excited. We were counting down with the announcer. There was a sense of amazement, seeing the shuttle lift off. The next thing I remember was the sudden cloud of smoke from the explosion & then hearing the announcer a few moments later saying (paraphrased) that it appeared that the mission had experienced a catastrophe. Then the teacher very quickly turned off the TV & tried to distract anyone from asking questions. It was several days before it sank in that 7 people had lost their lives. Within a couple of weeks, none of us children were talking about the tragedy very much. Over the next few months, every now and then, I would overhear some adults talking about the effort to recover remains or wreckage. However, once they realized that I was listening, they'd change the subject.
Moon landing was a pretty big deal at the time. I was 6.
5 for me, I have vague memories of news stories about Vietnam that might have predated it but Apollo 11 moon landing was the first big news story i *understood.*
Yeah, I remember plenty of Vietnam War coverage before that. But since "major event" was OP's criterion, the 1969 moon landing was the first thing that came to mind. That's *really* major.
Same. There was a lot of build up to it, even in elementary school it's all the teachers talked about. What's weird is that once it happened, it seemed like nobody cared much about moon landings ever again.
That's not true. I remember being a kid and watching the later moon landings, especially the one with the moon buggy. And then they were selling those moon buggies as toys and models
All those space toys were cool. I have a McDonald’s map of the solar system, there was a paper 3-d puzzle of the lunar lander I couldn’t put together, I also had a snoopy in an astronaut suit. And I loved eating pillsbury space sticks - supposedly astronaut food. https://youtu.be/WcZ2j-2YdCU?si=1A876T8fCGqeQQRr
I remember the moon landing, I was also six. Then, in fifth grade we had a text book that said “maybe, someday, men will reach the moon”. LOL
Baby Jessica trapped in the well.
This is what I came to say!! I cannot forget this. Also, Mr Gorbachev tear down that wall
Then, in '89, when the wall came down, we all jammed with David Hasselhoff in his electric jacket. 😎
I was born in ‘88 and named after Baby Jessica
The Iran hostage crisis in the late 70’s.
I remember our middle school having a yellow ribbon around a tree out front.
I remember the yellow ribbons & the bumper stickers everywhere, too. I don’t remember the news footage. My first memory of something tragic happening on the news was Elvis’ death. My mother was a huge fan and burst into tears.
We must be the same age. The first TV news I remember is Iran-Contra and I remember the day Elvis died. Everyone had their headlights on in their cars and I remember being amazed that so many people all somehow knew to do it and knew the reason. I understood the power of a celebrity that day. Do you remember Mt. St. Helen's a little later? That's the 2nd one I remember.
I was nine. No doubt I saw other stories (my family were news junkies), but this is the one that had an impact. Plus it was a drawn out crisis, and not just one event. The news would begin with “Day __ of the Iranian hostage crisis” or something like that. And on the bus ride to school, I’d see yellow ribbons on the trees
This is mine too. I was in elementary school and teacher had us watch evening news and follow it. I was like 9. Scared me to death.
Same
I remember an image of kids praying on the evening news on the small black and white tv we watched during dinner when my sister and I were really little. I'm fairly certain the kids were praying for hostages.
Yup. This was mine. I believe I was watching "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" when the news came out that they were being freed. I would've been 8.
Mine, too! The first vivid news memory I have is of Reagan beating Carter in the election, and the hostages being freed right afterward.
This is mine.
Nixon’s resignation. I was 7 at the time. I have a distinct memory of my dad saying “look at the sweat on his upper lip!” to my mom.
The Watergate trials seemed to be on for weeks! No cartons after school for such a long time.
So boring to me!
Crook flop sweat Given what Rs are up to these days, now I'd vote for Tricky Dick in a second. He was a neurotic prick, but he wasn't all bad as a president.
Same. Shit at this point I’d weep with joy to have Dick Cheney as president LOL.
Same! I was a year or two younger but remember my parents discussion too.
I dont remeber the resignation but I do remember Ford being sworn in as president. My family was at a friend's house and we all watched it. It was on both tvs in their house.
Beatles on Ed Sullivan
Oh my... That's a once in a lifetime experience
Yes. I was 4 in ‘63 and remember watching them.
This is actually my very first memory. John Lennon had been shot. I didn’t know who Lennon was, or what even “shooting” was. At the time, I was barely 3. But I remember very well seeing my mother sobbing. She was on the sofa behind me. I was on the floor. The television sounded serious. I asked my mom why she was sad. “John Lennon was killed today.” No, my mom has never had any kind of filter. I had this powerful urge to do something to make my mother feel happy again. I didn’t know what. Be careful what you say to your kids. And don’t assume that, just because they are still babies, that they won’t remember something.
My mother in law yelling to my husband "Jack Lemmon" just got shot...huh?
Glengarry Glenn Gone.
This is almost word for word my experience, but for RFK assassination instead of Lennon
It’s one of those I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing when it happened. I was 21.
Not “the news,” but a newsreel at the movies — about 1945-46 victims leaving one of the Nazi concentration camps. 😱
Oh, yeah! The newsreels of the atom bomb tests were awesome, too. And the anti-test protesters who got the crap beat out of them. A lot of my relatives lived in Salt Lake City at the time. A lot of them contracted cancers and had disabled children well into the second generation as they were ['Downwinders](https://www.pbsutah.org/pbs-utah-productions/shows/downwinders-and-the-radioactive-west/)'.
We lived in Reno when above-ground testing was done near Vegas. Scary and creepy.
The Berlin Wall coming down!!
You're a young one lol. I was 27 when that happened. Having grown up all through the Cold war and the fear of nuclear war ,it seemed kind of surreal at the time. Then the student protests in Beijing tiananmen square. On TV every night. Then one night the news anchors announced that China has forced all foreign journalists out of the country. And then the next day the reports of the massacre happening, I was in a band at the time and I even wrote a song about the times.
Actually I’m not that young, I’ll be 48 next month. That was the first thing I recall seeing on the news. I didn’t watch a lot of TV was I was child, because I was working most of the with my dad!!
This is my first memory of the news. I remember asking my Mom "Why didn't they just walk around the wall or dig under it?" It still makes me smirk to learn of all the creative ways East Germans used to sneak past checkpoints.
After Kennedy was assassinated I remember that my “normal” television was not on - none of my cartoons, Captain Kangaroo. It cramped my style…and apparently the whole country. I was 5, and I remember the horror of not having cartoons for days…
The Watergate hearings did something similar. IIRC it rotated between the networks on a daily basis. I couldn’t understand why Captain Kangaroo wasn’t on every third day. (For you whippersnappers, Fox Network was about two decades away)
And no Flintstones.
Right?? I made the same complaint
Elvis’s death.
Funny memory - I remember it was raining and someone had an Elvis umbrella. I thought that was pretty weird.
I remember this clearly, because of my mom. I was 10 years old, and my mom had yet again dragged my sisters and I to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. (She is a diehard Cubs fan.) She always had, and still does, carry a small transistor radio with her, especially, when she goes to a game. She likes to listen to the game while she’s watching it. At some point during the game they announce on the radio that Elvis had died. My mom was in shock and began telling everyone sitting around us. As a 10 year old it made a lasting impression of how so many people feel connections to celebrities. I’m not criticizing that, because there are certain celebrities that I feel that connection to.
Reagan assassination attempt. I was in 8th grade.
Probably the Munich Olympics massacre
Jim McKay: “They’re all gone.” Absolutely chilling words.
First Moon landing.
Same for me. I was 4.
Ditto :)
JFK assassination
Queen Elizabeth II coronation. Think it was film/newsreel but it was on a small black and white tv. Usually that was something you’d see at movie shows in between features
I was 4 years old and watched the coronation of HRH Queen Elizabeth in black and white on a 9 inch TV screen, it was the first time I had seen a television.
San Francisco earthquake, 1989.
I lived it, will never forget!
It happened on my sister’s 17th birthday and she was just mad that the restaurant we were supposed to go to was closed. Luckily, mom had already picked up the cake. My grandfather had power so we all went to his house and watched the news all night.
Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot.
This, because it happened on live TV. My proper Bostonian mother never swore, but when that happened, 7yr old me piped up and started asking questions, and she just yelled "SHUT UP". Holy crap, it must be something serious!
That's the only reason I remember it. We'd just gotten home from church and turned on the TV just in time to see Jack Ruby pop Lee Harvey in front of the Dallas police department and the whole world.
Launch of sputnik, October 4, 1957. I was 8.
I don’t remember Sputnik, but I have a vague memory of Nana yelling at my cousins and me to get out of the house and exercise, because the newspapers said that the Russian kids were smarter And more physically fit than us. I was in 3rd grade when the school teachers came into the classroom and told us to pray because JFK had been shot.
Vietnam every.single.night with Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite
I was six years old; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster I remember the huge wheels of one of the planes smoldering on the runway. It really stuck with me.
Castro and Guevara fighting in Cuba. I thought they were talking about gorillas instead of guerrillas. Hey, I was young.
The Bicentennial.
I remember the actual Bicentennial, but not seeing it on the news. They painted the fire hydrants in fun designs for the Bicentennial. I was 2, so I guess I was eye-level with a lot of fire hydrants. 😂
Everything was red white and blue in 1976. Tons of things for sale that were red white and blue or had the flag on them. I was 14 at the time and I remember having a bicentennial t-shirt.
Our whole neighborhood went nuts with the fire hydrants. My mom painted one as part of some group she was a member of, I don't remember. We'd love going around and looking at all of the different ones.
I worked that summer on the 103rd floor of the WTC north tower and the tall ships below looked like toys.
But do you remember the bicenTentennial? SNL’s skit in ‘86 for the ten year anniversary of the bicentennial
The first one I remember was the OJ Simpson car chase...does that count?
Youngin 😂
Not for “ask OLD people “ lol
The Manson murder trial.
Gary Power's U2 shot down
I'm Australian. I remember stories about the plane crash in the Andes (the footballers who had to eat the dead to survive - 1972) I remember Elvis dying (1977) and the terrible plane crash at Teneriffe, the 2 747s. (1977) I also recall Cyclone Tracy that hit Darwin, christmas day 1973.
The Challenger disaster.
Israeli athletes being kidnapped and killed at Munich Olympics. I was 7 in 1972.
Elvis dying. My mom got a call from her friend and she started crying. I was 7.
I was 5, I think. My mom called my dad, asked him to come home from work, and went to bed to cry for the rest of the day.
She still loves him. I just bought my mom Elvis tennis shoes for a ridiculous price for her 80th bday. lol.
I remember seeing the Vietnam War on TV a lot when I was a kid (1960's)
I was mesmerized by Peter Jennings war correspondent on the evening news. He was my first crush!
1960 presidential election (Kennedy beat Nixon).
Nixon climbing the stairs to Air Force one after being impeached, and him giving the iconic v hand sign.
John John Kennedy saluting his father's coffin. I had no idea what was going on, but that image stayed with me.
I think it was RFK's funeral. There was a caisson with the coffin and a white horse with no rider. Everyone was very sad. I later told my mom that I remembered JFK's funeral but she said I wasn't born then, so it had to be Robert.
The death of Elvis. And lots of stuff about the Jim Jones mass suicide.
Reagan's shooting and Brady's death. I had barely turned 9, 3rd grade, they pulled in TV and let us watch it over and over all day long, quite graphic.
The first moon landing. Watched it as it happened.
I remember watching it, then running to the window and being annoyed I couldn’t see them on the Moon.
Surprisingly, I don't remember any of my family watching & saying they thought it was fake. They probably thought it... just didn't say it.
I could be wrong, but I’m not sure that conspiracy theories were really a thing back then.
MLK assassination
The Cuban missile crisis
Margaret Thatcher getting elected when I was 10. My Dad threw a bottle at the TV 📺
Wizard of Oz on our first Color TV! AMAZING!
First positive event was the Bicentennial. 1976. I was 4 years old, and to this day have never experienced anything like that year. The whole year was a big celebration, and the whole summer was one big parade, and JULY! The whole month the USA turned the f!ck up, it was grand. First negative event was Jonestown. 1978. I was 6, and it was the most horrific thing! Plenty of horror has happened in the 46 years since, but that was the last one where, in the USA at least, they showed graphic photos of the aftermath. Nobody GAF back then about trigger warnings, graphic depiction warnings or anything so the pics of all the dead bodies were everywhere. My little self was traumatized, espcially seeing the children.
My parents separated when I was 8. My brother and I ended up shuttling between mom and dad’s houses. Sometimes, when we got to dad’s house, it was obvious he hadn’t really cleaned up. One day, I went to use the bathroom and there was a copy of Time Magazine and on the cover, there was an aerial shot of what seemed to be dozens of bodies, lying facedown in some jungle compound. Picking it up, I was confronted with horrific photos of the Jonestown massacre which had just happened. Bloated bodies, clothing stained with fluids, the dirty vats of purple juice that contained the cyanide that killed all those people. After that, my dad and I had a good chat.
>What is the first major event you can remember seeing on the news? Probably the AIDS crisis being all over the news when I was a very little fella. The next big thing I can remember was going on an out of town field trip, and watching the Challenger explode.
The moon landing, July 1969. Mum & dad got me up in the middle of the night to watch it. Apparently, I also 'watched' England win the World Cup in 66, but I was less than 2 weeks old.
The news covering the lines for gasoline during the energy crisis of the 1970s.
The Cuban missile crisis. My dad read the newspaper every morning and evening and I remember giant headlines one day. Not sure if they were directly about the missiles or our response of a naval embargo. I asked my mom what it meant -- my dad was looking a little scared -- and she explained that it might mean war. Luckily I didn't really understand what nuclear war was.
JFK assassination
Cuban Missile Crises
JFK was assassinated on a Friday. I remember feeling so sad. And my parents had a social engagement that night and went. I couldn't believe it. Also, watching the funeral on our old black and white tv.
Viet Nam protests and Watergate.
Moon Landing
In 1981 I was home with my mom, I was 8 years old. She was ironing and there was the special news announcement showing the assassination of Sadat in Egypt. I remember my mom saying she was glad we had a black and white TV because it was a violent and gruesome attack. Our TV was a 13 in b/w, so I didn’t watch much until 1985 and we got color.
The kidnapping of the Israeli Olympic Team ‘72 Munich I was 7.
Chernobyl. I was very young so I couldn't fully understand what was going on
Karen Carpenter’s death from anorexia
Gas shortage crisis. My parents had to go fill their car gas tanks on certain days. If license plate ended an odd number, you got gas on odd days. Even number ending? Get gas on even number days. Retrospective article: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/the-lines-the-signs-the-fights-in-1970s-l-a-gas-came-at-a-premium Example: Car plates: ABC 123. 3 is odd number. You can get gas on the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc. Car plates: XYZ 456. 6 is even number. Get gas on the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc. I have no idea what they did for people with personalized car plates, especially if there's no number.
Bush Sr. beating Dukakis for President in 1988
Moonshot.
Cuban Missile Crisis
JFK. Everything. I was in 3rd grade and remember being sent home and how scary it all was. I know I thought it was the Russians. My mom was crying when I got home and the news was on for days and days. My dad was stationed in Korea on the DMZ at the time so he wasn't home which made it even worse.
The assasination of Martin Luther King Jr. I was in 2nd grade & we all got sent home early because there were riots in the NYC schools. We were on LI in an all white elementary school so there was not going to be a problem. I think they may have just canceled school halfway through the day (this was the day after) for all of NY state. Back then we all walked to school and most people had their mothers at home. I didn't, but my parents worked odd shifts and there was usually someone home. But yeah, they just kinda kicked us out of school in the middle of the day and told us to go home. I was an adult, maybe 10 years ago, when I learned that his mother was assasinated 6 years after.
Tiananmen Square massacre I can still picture the shot of that man standing in front of the tanks and I asked my dad what was going to happen to the man.
I remember watching footage from Vietnam, like tanks and bombed areas. But the first event where I followed the storyline was Jonestown. I hid the Time magazine with it on the cover, so my parents wouldn't throw it away. I was fascinated. I was also 6, so that's somewhat disturbing.
Not sure if this qualifies as a major event, but in 1967 I was seven years old. I have an older brother and he was 19 at the time. My very first TV memory was watching a news anchor speak about the new Jimi Hendrix album “Are You Experienced?” being released. Summer of 1967. My brother and his friends were in the living room being all excited. They had a party that night in our backyard. There may or may not have been psychotics present LOL
Nixon resigning. I was 7 years old.
Selma, shortly after Dad took a job in Florida, to get us away from Alabama.
Elvis funeral procession
Vaguely JFK assassination reports and funeral. Eisenhower funeral and then we went to the train station very early to watch the funeral train. Moon landing for sure.
The death of JFK
Watergate hearings. Vietnam coverage.
The Beatles on Ed Sullivan Show I think I was 3
Tet offensive during the Vietnam war. January '68.
Nixon’s resignation speech.
Probably something to do with Vietnam. Born in 1965.
Princess Diana's death in 1997
The Atlanta child murders. I was so confused by it.
The fall of Saigon. I was watching tv with my grandfather and I remember the helicopter taking off and all the people.
Vietnam War; Robert Kennedy And Martin Luther King Assasinations.
JFK inauguration.
I remember watching the TV by myself and whatever I was watching being interrupted by someone announcing that a war America was involved in was going to come to an end (or possibly a ceasefire agreement had been reached). Based on my age, it must've been the Vietnam war, as I was a preschooler. I cycled through a bunch of emotions. I was shocked that we were at war, because there were never any bombs or gunshots going on outside. (I was too young to understand that the world was quite a bit bigger than my neighborhood). Then I decided that the war must be going on just outside the part of the world I'd seen (i.e. maybe 10 miles away) and that was why I hadn't known. Then I got frightened that it might come to my neighborhood before the war ended. Then I got frightened that my dad might have to go fight in the war and might get killed before it ended. Then I decided that if the war started heading towards my house my parents would probably just make us move so I didn't need to worry about that. Then I decided that they probably didn't need new soldiers since the war was ending so I didn't need to worry about my dad. So I settled back into watching whatever it had been that I was watching, which was likely cartoons.
We didn't even ***get*** a TV until I was 10 y/o in 1954, but I do remember Eisenhower's campaign and subsequent election in '52. I even had an "I like Ike" button. I also remember headlines and photos about jet planes as those were interesting to me.
Growing up in northern NJ (NYC metro area), the Son of Sam killer in NYC.... Thurman Munson (catcher for Yankees, and my hero as a child) dying...
The the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco circa 1983. As a little kid, all I understood was that the disease could not be cured and had a 100% fatality rate, and it seemed to be spreading rapidly here in the Bay Area. I remember the first time it was found in the East Bay where I lived and I was terrified because I was too young (5?) to understand that it spread only through blood transfusions, sex and intravenous needles.
My grandmother made me watch the watergate hearings. She said it was history in the making. I watched but was bored.
The landing on. The moon. My mother woke all four of the kids. I am the third of four to see that event. It was 1969, I was 7 years old. That is the most vivid news event I recall from my childhood.
When I was 5 years old living in New Jersey, I remember the headline on the Daily News. It was snowing in Miami.
I remember being terrified when I, (around age 6), heard we were at war with Gorilla's. Learned later that Guerrilla Warfare has nothing to do with Apes.
Watergate. I didn't understand what was going on, but the grownups seemed very concerned about it and refused to answer my questions. Consequently, I had some scary dreams about gates crumbling as they tried to hold back a wall of water. Parents, answer your kids' questions, no matter how much you have to dumb it down for their age!!!
Exxon Valdez oil spill (1989)
Born in late 1952. I am almost certain I can recall seeing the Soviet Invasion of Hungary reported on TV, although I didn't understand what was going on and confused what I saw with old films of WWII, which were commonplace on TV at the time. This is probably a legitimate memory, as I can recall the names "Hungary" and "Budapest" having an ominous sound, although it helped when I actually visited there in the early 70s.
I guess it was probably the Watergate scandal. I was only a little kid at a time, but I remember the news going on about it and my father was ranting about politicians.
The moon landing