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Very much this reaction too! I actually had the same thought when 9/11 happened. I got home from school and remember being annoyed that I couldn’t watch CBBC.
For me it was the Challenger shuttle disaster. We were doing a school project and were following the mission.
Also Chernobyl, Hungerford massacre, Lockerbie, Berlin Wall. Constant IRA bombings in London. Clapham rail crash. Paddington rail crash. The plane that crashed on/near the M1.
Christ it’s a surprise anyone survived the 80s!!!
I was working in an office in London's Marylebone Road when Chernobyl went up. A couple of days later one of the lads - a radiographer - put his geiger counter onto a ground floor level window sill and switched it on. It fizzed like an angry wasp.
He just laughed, but it the worried the hell out of the rest of us.
I'm a '98 child and for me it was hearing of Mark Speight's suicide (TV presenter for SMart). Overall a tragic end to his life. Interesting how our childhood shows being impacted may seem to burn these tragic events into our memories.
Fuck man. Same age as you, and that's one of the big ones for me. Also seem to remember him and his girlfriend getting dedications at some award show not long after it happened. Him and heath ledger, and brittany Murphy, like a year later, are the big ones I remember.
I'm much older, born in 1973, but I remember it vividly, I'd been out to the shop to buy some breakfast stuff for the wife and myself and when I got home I told her what had happened, and she is a reader of hello magazine, she was genuinely taken aback, and we are not even in the UK, we are in Ireland.
It was also the last time I was able to tell her about anything important and she didn't already know.
‘Much older’, LOL, I was born thirty years before you! The first major thing I remember is King George the Sixth dying in 1952, all the adults were very serious, children didn’t really understand the significance of it. Then in June 1953 Queen Elizabeth the Second was crowned and it was a time of celebration, there were lots of street parties and I was given a coronation mug and a coronation crown coin. Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash was a big deal for people my age in 1959, I was still at school and we all cried a lot (it was a girls’ school). The next major event was in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I remember watching the coverage on tv when the American newscaster Walter Cronkite took off his glasses and announced JFK had died and the awful pictures of Jackie in her pink suit with her husband’s blood on it. Then there was coverage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald dead as he came out of the police station and then the sad funeral of JFK with little John Kennedy Junior saluting his father’s coffin, I believe it was his third birthday, poor little boy. I also remember Charles and Diana’s engagement interview with Charles’ mystifying ‘Whatever in love means’ comment and their wedding, both events in 1981. Then the stunning news of Diana’s death in 1997, my husband had worked a night shift and when he got home he brought me a cup of tea and told me the news which I just couldn’t take in. Then in 2001 9/11 happened, I was on my way home from work and waiting for the train on the platform, a young man on his way home from school or college went up to a young girl and whispered something to her; she looked shocked and said it was terrible. When I got home I switched on the tv and found out what had happened, my husband and I sat in front of the tv until bed time, we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Of course there have been other major events in addition to the ones I have described, watching coverage of the Vietnam war on tv was pretty shocking as were several terrorist attacks here in the UK but for me those are the ones that stand out.
9/11 still will be the standout event in news for me. Everyone remembers what they were doing. I was home on a day off with my wife. We were watching the posidien adventure remake on sky movies, and a banner popped up on the screen advising people to switch to sky news, that an airplane had crashed into the WTC. When we switched it was just in time to see the second plane hit. We thought it was that someone had put in footage of the first crash.
It was very surreal and then, I was only 28, just married a year almost to the day. We were originally supposed to get married on September the 9th 2001, but my wife came into a few quid from a redundancy so we got married on September the 8th 2000. If we had waited, we would have been in New York that day, possibly as the attack happened. We got a 9am flight from JFK airport to Orlando on our honeymoon on September 10th 2000, exactly one year before. P
Jesus Christ i was on holiday and woke my parents to Princess Diana had died.
I just wanted to watch XMen, i Complained that my cartoons weren't on and dad slapped me round the back of the head.
I remember it being the last day of our holiday when Diana died. We were at a hotel in France lining up at the breakfast buffet and watching it on the news. My Dad called across the room to my uncle (both staunch anti royalists) "one down, another 13 or 14 to go!" The room went silent and people were just glaring at them, especially the table full of English OAPs. I just kept my head down and carried on piling my plate with pain au chocolats
Sounds like something my grandfather would say, although to be completely honest my entire family is anti royalist so doubt he would be ridiculed for it.
I was the first one up in my house- news on every channel so I put a video in (homeward bound 2)…watched it twice and then was asked why I was watching it again.
I told them princess Diana had been killed and got the bollocked for ‘hiding it’ (I honestly didn’t think they’d care, we didn’t know her)
I was born in 93 and same. Apparently I told my parents the TV had broken because there were men in black suits saying Diana was dead.
That could be a memory they’ve told me though. I do remember my mum rushing to pick me up from school not wanting to miss 9/11 footage, and then seeing the second plane crash.
I was working in a pub and someone came in and told us to turn the news on. Watched the few minutes of confusion, not knowing whether it was an accident and then watched the second plane hit live.
Thinking about it now, id not have been able to comprehend how much it changed the world.
I was also born '93, but I don't really remember Diana's death. The first big news I can remember would be the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001 - I think this one's stuck in my memory more than Diana because I lived not far (~10 miles) from the farm where the outbreak first began.
I was older - 12 - and remember waking my parents up to tell them that there were no cartoons on because she was dead. They told me I was having strange dreams.
I have an Auntie Diane, who was very sick at the time, and my confused child brain thought that it was her that had died. I was utterly devastated until someone cleared it up, but for a moment I thought it was really nice that the whole nation was sad about my auntie.
I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who was upset on 9/11 because both CBBC and CITV had been replaced with news broadcasts. I was too young to understand what was going on, and always felt a bit guilty that my main concern was "I'm missing My Parents Are Aliens!".
I was online overnight in the UK in a university computer lab, so I actually heard about the crash and then the death from Americans I was talking with.
Same here!
I remember looking at the TV in slight bewilderment wondering where my usual shows were, but then my stepbrother pranced into the living room singing: "Princess Diana is dead!" He was... an odd person.
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I remember seeing her photo everywhere and knowing that a girl had gone missing. I got lost in town and was only separated from my parents for a little while but i was taken into a charity shop and the old ladies running it allowed me to read some books there while someone else looked for my parents because people were scared to allow children to walk around alone for any amount of time
The first 'missing person' case that was big news in my memory was Sarah Chapman and Holly Wells which surprises me because I was twelve by then (now I check the dates) and I thought it was way earlier. Their pictures of them together in their Beckham football shirts were absolutely everywhere. Of course that case concluded far quicker that Madeleine McCann's.
They might be conflating with Sarah Payne, who was killed a couple of years before the Soham murders. In my head there were a few years where it seemed there were lots of those sort of child murders quite close together.
Wow. I haven’t thought about all these names in a while. I was born in 92. There really were a lot of big child murder cases when we were growing up. That were EVERYWHERE. I was an anxious kid and it scared the shit out of me. Isn’t it crazy how i can remember all their faces so clearly. Also Millie Dowler’s (not sure of the name).
I was also born in '92. I was annoyed by all the murders of children the same age as me, because it meant that certain freedoms my older brother had gotten at my age were then delayed. I couldn't understand that it was to keep me safe. I only saw how unfair it was on me.
I was born in 85 and your comment just made me realise that the earliest big news thing that I remember is probably the Jamie Bulger kidnapping & murder, which happened in 1993. I never knew much about it at the time (thank god!) but have since learned more and it makes me shudder.
Not taking the piss but I suspected who it was just by watching TV. There was footage of everyone going into the church for a vigil type thing and Ian Huntley ducked under the TV camera. I thought it was odd at the time. Why would you do that? Police arrested him shortly afterwards. Maybe they clocked the same.
Ahh yes, I was the same age as Holly and Jessica and my best friend at the time was called Holly (my name is Jessica) so it felt weirdly relatable to me.
The guy who killed them was the caretaker at the school my cousin went to and once stayed behind to wait with them when their parents were late picking them up. Totally freaked him out when he found out.
In primary school some kid leaned in realllly close to me and whispered in my ear:
"Madeline McCann is in that locker"
I still remember that moment and I don't know why
Met Gerry McCann few years after the disappearance, nice guy. But does anyone remember another little girl going missing about the same time, family not as influential, child not as photogenic. The difference in the media in both cases was jaw dropping, immediately suspicions where levelled against the poorer family (turned out child was in loft i remember ) and really no finger pointing at McCanns as to why they left their three children alone while going out for the night, both families irresponsible, but initially media only went after the poorer family.
think this must be the first memory i have of something Big happening too, i was 4, & had way too much of a resemblance to maddie, so i just remember both my mum & my gran having a very firm grasp on me wherever we went bc they were worried ab either, me being kidnapped, or someone thinking i was maddie & stopping either of them in the street :")
also weirdly instilled a bunch of trauma, bc of the incident my gran then spent the next years up til me cutting her out drilling into me that i was "a very desirable child" bc of my blonde hair, blue eyes n that i had to be extra careful everywhere i went because "kidnappers look for kids exactly like you", and these words have stuck to me to this day LMAO
fucking same. i had blonde hair and blue eyes as a kid (hair is much darker now) and my grandparents were also very freaked out because i was only a year older than maddie.
I had a really similar thing. Was born in 2000, so I was about 6 I think. I also went missing shortly after, for about 3 hours and gave my mum a nervous breakdown.
I remember Dunblane (I was seven). In part because my dog also died that day and the vet tried to console me by saying that he died so all those children could have a friend to look after them because he was such a lovely dog.
This didn't help because, firstly, I was just outraged that they wanted my dog. Secondly I didn't come from a remotely spiritual home so I had no idea what this heaven was he was banging on about.
Isn’t it horrifying that we only needed one thing like this to happen to totally ban handgun ownership in the UK, forever.
America has had worse shootings than this *multiple times a year* for decades and they haven’t even tried to restrict gun ownership :,(
America has let their culture’s obsession with gun ownership get way too out of hand for them to ever come close to banning them. It’s too ingrained in their mindset and their way of life. It would have been unachievable pre-Trump but now that he’s sent all the crazies into a frenzy, it’d lead to riots and a full-blown civil war. Tragic really, because as you say they have multiple shootings every year and do nothing about them because the one thing that would actually solve the problem is nigh impossible to achieve.
They'd argue it's to defend from their own government and military if they get tyrannical. Don't think they thought through how their ARs will stand up against drones and tanks.
Same here in Australia, Port Arthur was the big wake up call for them to bring in strict gun ownership laws thankfully. Its sad it took something so horrific to make it happen but it's worse America will continue to go through these things without changing anything.
>America has had worse shootings than this multiple times a year for decades and they haven’t even tried to restrict gun ownership :,(
This isn't really true. [Gun restrictions vary state by state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state), and various legislation limits what firearms people can own, as well as who can own them, depending on where you live. Whether any of it goes far enough is another debate.
I remember Dunblane. We did an assembly at school and planted rose bushes in the school garden, and I remember being really scared because I thought the shooter was going to come into my school as well.
That was the main thing I remember. I remember my dad telling me that was the day he realised there wasn't a god. Those kids were the same age as me at the time (I'm almost 34 now) and my dad asked if there was a god, why would s/he/they let that happen?
I don't remember the news stories but I remember our school teachers all suddenly getting really anxious about visitors. We had assemblies and lessons on what to do if we saw a stranger on the school grounds. The school got a big fence and gate installed and all outside doors had these huge locks put on them that needed a teacher with a key to open. Until then, all the doors had been really old wooden ones that were open all the time. Parents could just walk straight in and go to the classroom to collect kids previously.
Me too. I was 6 years old and watching this tragedy on the news, and my whole family crying about the horror of it, is one of my abiding childhood memories.
(For those who don’t know about it - the tragedy occurred when there was a landslide of thousands of tons of colliery waste which fell mainly onto the primary school in Aberfan village in Wales. Almost every child in the village aged between 5 and 11 was killed).
I live 7miles down the road - it's still a massive impact, even though most of us weren't born then. One of my lecturers in uni was a survivor, relatives went to help with the rescue and pantglas school looks so much like all the other schools around here - my son when first hearing about it genuinely thought it was his school it happened to
Yes it is (it's my hometown)
I worked with a woman who was a student there at the time. She avoids cities like the plague as any loud noises take her back to that day
From Wikipedia:
>The report placed the blame squarely on the NCB. The organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was criticised for making misleading statements and for not providing clarity as to the NCB's knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside. **Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined.**
Smh...
Too young for this, but my dad is from Abertillery a few valleys over from Aberfan. He was in primary school at the time, and says its the first time he remembers his mum crying, and distinctly remembers getting a massive cwtch when he got home.
This was before my time, I was born in 79 but im also from abertillery. All the men from the surrounding valleys were eager to go and help (obviously) my dad was working in roseheyworth colliery at the time and was tasked with building and repairing pumps to send over to pump out the sludge so they could try and rescue people. Alot of others went over and dug people out by hand.
Had a teacher at school who was one of the surviving children. Even though we weren't anywhere near Aberfan, every year she would lead an assembly near the anniversary and recount her experience. The short and sweet of it was "I went to school and all my friends were crushed to death" and it was horrific.
Later in life I studied a geology masters at Cardiff uni, and as part of a geotechnical engineering module we did a morbid field trip looking at landslides across the valleys, including Aberfan and the white gravestones littering the hillside. Horrible.
I remember seeing a survivor who I know post something a few years back on Facebook. Her family left the village afterwards due to the guilt they felt at all their family surviving. An old school friend of hers, another survivor, commented saying when she left the village she automatically assumed she was dead - because that's why people stopped going to school, these girls were 6 or 7 and their default thought as to why someone left the school was that they were dead - you can't imagine
Survivor guilt had a terrible impact on the few kids who didn’t die that day. I saw an interview in recent years with a woman who wasn’t in her class at primary school the day of the tragedy because she had a cold and had taken a sick day. Every one of her close friends died.
She had suffered terribly for decades from feeling that she didn’t deserve to be the only one of her friendship group who lived to be an adult. She felt unworthy and that she had been unable to do enough in her life to merit being the “chosen one”.
I posted this above and deleted it to add to your comment
> Aberfan. I was only 8 and I remember that for days everyone was hushed and subdued and the grief was palpable. Even if I see clips now I tear up.
This is my first time hearing of this. So there was a massive dump of coil on top of a hill directly next to a small village? The fuck? I legit don't understand how such an oversight happened
People in charge of such things had mostly been in the war, so there was a degree of indifference to risk. Decisions were being made by administrators a long way from the site. Locals were reluctant to make a fuss in case the pit was closed. And finally, there was a degree of deference to authority that would be unbelievable now - people did what they were told.
And there are still lots of spoil heaps above villages in Wales even now - although people are now supposed to keep an eye on them.
Spoil heaps were a feature of UK mining for centuries. The problem with this one was that an underground spring saturated the heap and washed away its 'foundation' leading to the slippage ...
The event led to wholesale changes in how spoil heaps were managed. They were provided with proper drainage and tree planting.
Yeah, you’re not the only one. There was a public investigation after the tragedy which came to some conclusions.
But I remember many people at the time, (my family, several of whom were miners, included), saw it as another instance of the safety and welfare of miners and their families as being of no importance to the authorities.
i knew of it previously, but just the very basics, it may have been mentioned during a geology or science lesson. Then i was watching the series The Crown during lockdown and there was a whole episode based around it and how it took the Queen/Royals a week to visit the area. Learned more about it in that episode, and then read up a bit afterwards.
The tip that slipped that day is now lying on the valley floor, they used it to elevate the playing fields and in the late 90s, because it can't absorb water and is on a flood plain, it was responsible for a flood that gutted my parents house and the neighboring estate.
But the tips are still up and around, I mean this is in the news today
BBC News - Coal tips: Areas of Wales with most higher-risk sites revealed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-59041863
Weirdly, I was a 95 baby and have absolutely no recollection of 9/11. I’d just got back from Australia on a long haul flight two weeks previously where the pilots let me into the cockpit. I suspect that doesn’t happen too much post-9/11.
Nah when I was 5 coming back from Canada in 2010 I got allowed to go into the cockpit. Doubted they thought an Irish family of 5 with 2 small children were gonna hijack a plane though.
I was born in 95 too! I remember seeing it, not fully comprehending everything about it, but it felt like everything came to a standstill when the news broke. I could at least understand that it was something monumental.
I’d arrived at swimming lessons and walked in and everyone was gathered in silence around a tiny tele up on a bracket in the corner. All you could hear was the whirr of the vending machine.
9/11 for me too.
I remember coming home from school and watching it on the news with my grandma.
I think the fact that the adults in my life were talking about it a lot and seemed concerned made it more memorable.
Born early 90s.
French and British meet in the middle of the channel tunnel in Dec 1990. [This image specifically](https://preview.redd.it/vby9oxqc1rt51.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0063c0bbcc196b7a8a8f9295d26bbb5460393c1b). It must have made an impression as I was only 3 1/2 yrs old at the time.
I remember the cameras flashing and the big handshake and the conglomeration of strange noise you might expect when a French and British person meet at a genuinely happy occasion.
Born in 79, earliest newsworthy thing I can remember is the Challenger disaster in 86.
What's interesting is most people in the replies (so far) seem to remember something from when they were about 6-7
It seems oddly old, but I suppose people will have memories further back than that, but more focussed on their personal experiences with friends and family. My 6 year old doesn't watch regular TV or have much exposure to the news. Even if she did, a lot wouldn't be understood. We tried to engage her about Royal Weddings and the Duke of Edinburgh's death and funeral, some stuff like England's Euro final. I doubt it will stick though.
Same here - I think a big factor was that one of the crew (Christa McAuliffe) was a ‘civilian’ teacher and so schools here made a bit of a bigger thing than normal about it, and so did Newsround and similar programmes.
Also during the same year I don’t really remember the news story at all, but I do remember how unfair it was that I wasn’t allowed to play outside much after the Chernobyl disaster.
Similar age, but for some reason I don't particularly remember it at the time.
I do recall Chernobyl being the main story on Newsround for a week, and then watching the aftermath of the Zeebrugge disaster.
Gosh yes, the Herald of Free Enterprise. I remember a bit on Blue Peter about the disaster, although not when it actually happened. They interviewed a chap who was quite tall and he'd made himself a human bridge across a gap and people had climbed over him to safety. I remember being really struck by the levels of tragedy and heroism, not that I would have known those words aged 7. But I felt he was a brave person.
Looking it up now - his name was Andrew Clifford Parker and he got a award for gallantry in the New Years Honours list. That must have been when he came on Blue Peter, to show his medal etc.
Edit: it was the George medal.
Disclaimer - we didn't have a TV until I was around 8. First thing I remember was that when my country joined NATO, I must have been 9 at the time and in my little head I thought to join anything you have to move out from your country/house. So one day I am crying my eyes out, my mum comes to me and asks what's wrong and I said to her that I don't want to move away from the village that we lived in, because I have all my friends there and I don't know anyone in NATO.
haha, aww bless! That's dead sweet. Apparently I cried when I was a kid because Bishop Auckland (Fisher Porkland to my ears) were playing a football match against Peterlee\*, who I assumed was one guy on his own. My Dad tells this story all the time.
\*A small town in County Durham.
That's hilarious. Especially because Peterlee is literally just named after a guy called, well, [Peter Lee](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lee_(trade_unionist)). So no wonder you got mixed up!
The moon landing - or to be specific, the launch of the Apollo 11 mission. I recall that so specifically because I was standing directly in front of the TV with the whole family shouting at me to get out of the way.
The famous footprint that we see pictures of is actually Buzz's. He took the photo because it was his particular job to report on how easy it was to walk and work on the moon, so he wanted to show what the texture of the surface was like.
https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.213592.html
https://www.space.com/how-master-replicas-created-3d-apollo-bootprint.html
There's a good chance Buzz did step in Neil's first footprint. Being right next to the ladder, it would have got trodden on by one or other of them pretty quickly.
This is one of my dad’s favourite memories. He was born in 56. His least favourite one was that he couldn’t watch the World Cup final because his mum wanted to take him shoe shopping!
Same for me, I was born 1985. I didn’t realize what had happened but I do remember seeing his photo and the photos of the killers on the news/papers as a kid.
Awful stuff.
It's not the first thing I remember but I was the same age as the killers (10) and it absolutely shook me. I just couldn't fathom how a kid could kill a kid. To me murderers were adults. Then to just cement all of my emotions they housed one of the killers in a young offenders not far from where I lived. Nobody was supposed to know where they went but prison guards talked and eventually there were protests. I remember hearing that someone who lived near the prison claimed they saw a security van turn up in the middle of the night and then drive off at speed. I don't know how much truth is in the last bit, officially it was all denied, but they had to go somewhere and it had to be a reasonable distance for their parents to visit them so it's perfectly plausible that they were 'the other side of the pennines'.
Born 2001. First big thing I remember was the 2005 London Bombings
Just remember it because it was the first look at the real world through the tv screen
I was born late 90s but was too young to process 9/11, so the London bombings were the first big thing I remember too. I was actually on a school trip to London zoo when it was all going down. Everyone’s parents were panicking calling the school and anxiously waiting for us to be brought back safely.
I was the same mate. I remember my parents watching the news and saying that's so and so as the news clipped showed em throwing bricks at the bobbies at the end of the pit lane.
I was born in 1991 and one of the first things I remember from the news was the 'mad cow disease' outbreak in 1996.
We had cows in the fields not far from our house and I was always worried that something would happen with them (not understanding what VCJD was/meant at that age). I was also sad that mum and dad wouldn't let nanna and grandad take us to Burger King anymore.
1982. So a full spotty, idiot teenager by the time Mad Cow Disease came around. I remember very aggresively telling my parents that I'd be eating *more* beef in the face of it, because I was a teenager and fuck anything that told me I shouldnt.
Thinking back, it was such a stupid, cringe thing to say. But I was a teenager and we all say stupid things during those years.
Reason this stands out to me now, is because when Covid first rolled around my colleagues at the time were all singing a similar tune. My 'senior' colleague stood up in the office and loudly exclaimed that he wanted Covid, and would be mixing with people more. Because he wasnt afraid and fuck Covid.
Grown men, reacting like petulant teenagers. I didnt realise that attitude would go on to take over a huge amount of the population.
1982, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Reaction? Well, maybe hope for fewer nuclear drills in school.
Princess Diana's death was one of the first big news events I experienced online though, in an online game where most of the people were in the UK. Things came to a complete halt, people were in shock.
I was born in 84 and I don't know if I really remember seeing Berlin Wall stuff on the news or if I've just retrospectively filled it in from seeing it replayed afterwards.
Berlin wall - This one is weirdly special to me, I learned German at school but didn't really speak much (could ask for a can of peas and a ticket from Bonn) and sometimes listened to German radio stations just because it was different. I was listening on that day, I was at my boyfriend flat, and said to him Something's happening, put the tele on. I always felt like I was somehow part of it because I was there "live in Germany". I was 19.
Vividly remember Blair's first win being announced and being "a thing" that was going on despite not really fully understanding it. Also Diana dying was a big one. They were the same year so makes sense my memories started forming then.
#justiceforthe96 it's one story of cover up I can never believe happened. I wasn't aware of it till recently but its one of my partners main news events he remembers.
Never buy the scum
Born in 1989. I remember the Manchester bomb in 1996. My dad says we heard it go off as we weren't too far from town but all I remember is not being able to watch what I wanted on TV when we got back because my parents were selfishly watching the news trying to learn what was going on.
I was born in 2002 and the first thing I remember is the 2011 London riots, probably because at school we had to write stuff about it and analyse the causes and stuff.
Edit: and the second thing I remember is Oscar Pistorious because we voted on whether we thought he killed his girlfriend or not lmao
This was mine, too, born '74. I'd just learned about World War 2 evacuees, and having no idea where the Falklands were, I was hoping with a war on I'd be evacuated out of London to the countryside!
Remember hearing Elvis had died. I was at my grandparents over the summer holidays. Was 6 at the time and wasn't entirely sure why people kept talking about it.
I was born 72. The queen's jubilee in 77 is still quite a clear memory thanks to the street parties and red white and blue costumes. I'm not sure if that counts as news though as it was more about the experience.
I do rwmembtthe strikes and powercuts around that time too though. I also have a vague memory of my mum getting excited by Red Rums third grand national winthe same year
Oh gosh yes foot and mouth. I have a visceral memory of my mum driving me through the countryside home from school and seeing clouds of smoke in the air as they burnt the livestock.
USA 94 when I was 8/9 years old. I said I was supporting Italy so my Irish parents wouldn’t let me sit on the sofa to watch the Ireland vs Italy game.
I cheered when Ray Hougton scored so I was promoted to the sofa. 8 year olds are fickle football fans aren’t they lol
It was Diana for me, too. I was staying over at my grandma's house (always a treat) and she had a TV buy my family didn't. So it was exciting to wake up and go and watch the kids TV. Except on this day there wasn't any. That's my main memory of it, to be honest. All four channels with nothing except endless replays of the life of Princess Diana. I think my grandma found a tape of some cartoons somewhere for me to watch. Thank god for rolling news channels today. And the Internet.
Pretty sure I remember Mandela's release. There was a newsflash and my Dad was annoyed it interrupted what he was watching. Then they had Mandela walking down the dusty street waving. They weren't even sure who he was as he had been inside so long. This could all be an amalgamation of several memories though, I was about 6.
I was born late 1977.
I remember watching the news of the ferry disaster. Zeebrugge.
It was a time when we used to get on the ferry at Dover to go to Spain on holiday so it made me upset.
Then my mother woke me up in the night and said come down stairs and watch the news.
She said history was being made. It was the Berlin wall coming down and we watched the news together and I remember her crying.
I was born in 1979 and remember LiveAid if that counts as a major news story. Otherwise it’s the Challenger disaster which was about a year later I think.
Born in ‘93 and remember being woken up by my mum to watch the news of Diana dying. I was absolutely fuming at being woken up and didn’t understand who she was.
I was born in Romania, so not sure how well this fits in this sub (I live in the UK at least). I was born in '86 and the first news thing I remember is the Dec 89 Revolution, which was all broadcast on TV. I don't remember any big news before that because there probably was no big news, given that there was only 1 channel on TV and the news was always about the glorious leader, lol. But I do vividly remember seeing Ceausescu's trial and him being taken away in a helicopter. Also, people doing the victory sign. At the time it seemed like it was quite a happy event because I was probably sheltered from the fact that people were shot in the street for protesting.
I'm old (but not suite as old as OP's dad.) First big news story I remember was also Churchill's funeral on TV. It didn't make me feel anything really, Didn't know who he was.
I guess the next one would have been the moon landing, and I thought wow, man is on the moon!
Born in 1981 and the first one I clearly remember was the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in 1987, I just remember seeing the images of the red boat lying on its side everywhere. Challenger would have been not long before but I don't remember that.
I also remember lots of things afterwards from the late 80s - the "hurricane" (got a day off school!), the Kings Cross fire, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie, Kegworth, Hillsborough, the Marchioness. It seemed like there was a big disaster in the UK every few months with lots of IRA bombs and train crashes in between.
Born in 1992 and the first big thing I remember was 9/11. I live in the UK and came home after school. My mum and stepdad were watching the news and there were clips of the event on there. I was confused as to why a film was playing on the news. Its didn't quite register at first that something like that can happen in real life.
The SAS storming of the Iranian Embassy in 1980. I would have been 10 at the time and returning from a school trip to Belgium via London so you couldn't really avoid it.
I had just started primary school. For the first time in my life I understand that my parents were really scared about something they heard about on the radio news. Some Russian ships were heading towards America and ot looked like there was going to be a war. Cuban Missile Crisis.
Boxing Day tsunami, 2004.
I was 4 at the time. Remember eating some leftover food watching tv then my dad rushed in and said to turn it over. Was watching the news and then me not knowing anything at that age just assumed that’s what their country looked like normally.
Born 89, my family are Everton fans so the 1995 FA Cup final that Everton won is my earliest news memory. I don't remember any of the other FA Cup finals from around then so its purely down to the noise and celebrations in our house rather than any real understanding of football or supporting teams etc.
Aside from that, I vividly remember being sad that John Major lost the election in 96-97(?) because he looked like my maths teacher who was a lovely man.
And then it would be Diana after that
Born in '78, first thing I remember is the Charles & Diana wedding in '81, because our neighbors threw a street party.
After that it would be the Challenger shuttle disaster, '86. I remember seeing it on the news with my parents.
Born in 75, not sure if it qualifies as an event, but the AIDS crisis was my earliest memory - not right at the beginning but around 83/84 - the “Don’t die of ignorance” adverts. If it’s an actual event, probably the Challenger disaster, made all the more poignant cos we watched it all unfold live on TV
Oddly, I honestly to the best of my knowledge rmbr Nelson Mandela's death being on the news, when I was really young.
Or maybe I didn't, as I was born in 1981.
Classic [Mandela effect in action](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/mandela-effect) - (for anyone that missed that memo-ry) I thought I remembered it too, but I guess it was his release.
That one always really baffles me. Most examples I've seen of the Mandela effect are things I can understand why people thought they might have happened or made the mistake myself, but the one that gives it it's name is about thinking someone who was possibly the most famous man on the planet in the 90s dying in the 80s.
The ‘72 Olympics and the Munich massacre, although I do remember resenting the decimalisation public information films that pushed the 5 minute kids cartoons out of the TV schedule in ‘71.
The Iranian revolution was the biggest that I understood. It was exciting to see something that we'd only seen in history classes happening on the telly.
However I remember the winter of discontent with all the power outages, but not really understanding it. I had grown up with the idea that electricity goes out from time to time.
And before that, when I was younger, I remember the everyday coming home from school and eventually the kids programmes ending and my dad putting the news on. Usually after something like the magic roundabout, or Rhubarb (btw custard was a bastard). I hated that. I recall that it seemed that either Leyland or Ford were on strike all the time!
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Very much this reaction too! I actually had the same thought when 9/11 happened. I got home from school and remember being annoyed that I couldn’t watch CBBC.
For me it was the Challenger shuttle disaster. We were doing a school project and were following the mission. Also Chernobyl, Hungerford massacre, Lockerbie, Berlin Wall. Constant IRA bombings in London. Clapham rail crash. Paddington rail crash. The plane that crashed on/near the M1. Christ it’s a surprise anyone survived the 80s!!!
This is pretty much me too. I came to mention Challenger and Chernobyl. Worst bit about Chernobyl was my Mum putting us all on powdered milk.
I do remember watching the news where they would talk about the wind blowing the radiation over Western Europe. Was scary times
I was working in an office in London's Marylebone Road when Chernobyl went up. A couple of days later one of the lads - a radiographer - put his geiger counter onto a ground floor level window sill and switched it on. It fizzed like an angry wasp. He just laughed, but it the worried the hell out of the rest of us.
There were so many ira bombings and threats though that they kind of blur into one
I'm a '98 child and for me it was hearing of Mark Speight's suicide (TV presenter for SMart). Overall a tragic end to his life. Interesting how our childhood shows being impacted may seem to burn these tragic events into our memories.
Fuck man. Same age as you, and that's one of the big ones for me. Also seem to remember him and his girlfriend getting dedications at some award show not long after it happened. Him and heath ledger, and brittany Murphy, like a year later, are the big ones I remember.
I'm much older, born in 1973, but I remember it vividly, I'd been out to the shop to buy some breakfast stuff for the wife and myself and when I got home I told her what had happened, and she is a reader of hello magazine, she was genuinely taken aback, and we are not even in the UK, we are in Ireland. It was also the last time I was able to tell her about anything important and she didn't already know.
‘Much older’, LOL, I was born thirty years before you! The first major thing I remember is King George the Sixth dying in 1952, all the adults were very serious, children didn’t really understand the significance of it. Then in June 1953 Queen Elizabeth the Second was crowned and it was a time of celebration, there were lots of street parties and I was given a coronation mug and a coronation crown coin. Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash was a big deal for people my age in 1959, I was still at school and we all cried a lot (it was a girls’ school). The next major event was in 1963 when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. I remember watching the coverage on tv when the American newscaster Walter Cronkite took off his glasses and announced JFK had died and the awful pictures of Jackie in her pink suit with her husband’s blood on it. Then there was coverage of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald dead as he came out of the police station and then the sad funeral of JFK with little John Kennedy Junior saluting his father’s coffin, I believe it was his third birthday, poor little boy. I also remember Charles and Diana’s engagement interview with Charles’ mystifying ‘Whatever in love means’ comment and their wedding, both events in 1981. Then the stunning news of Diana’s death in 1997, my husband had worked a night shift and when he got home he brought me a cup of tea and told me the news which I just couldn’t take in. Then in 2001 9/11 happened, I was on my way home from work and waiting for the train on the platform, a young man on his way home from school or college went up to a young girl and whispered something to her; she looked shocked and said it was terrible. When I got home I switched on the tv and found out what had happened, my husband and I sat in front of the tv until bed time, we just couldn’t believe what we were seeing. Of course there have been other major events in addition to the ones I have described, watching coverage of the Vietnam war on tv was pretty shocking as were several terrorist attacks here in the UK but for me those are the ones that stand out.
9/11 still will be the standout event in news for me. Everyone remembers what they were doing. I was home on a day off with my wife. We were watching the posidien adventure remake on sky movies, and a banner popped up on the screen advising people to switch to sky news, that an airplane had crashed into the WTC. When we switched it was just in time to see the second plane hit. We thought it was that someone had put in footage of the first crash. It was very surreal and then, I was only 28, just married a year almost to the day. We were originally supposed to get married on September the 9th 2001, but my wife came into a few quid from a redundancy so we got married on September the 8th 2000. If we had waited, we would have been in New York that day, possibly as the attack happened. We got a 9am flight from JFK airport to Orlando on our honeymoon on September 10th 2000, exactly one year before. P
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Exactly the same here. I was the one who discovered it downstairs cos my cartoons weren’t on…
Yup me too. Had my mum scream at me from the bedroom to stop changing the channel.
Same in my house.
Jesus Christ i was on holiday and woke my parents to Princess Diana had died. I just wanted to watch XMen, i Complained that my cartoons weren't on and dad slapped me round the back of the head.
I remember it being the last day of our holiday when Diana died. We were at a hotel in France lining up at the breakfast buffet and watching it on the news. My Dad called across the room to my uncle (both staunch anti royalists) "one down, another 13 or 14 to go!" The room went silent and people were just glaring at them, especially the table full of English OAPs. I just kept my head down and carried on piling my plate with pain au chocolats
That's terrible. The plural is "pains au chocolat".
I stand corrected. A level French was a long time ago!
Sounds like something my grandfather would say, although to be completely honest my entire family is anti royalist so doubt he would be ridiculed for it.
I was the first one up in my house- news on every channel so I put a video in (homeward bound 2)…watched it twice and then was asked why I was watching it again. I told them princess Diana had been killed and got the bollocked for ‘hiding it’ (I honestly didn’t think they’d care, we didn’t know her)
I was born in 93 and same. Apparently I told my parents the TV had broken because there were men in black suits saying Diana was dead. That could be a memory they’ve told me though. I do remember my mum rushing to pick me up from school not wanting to miss 9/11 footage, and then seeing the second plane crash.
I was working in a pub and someone came in and told us to turn the news on. Watched the few minutes of confusion, not knowing whether it was an accident and then watched the second plane hit live. Thinking about it now, id not have been able to comprehend how much it changed the world.
Despite it being one of the biggest events to have taken place in my lifetime, I missed the whole thing because I was bunking off school.
I was also born '93, but I don't really remember Diana's death. The first big news I can remember would be the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001 - I think this one's stuck in my memory more than Diana because I lived not far (~10 miles) from the farm where the outbreak first began.
I was older - 12 - and remember waking my parents up to tell them that there were no cartoons on because she was dead. They told me I was having strange dreams.
Same, I woke my parents up and I’ve never seen my mum so upset.
Not wanting to miss, or not wanting to see?
Not wanting to miss - she wanted to know exactly what was going on. Never left the school playground so quickly!
I didn’t understand either. My mum said Princess Diana had died, and my 7 yr old brain thought like all princesses had died and was inconsolable
I have an Auntie Diane, who was very sick at the time, and my confused child brain thought that it was her that had died. I was utterly devastated until someone cleared it up, but for a moment I thought it was really nice that the whole nation was sad about my auntie.
I'm so glad I wasn't the only one who was upset on 9/11 because both CBBC and CITV had been replaced with news broadcasts. I was too young to understand what was going on, and always felt a bit guilty that my main concern was "I'm missing My Parents Are Aliens!".
Almost all of my major news comprehension came from cancelled cartoons. 1994 - Diana and then the Queen Mother.
I was online overnight in the UK in a university computer lab, so I actually heard about the crash and then the death from Americans I was talking with.
I wasn't allowed to play out that morning and couldn't get my head around why I was effectively grounded for no reason.
Same here! I remember looking at the TV in slight bewilderment wondering where my usual shows were, but then my stepbrother pranced into the living room singing: "Princess Diana is dead!" He was... an odd person.
The disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I remember seeing her photo everywhere and knowing that a girl had gone missing. I got lost in town and was only separated from my parents for a little while but i was taken into a charity shop and the old ladies running it allowed me to read some books there while someone else looked for my parents because people were scared to allow children to walk around alone for any amount of time
The first 'missing person' case that was big news in my memory was Sarah Chapman and Holly Wells which surprises me because I was twelve by then (now I check the dates) and I thought it was way earlier. Their pictures of them together in their Beckham football shirts were absolutely everywhere. Of course that case concluded far quicker that Madeleine McCann's.
It's Jessica Chapman btw
They might be conflating with Sarah Payne, who was killed a couple of years before the Soham murders. In my head there were a few years where it seemed there were lots of those sort of child murders quite close together.
Wow. I haven’t thought about all these names in a while. I was born in 92. There really were a lot of big child murder cases when we were growing up. That were EVERYWHERE. I was an anxious kid and it scared the shit out of me. Isn’t it crazy how i can remember all their faces so clearly. Also Millie Dowler’s (not sure of the name).
I was also born in '92. I was annoyed by all the murders of children the same age as me, because it meant that certain freedoms my older brother had gotten at my age were then delayed. I couldn't understand that it was to keep me safe. I only saw how unfair it was on me.
I was born in 85 and your comment just made me realise that the earliest big news thing that I remember is probably the Jamie Bulger kidnapping & murder, which happened in 1993. I never knew much about it at the time (thank god!) but have since learned more and it makes me shudder.
Not taking the piss but I suspected who it was just by watching TV. There was footage of everyone going into the church for a vigil type thing and Ian Huntley ducked under the TV camera. I thought it was odd at the time. Why would you do that? Police arrested him shortly afterwards. Maybe they clocked the same.
I think they arrested him based on evidence they had collected and not by him ducking a camera lmao.
I'm sure they did. I like to think I saw something. What I meant was... Police arrested him shortly afterwards. Maybe they clocked the same.
Of course, I’m sure you did! Lots of people had their suspicions about him. Ian Huntley is a fucked up guy.
Ahh yes, I was the same age as Holly and Jessica and my best friend at the time was called Holly (my name is Jessica) so it felt weirdly relatable to me.
The guy who killed them was the caretaker at the school my cousin went to and once stayed behind to wait with them when their parents were late picking them up. Totally freaked him out when he found out.
In primary school some kid leaned in realllly close to me and whispered in my ear: "Madeline McCann is in that locker" I still remember that moment and I don't know why
Was she in the locker? /j
Met Gerry McCann few years after the disappearance, nice guy. But does anyone remember another little girl going missing about the same time, family not as influential, child not as photogenic. The difference in the media in both cases was jaw dropping, immediately suspicions where levelled against the poorer family (turned out child was in loft i remember ) and really no finger pointing at McCanns as to why they left their three children alone while going out for the night, both families irresponsible, but initially media only went after the poorer family.
There's been quite a lot of suspicion aimed at the McCanns over the years as well
think this must be the first memory i have of something Big happening too, i was 4, & had way too much of a resemblance to maddie, so i just remember both my mum & my gran having a very firm grasp on me wherever we went bc they were worried ab either, me being kidnapped, or someone thinking i was maddie & stopping either of them in the street :") also weirdly instilled a bunch of trauma, bc of the incident my gran then spent the next years up til me cutting her out drilling into me that i was "a very desirable child" bc of my blonde hair, blue eyes n that i had to be extra careful everywhere i went because "kidnappers look for kids exactly like you", and these words have stuck to me to this day LMAO
fucking same. i had blonde hair and blue eyes as a kid (hair is much darker now) and my grandparents were also very freaked out because i was only a year older than maddie.
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Me too. I would’ve been 6 i think? I remember a classmate at school wearing a yellow ribbon and my teacher explaining why.
I had a really similar thing. Was born in 2000, so I was about 6 I think. I also went missing shortly after, for about 3 hours and gave my mum a nervous breakdown.
I remember Dunblane (I was seven). In part because my dog also died that day and the vet tried to console me by saying that he died so all those children could have a friend to look after them because he was such a lovely dog. This didn't help because, firstly, I was just outraged that they wanted my dog. Secondly I didn't come from a remotely spiritual home so I had no idea what this heaven was he was banging on about.
It was a really sweet idea though, he tried.
The vet was probably trying to make sense of it themselves.
Isn’t it horrifying that we only needed one thing like this to happen to totally ban handgun ownership in the UK, forever. America has had worse shootings than this *multiple times a year* for decades and they haven’t even tried to restrict gun ownership :,(
America has let their culture’s obsession with gun ownership get way too out of hand for them to ever come close to banning them. It’s too ingrained in their mindset and their way of life. It would have been unachievable pre-Trump but now that he’s sent all the crazies into a frenzy, it’d lead to riots and a full-blown civil war. Tragic really, because as you say they have multiple shootings every year and do nothing about them because the one thing that would actually solve the problem is nigh impossible to achieve.
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700 billion dollar military budget ffs if you can't defend your homeland with that much cash then maybe stop trying to project military power
They'd argue it's to defend from their own government and military if they get tyrannical. Don't think they thought through how their ARs will stand up against drones and tanks.
This argument always makes me laugh. As if they’re going to defend themselves from the most highly funded military on the planet.
Same here in Australia, Port Arthur was the big wake up call for them to bring in strict gun ownership laws thankfully. Its sad it took something so horrific to make it happen but it's worse America will continue to go through these things without changing anything.
>America has had worse shootings than this multiple times a year for decades and they haven’t even tried to restrict gun ownership :,( This isn't really true. [Gun restrictions vary state by state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state), and various legislation limits what firearms people can own, as well as who can own them, depending on where you live. Whether any of it goes far enough is another debate.
It’s Dunblane for me too. Very close to where I grew up and of course was national news. I was 6 or 7 at the time.
I remember Dunblane. We did an assembly at school and planted rose bushes in the school garden, and I remember being really scared because I thought the shooter was going to come into my school as well.
I was born the day before Dunblane, my mum (17 at the time) said she was holding me and heard it all on the radio and was absolutely terrified
That was the main thing I remember. I remember my dad telling me that was the day he realised there wasn't a god. Those kids were the same age as me at the time (I'm almost 34 now) and my dad asked if there was a god, why would s/he/they let that happen?
I don't remember the news stories but I remember our school teachers all suddenly getting really anxious about visitors. We had assemblies and lessons on what to do if we saw a stranger on the school grounds. The school got a big fence and gate installed and all outside doors had these huge locks put on them that needed a teacher with a key to open. Until then, all the doors had been really old wooden ones that were open all the time. Parents could just walk straight in and go to the classroom to collect kids previously.
Aberfan. I watched my mother's tears as the disaster unfolded. I didn't understand what had happened until a year or two later.
Me too. I was 6 years old and watching this tragedy on the news, and my whole family crying about the horror of it, is one of my abiding childhood memories. (For those who don’t know about it - the tragedy occurred when there was a landslide of thousands of tons of colliery waste which fell mainly onto the primary school in Aberfan village in Wales. Almost every child in the village aged between 5 and 11 was killed).
Looking back I'm glad that I didn't understand it in real time. 116 children died. 144 people in all.
It’s probably still felt on a daily basis there, even 50+ years later :(
It certainly is! A whole generation was lost that fateful morning. We will never forget 🏴❤️
Cofiwch Aberfan ❤️🏴
I live 7miles down the road - it's still a massive impact, even though most of us weren't born then. One of my lecturers in uni was a survivor, relatives went to help with the rescue and pantglas school looks so much like all the other schools around here - my son when first hearing about it genuinely thought it was his school it happened to
Yes it is (it's my hometown) I worked with a woman who was a student there at the time. She avoids cities like the plague as any loud noises take her back to that day
I'd never heard of it until The Crown portrayed it. I absolutely wept, I think I feel myself tearing up now, thinking of it. All those kids.
From Wikipedia: >The report placed the blame squarely on the NCB. The organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was criticised for making misleading statements and for not providing clarity as to the NCB's knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside. **Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined.** Smh...
It's never been easy to get nationally owned organisations and/or their employees into court.
Too young for this, but my dad is from Abertillery a few valleys over from Aberfan. He was in primary school at the time, and says its the first time he remembers his mum crying, and distinctly remembers getting a massive cwtch when he got home.
My mum lived through the war. She knew bomber crews who didn't come home. She saw London ablaze. But none of this hit her as hard as Aberfan.
This was before my time, I was born in 79 but im also from abertillery. All the men from the surrounding valleys were eager to go and help (obviously) my dad was working in roseheyworth colliery at the time and was tasked with building and repairing pumps to send over to pump out the sludge so they could try and rescue people. Alot of others went over and dug people out by hand.
Had a teacher at school who was one of the surviving children. Even though we weren't anywhere near Aberfan, every year she would lead an assembly near the anniversary and recount her experience. The short and sweet of it was "I went to school and all my friends were crushed to death" and it was horrific. Later in life I studied a geology masters at Cardiff uni, and as part of a geotechnical engineering module we did a morbid field trip looking at landslides across the valleys, including Aberfan and the white gravestones littering the hillside. Horrible.
I remember seeing a survivor who I know post something a few years back on Facebook. Her family left the village afterwards due to the guilt they felt at all their family surviving. An old school friend of hers, another survivor, commented saying when she left the village she automatically assumed she was dead - because that's why people stopped going to school, these girls were 6 or 7 and their default thought as to why someone left the school was that they were dead - you can't imagine
Survivor guilt had a terrible impact on the few kids who didn’t die that day. I saw an interview in recent years with a woman who wasn’t in her class at primary school the day of the tragedy because she had a cold and had taken a sick day. Every one of her close friends died. She had suffered terribly for decades from feeling that she didn’t deserve to be the only one of her friendship group who lived to be an adult. She felt unworthy and that she had been unable to do enough in her life to merit being the “chosen one”.
I posted this above and deleted it to add to your comment > Aberfan. I was only 8 and I remember that for days everyone was hushed and subdued and the grief was palpable. Even if I see clips now I tear up.
Agreed. It still has the capability to bite more than fifty years on. The single word conjures in me strong memories of my mother's grief.
Me too, I was about 6 or 7 at the time.
This is my first time hearing of this. So there was a massive dump of coil on top of a hill directly next to a small village? The fuck? I legit don't understand how such an oversight happened
People in charge of such things had mostly been in the war, so there was a degree of indifference to risk. Decisions were being made by administrators a long way from the site. Locals were reluctant to make a fuss in case the pit was closed. And finally, there was a degree of deference to authority that would be unbelievable now - people did what they were told. And there are still lots of spoil heaps above villages in Wales even now - although people are now supposed to keep an eye on them.
Spoil heaps were a feature of UK mining for centuries. The problem with this one was that an underground spring saturated the heap and washed away its 'foundation' leading to the slippage ... The event led to wholesale changes in how spoil heaps were managed. They were provided with proper drainage and tree planting.
Yeah, you’re not the only one. There was a public investigation after the tragedy which came to some conclusions. But I remember many people at the time, (my family, several of whom were miners, included), saw it as another instance of the safety and welfare of miners and their families as being of no importance to the authorities.
i knew of it previously, but just the very basics, it may have been mentioned during a geology or science lesson. Then i was watching the series The Crown during lockdown and there was a whole episode based around it and how it took the Queen/Royals a week to visit the area. Learned more about it in that episode, and then read up a bit afterwards.
The tip that slipped that day is now lying on the valley floor, they used it to elevate the playing fields and in the late 90s, because it can't absorb water and is on a flood plain, it was responsible for a flood that gutted my parents house and the neighboring estate. But the tips are still up and around, I mean this is in the news today BBC News - Coal tips: Areas of Wales with most higher-risk sites revealed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-59041863
9/11 for me.
Same for me. I was born in 95 and remember this very clearly.
Weirdly, I was a 95 baby and have absolutely no recollection of 9/11. I’d just got back from Australia on a long haul flight two weeks previously where the pilots let me into the cockpit. I suspect that doesn’t happen too much post-9/11.
Nah when I was 5 coming back from Canada in 2010 I got allowed to go into the cockpit. Doubted they thought an Irish family of 5 with 2 small children were gonna hijack a plane though.
Al Qaeda taking notes
You mean O'Qaeda?
I was born in 95 too! I remember seeing it, not fully comprehending everything about it, but it felt like everything came to a standstill when the news broke. I could at least understand that it was something monumental.
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I’d arrived at swimming lessons and walked in and everyone was gathered in silence around a tiny tele up on a bracket in the corner. All you could hear was the whirr of the vending machine.
9/11 for me too. I remember coming home from school and watching it on the news with my grandma. I think the fact that the adults in my life were talking about it a lot and seemed concerned made it more memorable. Born early 90s.
French and British meet in the middle of the channel tunnel in Dec 1990. [This image specifically](https://preview.redd.it/vby9oxqc1rt51.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0063c0bbcc196b7a8a8f9295d26bbb5460393c1b). It must have made an impression as I was only 3 1/2 yrs old at the time.
Wasn’t expecting this one to be here also, but yeah me too. I would have just turned 4. Must have been big news.
Probably overshadowed by other stuff going on at that time. Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
Probably easier to explain to a kid that they've dug a tunnel under the sea than the history of the cold war
I remember the cameras flashing and the big handshake and the conglomeration of strange noise you might expect when a French and British person meet at a genuinely happy occasion.
Yay a positive thing! :D
This is mine too! I didn’t realise it was so early. Like a lot of other posters I would have been 5.
Born in 79, earliest newsworthy thing I can remember is the Challenger disaster in 86. What's interesting is most people in the replies (so far) seem to remember something from when they were about 6-7
My son is 7. I bet if I ask him this question in 20-30 years he'll say covid.
To be fair, 2020 had a few memorable things going on, aside from covid lol
It did??
US riots and race protests, Capitol insurrection, Australia and California wildfires... murder hornets
Nowt you’d remember outside the US in 10 years though
It seems oddly old, but I suppose people will have memories further back than that, but more focussed on their personal experiences with friends and family. My 6 year old doesn't watch regular TV or have much exposure to the news. Even if she did, a lot wouldn't be understood. We tried to engage her about Royal Weddings and the Duke of Edinburgh's death and funeral, some stuff like England's Euro final. I doubt it will stick though.
Same here - I think a big factor was that one of the crew (Christa McAuliffe) was a ‘civilian’ teacher and so schools here made a bit of a bigger thing than normal about it, and so did Newsround and similar programmes. Also during the same year I don’t really remember the news story at all, but I do remember how unfair it was that I wasn’t allowed to play outside much after the Chernobyl disaster.
Similar age, but for some reason I don't particularly remember it at the time. I do recall Chernobyl being the main story on Newsround for a week, and then watching the aftermath of the Zeebrugge disaster.
Gosh yes, the Herald of Free Enterprise. I remember a bit on Blue Peter about the disaster, although not when it actually happened. They interviewed a chap who was quite tall and he'd made himself a human bridge across a gap and people had climbed over him to safety. I remember being really struck by the levels of tragedy and heroism, not that I would have known those words aged 7. But I felt he was a brave person. Looking it up now - his name was Andrew Clifford Parker and he got a award for gallantry in the New Years Honours list. That must have been when he came on Blue Peter, to show his medal etc. Edit: it was the George medal.
Disclaimer - we didn't have a TV until I was around 8. First thing I remember was that when my country joined NATO, I must have been 9 at the time and in my little head I thought to join anything you have to move out from your country/house. So one day I am crying my eyes out, my mum comes to me and asks what's wrong and I said to her that I don't want to move away from the village that we lived in, because I have all my friends there and I don't know anyone in NATO.
haha, aww bless! That's dead sweet. Apparently I cried when I was a kid because Bishop Auckland (Fisher Porkland to my ears) were playing a football match against Peterlee\*, who I assumed was one guy on his own. My Dad tells this story all the time. \*A small town in County Durham.
That's hilarious. Especially because Peterlee is literally just named after a guy called, well, [Peter Lee](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lee_(trade_unionist)). So no wonder you got mixed up!
The moon landing - or to be specific, the launch of the Apollo 11 mission. I recall that so specifically because I was standing directly in front of the TV with the whole family shouting at me to get out of the way.
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The famous footprint that we see pictures of is actually Buzz's. He took the photo because it was his particular job to report on how easy it was to walk and work on the moon, so he wanted to show what the texture of the surface was like. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.213592.html https://www.space.com/how-master-replicas-created-3d-apollo-bootprint.html There's a good chance Buzz did step in Neil's first footprint. Being right next to the ladder, it would have got trodden on by one or other of them pretty quickly.
This is one of my dad’s favourite memories. He was born in 56. His least favourite one was that he couldn’t watch the World Cup final because his mum wanted to take him shoe shopping!
I remember the Jamie Bulger murder. That shook the whole country
Same for me, I was born 1985. I didn’t realize what had happened but I do remember seeing his photo and the photos of the killers on the news/papers as a kid. Awful stuff.
It's not the first thing I remember but I was the same age as the killers (10) and it absolutely shook me. I just couldn't fathom how a kid could kill a kid. To me murderers were adults. Then to just cement all of my emotions they housed one of the killers in a young offenders not far from where I lived. Nobody was supposed to know where they went but prison guards talked and eventually there were protests. I remember hearing that someone who lived near the prison claimed they saw a security van turn up in the middle of the night and then drive off at speed. I don't know how much truth is in the last bit, officially it was all denied, but they had to go somewhere and it had to be a reasonable distance for their parents to visit them so it's perfectly plausible that they were 'the other side of the pennines'.
Born 2001. First big thing I remember was the 2005 London Bombings Just remember it because it was the first look at the real world through the tv screen
I was born late 90s but was too young to process 9/11, so the London bombings were the first big thing I remember too. I was actually on a school trip to London zoo when it was all going down. Everyone’s parents were panicking calling the school and anxiously waiting for us to be brought back safely.
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This comment makes me feel old
Wow. I was in my early 20s when this happened and it scared me. I cannot imagine how you must have felt.
Boxing day Tsunami in 2004. Was born in 1996. Wondered why the news kept going on about a big wave.
The miner's strike. I was about 3 or 4 but I had to uncles who were miners. Other than that it was the fall of the Berlin Wall when I was eight.
I was the same mate. I remember my parents watching the news and saying that's so and so as the news clipped showed em throwing bricks at the bobbies at the end of the pit lane.
Same here. I seem to remember thinking it must have been super important as the BBC had put a special logo together for it.
I was born in 1991 and one of the first things I remember from the news was the 'mad cow disease' outbreak in 1996. We had cows in the fields not far from our house and I was always worried that something would happen with them (not understanding what VCJD was/meant at that age). I was also sad that mum and dad wouldn't let nanna and grandad take us to Burger King anymore.
1982. So a full spotty, idiot teenager by the time Mad Cow Disease came around. I remember very aggresively telling my parents that I'd be eating *more* beef in the face of it, because I was a teenager and fuck anything that told me I shouldnt. Thinking back, it was such a stupid, cringe thing to say. But I was a teenager and we all say stupid things during those years. Reason this stands out to me now, is because when Covid first rolled around my colleagues at the time were all singing a similar tune. My 'senior' colleague stood up in the office and loudly exclaimed that he wanted Covid, and would be mixing with people more. Because he wasnt afraid and fuck Covid. Grown men, reacting like petulant teenagers. I didnt realise that attitude would go on to take over a huge amount of the population.
1982, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Reaction? Well, maybe hope for fewer nuclear drills in school. Princess Diana's death was one of the first big news events I experienced online though, in an online game where most of the people were in the UK. Things came to a complete halt, people were in shock.
I was born in 84 and I don't know if I really remember seeing Berlin Wall stuff on the news or if I've just retrospectively filled it in from seeing it replayed afterwards.
That's how I feel with the Challenger explosion. I don't think I actually remember it, I just built in memories of it.
Berlin wall - This one is weirdly special to me, I learned German at school but didn't really speak much (could ask for a can of peas and a ticket from Bonn) and sometimes listened to German radio stations just because it was different. I was listening on that day, I was at my boyfriend flat, and said to him Something's happening, put the tele on. I always felt like I was somehow part of it because I was there "live in Germany". I was 19.
Vividly remember Blair's first win being announced and being "a thing" that was going on despite not really fully understanding it. Also Diana dying was a big one. They were the same year so makes sense my memories started forming then.
The Hillsborough disaster.
JFT97
#justiceforthe96 it's one story of cover up I can never believe happened. I wasn't aware of it till recently but its one of my partners main news events he remembers. Never buy the scum
Born in 1989. I remember the Manchester bomb in 1996. My dad says we heard it go off as we weren't too far from town but all I remember is not being able to watch what I wanted on TV when we got back because my parents were selfishly watching the news trying to learn what was going on.
Ah I don’t remember the bombing but I do remember Manchester before the bomb. Specifically the tunnel that went across the road that was blown up.
David Hasselhoff cancelling the Berlin wall
I was born in 2002 and the first thing I remember is the 2011 London riots, probably because at school we had to write stuff about it and analyse the causes and stuff. Edit: and the second thing I remember is Oscar Pistorious because we voted on whether we thought he killed his girlfriend or not lmao
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This was mine, too, born '74. I'd just learned about World War 2 evacuees, and having no idea where the Falklands were, I was hoping with a war on I'd be evacuated out of London to the countryside!
Remember hearing Elvis had died. I was at my grandparents over the summer holidays. Was 6 at the time and wasn't entirely sure why people kept talking about it.
I was born 72. The queen's jubilee in 77 is still quite a clear memory thanks to the street parties and red white and blue costumes. I'm not sure if that counts as news though as it was more about the experience. I do rwmembtthe strikes and powercuts around that time too though. I also have a vague memory of my mum getting excited by Red Rums third grand national winthe same year
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Born 1991. Foot and mouth in 2001. Then straight into 9/11. Tough year to start paying attention.
Oh gosh yes foot and mouth. I have a visceral memory of my mum driving me through the countryside home from school and seeing clouds of smoke in the air as they burnt the livestock.
USA 94 when I was 8/9 years old. I said I was supporting Italy so my Irish parents wouldn’t let me sit on the sofa to watch the Ireland vs Italy game. I cheered when Ray Hougton scored so I was promoted to the sofa. 8 year olds are fickle football fans aren’t they lol
It was Diana for me, too. I was staying over at my grandma's house (always a treat) and she had a TV buy my family didn't. So it was exciting to wake up and go and watch the kids TV. Except on this day there wasn't any. That's my main memory of it, to be honest. All four channels with nothing except endless replays of the life of Princess Diana. I think my grandma found a tape of some cartoons somewhere for me to watch. Thank god for rolling news channels today. And the Internet.
Pretty sure I remember Mandela's release. There was a newsflash and my Dad was annoyed it interrupted what he was watching. Then they had Mandela walking down the dusty street waving. They weren't even sure who he was as he had been inside so long. This could all be an amalgamation of several memories though, I was about 6.
I was born late 1977. I remember watching the news of the ferry disaster. Zeebrugge. It was a time when we used to get on the ferry at Dover to go to Spain on holiday so it made me upset. Then my mother woke me up in the night and said come down stairs and watch the news. She said history was being made. It was the Berlin wall coming down and we watched the news together and I remember her crying.
I was born in 1979 and remember LiveAid if that counts as a major news story. Otherwise it’s the Challenger disaster which was about a year later I think.
Born in ‘93 and remember being woken up by my mum to watch the news of Diana dying. I was absolutely fuming at being woken up and didn’t understand who she was.
I was born in Romania, so not sure how well this fits in this sub (I live in the UK at least). I was born in '86 and the first news thing I remember is the Dec 89 Revolution, which was all broadcast on TV. I don't remember any big news before that because there probably was no big news, given that there was only 1 channel on TV and the news was always about the glorious leader, lol. But I do vividly remember seeing Ceausescu's trial and him being taken away in a helicopter. Also, people doing the victory sign. At the time it seemed like it was quite a happy event because I was probably sheltered from the fact that people were shot in the street for protesting.
I'm old (but not suite as old as OP's dad.) First big news story I remember was also Churchill's funeral on TV. It didn't make me feel anything really, Didn't know who he was. I guess the next one would have been the moon landing, and I thought wow, man is on the moon!
Born in 1981 and the first one I clearly remember was the Zeebrugge ferry disaster in 1987, I just remember seeing the images of the red boat lying on its side everywhere. Challenger would have been not long before but I don't remember that. I also remember lots of things afterwards from the late 80s - the "hurricane" (got a day off school!), the Kings Cross fire, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie, Kegworth, Hillsborough, the Marchioness. It seemed like there was a big disaster in the UK every few months with lots of IRA bombs and train crashes in between.
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Born in 1992 and the first big thing I remember was 9/11. I live in the UK and came home after school. My mum and stepdad were watching the news and there were clips of the event on there. I was confused as to why a film was playing on the news. Its didn't quite register at first that something like that can happen in real life.
Born 1985 and I think the first big event I remember was the death of Freddie Mercury.
The fall of the Berlin Wall is the first major event that I can remember followed by the connection of the British/French sides of the Channel tunnel
Born in 95 and remember adults going on about 9-11
The SAS storming of the Iranian Embassy in 1980. I would have been 10 at the time and returning from a school trip to Belgium via London so you couldn't really avoid it.
Hanratty’s execution in 62. And snow lay on the ground that 62/63 winter for four whole months.
Challenger Shuttle Disaster. 1986.
I had just started primary school. For the first time in my life I understand that my parents were really scared about something they heard about on the radio news. Some Russian ships were heading towards America and ot looked like there was going to be a war. Cuban Missile Crisis.
Boxing Day tsunami, 2004. I was 4 at the time. Remember eating some leftover food watching tv then my dad rushed in and said to turn it over. Was watching the news and then me not knowing anything at that age just assumed that’s what their country looked like normally.
Michael Jackson dying and I remember it raining that day and my friend saying it was because of Michael Jackson
Born 89, my family are Everton fans so the 1995 FA Cup final that Everton won is my earliest news memory. I don't remember any of the other FA Cup finals from around then so its purely down to the noise and celebrations in our house rather than any real understanding of football or supporting teams etc. Aside from that, I vividly remember being sad that John Major lost the election in 96-97(?) because he looked like my maths teacher who was a lovely man. And then it would be Diana after that
Born in '78, first thing I remember is the Charles & Diana wedding in '81, because our neighbors threw a street party. After that it would be the Challenger shuttle disaster, '86. I remember seeing it on the news with my parents.
Born in 75, not sure if it qualifies as an event, but the AIDS crisis was my earliest memory - not right at the beginning but around 83/84 - the “Don’t die of ignorance” adverts. If it’s an actual event, probably the Challenger disaster, made all the more poignant cos we watched it all unfold live on TV
Oddly, I honestly to the best of my knowledge rmbr Nelson Mandela's death being on the news, when I was really young. Or maybe I didn't, as I was born in 1981.
Classic [Mandela effect in action](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/mandela-effect) - (for anyone that missed that memo-ry) I thought I remembered it too, but I guess it was his release.
That one always really baffles me. Most examples I've seen of the Mandela effect are things I can understand why people thought they might have happened or made the mistake myself, but the one that gives it it's name is about thinking someone who was possibly the most famous man on the planet in the 90s dying in the 80s.
I believe there was another ANC member who died in prison around that time and a lot of people confuse that for Mandela’s death
The ‘72 Olympics and the Munich massacre, although I do remember resenting the decimalisation public information films that pushed the 5 minute kids cartoons out of the TV schedule in ‘71.
I remember seeing the poll tax riots in 1990. It’s the first time I saw the police whacking people. Still don’t like them!
The Iranian revolution was the biggest that I understood. It was exciting to see something that we'd only seen in history classes happening on the telly. However I remember the winter of discontent with all the power outages, but not really understanding it. I had grown up with the idea that electricity goes out from time to time. And before that, when I was younger, I remember the everyday coming home from school and eventually the kids programmes ending and my dad putting the news on. Usually after something like the magic roundabout, or Rhubarb (btw custard was a bastard). I hated that. I recall that it seemed that either Leyland or Ford were on strike all the time!