What's the first big news story you can remember being concerned about.

[Quoth]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Quoth,

I'm just glad there is someone senior to me.  I remember some NASA thing on the news when I was really little.  Probably the Skylab shot.

Did ya really have to use the word "senior"?

[DunderMifflin]

Does anyone remember during the Nuclear War fears of the 80s when US presidential campaigns were going on, political commentators would commonly refer to something called "the button" ??

The idea being that a President has a button in their bedroom or somewhere that launched nuclear weapons. People would say about hopeful candidates - "Do we really want this guys finger on......the button???" The idea there being a President could have a temper tantrum one day and flippantly launch a weapon.

 

I'm not sure if this really happened or if I'm just remembering old movies or something, pre- internet people couldn't have really  been that stupid ???

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Quoth,

Sorry.

[peterbound]

3 hours ago, zelticgar said:

The Iran hostage crisis was the first big news story for me. I remember seeing the day counter on the nightly news every evening. That got me interested in the 1980 election. I remember my parents were staunch democrats but they voted for Reagan because they were pissed Kennedy lost to Carter. 

 

 

 

One of the guys that was a hostage (SGT. James Lopez) was from my home town.  People /still/ have shit up in their yards because of that situation.  

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/25/us/long-awaited-journey-begins-for-lopez-family.html

[HexMachina]

The first I remember is 9/11. I remember because we were doing these newspaper collages at school, and there were all of these stories about the twin towers and stuff. At the time I didn't really understand the significance, other than something bad had happened. I think like Stannis Eats No Peaches, the 7/7 bombings was probably the first story I remember being concerned about.

[Astromech]

18 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

First memory of a news story:  Reagan getting shot.

First news story I remember caring about:  Challenger explosion.

I vaguely remember Reagan getting shot. However, I vividly remember SNL's spoof on it with Buckwheat being shot. John Lennon's assassination is a more vivid memory since my parents were Beatles fans.

 

Challenger explosion was very memorable. Our classes were interrupted and we watched the news coverage in our home rooms.

[Silverstar]

Margaret Thatcher resigning as PM. I always remember that photo of her driving away from Downing St looking tearful. 

The horrible, horrible Jamie Bulger murder. 

[Adara]

The Landshut hijacking in 1977, I was eight years old. So called German Autumn, although shit started much sooner than '77. But this I remember, they shot the Pilot  and let his body slide out of the plane. .

[SkynJay]

6 hours ago, peterbound said:

One of the guys that was a hostage (SGT. James Lopez) was from my home town.  People /still/ have shit up in their yards because of that situation.  

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/25/us/long-awaited-journey-begins-for-lopez-family.html

That sparked an old memory for me.  As a child there were yellow ribbons all over Fort Collins for Tom Sutherland, a professor who was held hostage in Beirut for six years or so.

I don't remember the event, but those ribbons were part of my childhood. I thonk the whole city showed up when he finally came home.

[maarsen]

10 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Quoth,

I'm just glad there is someone senior to me.  I remember some NASA thing on the news when I was really little.  Probably the Skylab shot.

I remember Kennedy being assassinated. I was home sick that day and I later  remember my oldest brother talking about Jack Ruby after Oswald was killed. I was 5 then.

[IheartIheartTesla]

The assassination of Indira Gandhi. We were about to go on a road trip to a wedding and the Congress party called for a national shutdown with folks stopping traffic. I remember a few 'enforcers' stopping our taxi and my uncle talking them into letting us go because they had kids with them (I was 10 at the time).

The aftermath of that assassination was also pretty bloody but that's a story for another time.

 

[Lily Valley]

The first that I watched daily was the Clarence Thomas hearings.  Here's "Diamond Joe" talking about how he asked Anita Hill about her breasts on NATIONAL TELEVISION when he could have had these hearings closed. As he was asked to.  http://www.history.com/speeches/thomas-hill-sexual-harrasment-hearings

For those of you who didn't have the pleasure to watch these firsthand.  The entire series of disgusting interviews is still here to our perpetual shame.

 

I will never forget this woman being asked about her breasts and her undergarments for a whole week.  A whole week.  Never.

[Chaldanya]

AIDS. I was convinced that everyone would get AIDS and we would all die.

[Arkhangel]

9/11, because my Mum got a phone call in the middle of the night (in Australia) and had to go in to work. I remember getting up and the TV was on, which it never was in the mornings, and only my Dad was there watching the footage of the towers falling and he took us to school that day. It's the first time I can remember kids in the classroom talking about something that had been on the news.

Edit: Oh and Diana's funeral, although I remember that less because I was concerned about it and more because I was annoyed that cartoons were cancelled and there was literally nothing else on TV, it was playing on every bloody channel.

[Lordsteve666]

I have vague memories of IRA bombings being on the news when I was young and I remember a lot of fuss about the Rio environmental summit back in the 90's. 

Although quite late in my teens I think 9/11 was the one big one for me though. It was the first global event I think I realised was going to directly affect my life  

I was playing on the computer during a day off before starting university and I remember my mum calling me through the house to see what was going on. 

I remembered seeing that image of the burning tower and thinking "shit, this is going to start a war and be the end for all of us". To my mind which could understand what this sort of thing could mean I just knew that someone somewhere has just lit the fuse on something that was going to errupt and cause upheaval the world over. Of course WWIII hasn't quite happened yet but the world became a more paranoid and darker place after that attack, it changed the rules of the game. 

[Ice Queen]

Reagan's attempted assassination. I was 12. 

Other than that, I remember being scared on a daily basis that nuclear war was going to start any minute. When I was a senior in high school, we bombed Libya. Everyone in my first period history class was so terrified that the Soviets were going to nuke us that the teacher cancelled the lesson for the day and spent the class period calming everyone down. 

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Reagan's attempted assassination. I was 12. 

Other than that, I remember being scared on a daily basis that nuclear war was going to start any minute. When I was a senior in high school, we bombed Libya. Everyone in my first period history class was so terrified that the Soviets were going to nuke us that the teacher cancelled the lesson for the day and spent the class period calming everyone down. 

Let's hug it out.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

The 1989 Earthquake during the World Series.  I was six years old and terrified even though I am from New York.  

[Ice Queen]

On 7/7/2016 at 10:35 AM, DunderMifflin said:

Does anyone remember during the Nuclear War fears of the 80s when US presidential campaigns were going on, political commentators would commonly refer to something called "the button" ??

The idea being that a President has a button in their bedroom or somewhere that launched nuclear weapons. People would say about hopeful candidates - "Do we really want this guys finger on......the button???" The idea there being a President could have a temper tantrum one day and flippantly launch a weapon.

 

I'm not sure if this really happened or if I'm just remembering old movies or something, pre- internet people couldn't have really  been that stupid ???

Remember Genesis' video for Land of Confusion? Reagan had two red buttons--"Nurse" and "Nuke" and accidentally hits the wrong one. 

And that was way before anyone knew he had Alzheimer's. 

[Ice Queen]

13 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Let's hug it out.

LOL Nowadays they'd send them all to therapy. It was just something we lived with. My older brothers and older kids I grew up with still remember having air raid drills--I don't remember ever doing that even though my elementary school was a fallout shelter.